Ashley Crookham's Writing

I count down the days until my new book, I Was Just So Lonely, finally arrives. I often find myself thinking about the stories that share a similar heartbeat with my own work. If you enjoy narratives that peek behind the curtains of suburban life or explore the complexities of modern motherhood with a touch of wit, I think you feel right at home here.

I put together this list of five books to help you decide if my upcoming release is the right fit for your nightstand.

Five Similar Books (with brief similarity notes)

1) Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

• Similarity: A comic, slightly caustic first-person/epistolary-adjacent voice centering on a woman pushed to the edges of conventional domestic life; strong satirical eye for family logistics and suburban/modern motherhood. Both books use humor to peer into isolation and rekindle human connection.

2) Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

• Similarity: Interrogates motherhood, choices, and community dynamics; they both foreground how seemingly small domestic decisions ripple outward into broader emotional stakes .

3) The Mothers by Brit Bennett

• Similarity: A compassionate treatment of female friendship, communal judgment, and the aftermath of personal choices; both novels handle the long-term reverberations of youthful decisions and the ways community memory shapes adult identity.

4) Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

• Similarity: Ensemble domestic fiction about mothers in a community; uses observational humor, well-drawn inter-personal scenes, and escalating emotional stakes. This manuscript has analogous neighborhood-school-PTA scenes, multiple mothers with intersecting agendas, and a tonal mixture of comedy and serious undercurrents.

5) The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney

• Similarity: Adult-family/domestic dynamics with a wry, intimately-observed narrator and an ensemble of fraught relationships; both novels mine everyday grievances for emotional revelation, dramatizing small compromises and the humor within family responsibilities.

I hope these recommendations give you a better sense of what to expect when my book launches. I look forward to sharing the full story with you very soon!