'The course of true love never did run smooth,' wrote William Shakespeare, and that saying has never been more relevant than in books like Call Me By Your Name.

Elio and Oliver's powerful romance blossoms over the course of a summer on the Italian Riviera in André Aciman's unforgettable story. Elio tells the story of how he first felt attracted to Oliver and how it grew over the course of the six weeks they spent together, combining fear, curiosity, and obsession.

Because of the intensity of their feelings for one another that summer, their connection remains strong even after 19 years, despite the fact that their lives have taken them in different directions.

Love, in all its manifestations, is an inconvenient, painful, and unfathomable force in Call Me By Your Name and the other books like it that are listed below.

9 Books like Call Me By Your Name

Carol, by Patricia Highsmith

Until recently, I had never read Carol by Patricia Highsmith, a gripping story about the disintegration of a romance between two women, Therese Belivet and Carol Aird, in a time when society was unwilling to accept their union.

They are Therese, an aspiring stage designer who works in a department store, and Carol, a wealthy housewife who has seen her marriage fall apart over the years. Their paths cross in the store, where Therese is serving Carol, and the two women immediately feel drawn to one another because they see in the other everything that they are missing in their own lives: joy, passion, inspiration, stimulation.

On a road trip to see if they could be a couple, they're thwarted and extorted by Carol's husband, who's been keeping tabs on them. This puts the whole ordeal into perspective.

Highsmith's Carol, like all novels like Call Me By Your Name, is an exploration of the author's identity and a story of love in the face of adversity.

Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel Garca Márquez's poetic Love in the Time of Cholera, the passionate love story of Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza that spans a lifetime, is built around the idea that love is a physical and emotional disease.

Florentino and Fermina had a passionate love affair when they were young, but their paths have diverged since then. Florentino is devastated when Fermina marries a wealthy, well-educated doctor who is dedicated to eradicating cholera, so he devotes himself to his business and 662 affairs in order to pass the time until he can see Fermina again.

In the wake of Fermina's husband's sudden death, Florentino attends his wife's funeral in order to reignite the flame of love that he and Fermina first fell in love with fifty years, nine months, and four days earlier.

Love in the Time of Cholera explores love as both an ideal dream and a carnal depraved need for someone, making it an unconventional romance that readers of books like Call Me By Your Name are sure to fall in love with.

Lie With Me, by Philippe Besson

Philip Besson's novella Lie With Me is a must-read for anyone who enjoyed Call Me By Your Name's poignant depiction of Elio's life-changing encounter with a woman.

The narrator's memory is jolted by a chance encounter with a stranger who looks strikingly like Thomas, the charming boy with whom he had an extramarital affair during his senior year of high school. Even though they were socially and culturally dissimilar, Thomas was his first true love, and the two of them were drawn to each other despite their social differences, shame, and fear.

To be sure, Lie With Me is a heartbreaking coming-of-age tale that captures the tenderness and significance of first love while also showing how even decades later, the unanswerable questions of what ifs and what could have been remain.

The Only Story, by Julian Barnes

Is the person we choose to love a reflection of who we are as a person?

A book like Call Me By Your Name is the only story that matters to the narrator of the next novel on this list.

The Only Story by Julian Barnes is a quietly heartbreaking novel in which the narrator Paul falls in love with Susan, a woman nearly 30 years his senior. When Paul is just 19 years old and Susan is 48 years old with two grown daughters, they meet and fall in love despite the obstacles. They eventually live together.

In the second part, we learn about their years together and Susan's descent into depression and alcoholism, which culminated in her death. In the third part, Paul reflects on the meaning of love and attempts to make sense of Susan's death.

Despite its painful poignancy, The Only Story is an incredibly beautiful read about a couple who remained together in the face of all the odds.

Truth and Beauty, by Ann Patchett

As you'll see in Truth and Beauty, the heartbreaking story of Ann Patchett and her friendship with the late great Lucy Grealy, a fellow writer, friendships can have the same profound impact on our lives as our first love or other significant relationships.

Both Ann and Lucy became close friends at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where they shared a love of words and writing, and became as committed to each other's success as they were to their own careers. Years of pain and ridicule haunted her as a result of her childhood cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, and reconstructive surgery that resulted in the loss of the lower part of her jaw.

Lucille's depraved and tragic path could not be halted by her success as a writer and her close relationship with Ann, who saw beyond Lucy's disfigurement.

After Lucy's death, Ann penned Truth and Beauty, in which she vividly depicts her unwavering love and devotion for Lucy, a portrait of love that is ideal for fans of Call Me By Your Name.

Even though some of the most important love stories like Call Me By Your Name are the saddest, they shed light on the age-old question of whether or not it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all.

Even though these books can be heartbreaking and painful in some ways—just like love—we continue to read them because we know that the pain is worth it in the end.

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