Have you ever wished to be free of the burdens of life? In such moments, a kindred spirit can lift the weight from your shoulders. The books I am about to share, echo the silent screams of troubled souls. This is not a cry for help, but a lifeline extended through literature. Read on to learn how it came to this unusual book recommendation list I created for shepherd.com.
Honest offers vs. Scammers
Ever got flooded by messages of which most were advertising, promotions and people claiming to want your best if you pay them them but delivering sub-par? I got so many of those when I published my bestselling literary fiction “Prison of Loneliness” that I couldn’t tell who was genuinely interested in a win-win.
Out of hundreds there was less than a handful proper requests. One of those was by shepherd.com, a page that publishes book recommendation lists by authors and earns money via affiliate links to those books at no extra cost for the reader. They also have a web shop through which people can directly purchase the books.
This collaboration is of mutual benefit for all of us, you included. They get content and traffic on their webpage, I get free publicity, and you get themed book recommendations by your favourite authors.
Which books to choose, though?
Which novels do you know on heavy topics such as depression, trauma, and loneliness? Or contemporary stories about living abroad and being separated from your loved ones? The idea of Shepherd.com was for me to find books similar to mine and revolve them around a common theme. Easier said than done.
I struggled to find comparable titles to Prison of Loneliness, let alone all touching the same theme. Mental health books? Books about loneliness? And I should have read and liked all those? I realised this was a larger task than I originally anticipated and I was glad I had a full month to fill out their questionnaire.
I started by collecting a few titles resembling mine, and then the similarity stroke me.
Life’s struggles and their emotions
Ever been so overwhelmed by life’s burdens that you wished you’d be freed from it all? If yes, let me imaginarily lift the weight off your shoulders for a moment. If no, I hope you’ll never have to face this abyss.
The survival instinct is the strongest every living being has. If life itself appears worse than death, something tremendous must have happened. The main characters in the books I found similar to mine were all going through intense emotions and suffering until they pondered at least once throughout the story, whether to end it.
Follow the link below to find out which books I chose, my personal connection to them, and how a specific suicide influenced my perception of the topic.
More interested in the topic of loneliness? Here is shepherd’s list of books about loneliness:
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