Books Like The Help

There is a specific feeling that comes from finishing The Help: the feeling of having heard voices that needed to be heard. Kathryn Stockett’s novel - Skeeter, the young white woman in 1960s Mississippi; Aibileen and Minny, the Black maids whose stories she collects - has been loved by readers around the world because it is about the courage of telling the truth, and the friendship that grows across the deepest divides. The problem after finishing it is the one every great book creates: you want more of the feeling - the voices, the courage, the warmth. This guide collects the books that genuinely belong on that shelf.

What Made The Help Special#

Before the recommendations, it is worth naming what you are actually looking for, because the right next book depends on which part of the book stayed with you.

If the voices stayed with you - Aibileen, Minny, the women whose stories were never told - then the novels of women’s voices will fit. If the courage stayed with you - the risk of telling the truth - then the novels of courage and resistance will be your natural next step. And if the friendship stayed with you - the connection across the divide - then the friendship novels will carry it forward. Most readers are looking for all three, and the books below cover the range.

The Novels of Women’s Voices#

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd#

If there is one book that the Help reader should pick up next, it is The Secret Life of Bees. Lily, a white girl in 1960s South Carolina, runs away with her Black caretaker Rosaleen to find the truth about her mother - and the novel is the story of the women who take them in, the Boatwright sisters and their honey farm.

The two books are siblings: the South, the women’s strength, the courage to build a different life. Where The Help collects the maids’ stories, The Secret Life of Bees tells one girl’s story of finding a family of women. For readers who loved the women of The Help, the Boatwright sisters are the natural next family to love.

Content notes: Deals with racism; for readers from the mid-teens up.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker#

For readers who want the women’s voices in their most powerful form, The Color Purple is the essential book. Told in letters, the novel follows Celie, a Black woman in the early twentieth-century South, through cruelty and suffering to the discovery of her own voice and the love that heals her.

The book shares The Help’s project - the women’s stories finally spoken - delivered with more raw power and at greater depth. For readers who loved Aibileen and Minny, Celie is the voice that must be heard.

Content notes: Deals with abuse and racism; for mature readers.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg#

For readers who want the women’s voices with more warmth, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is the book. The novel weaves together the story of two women in 1920s Alabama - Ruth and Idgie, who build a life and a business together - with the present-day friendship of an elderly woman and the visitor she tells the story to.

The book shares The Help’s Southern setting and its celebration of women’s friendship and courage, delivered with warmth and humor. For readers who loved the community of The Help, Whistle Stop is the cozier version of the same world.

Content notes: A warm novel with some difficult moments; for readers from the mid-teens up.

The Novels of Courage and Resistance#

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee#

For readers who want the courage-of-telling-the-truth theme in its most essential form, To Kill a Mockingbird is the book. Scout Finch’s father Atticus defends an innocent Black man in 1930s Alabama, and the novel - told from Scout’s childhood perspective - is the great American novel of moral courage.

The book shares The Help’s subject: the courage of standing against the racism of your own community. For readers who loved the courage of Skeeter and the maids, Atticus is the essential companion.

Content notes: Deals with racism and a trial involving assault; for readers from the mid-teens up.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly#

For readers who want the untold-voices theme in nonfiction, Hidden Figures is the essential book. Shetterly tells the true story of the Black women mathematicians who helped NASA win the space race - the women whose essential work was long unacknowledged.

The book shares The Help’s project: the women’s stories finally told. For readers who loved the maids’ voices and want the real-life version of the untold story, this is the book.

Content notes: Nonfiction dealing with racism and segregation; for readers from the mid-teens up.

The Novels of Friendship Across Divides#

The Help and the Friendship Theme#

One of the quiet achievements of The Help is the friendship that grows between Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny - a friendship built on the courage of seeing each other fully across the deepest divide. The novels of friendship on this shelf share that achievement, and the best of them show that friendship across difference is one of the most powerful forces in fiction. For readers who loved the friendship at the center of The Help, these are the books that carry the theme forward with the same warmth and courage.

How to Choose Your Next Read#

The right next book depends on what you are ready for. If you want the women’s voices: The Secret Life of Bees or Fried Green Tomatoes. If you want the voices with more power: The Color Purple. If you want the courage theme: To Kill a Mockingbird. If you want the untold story in nonfiction: Hidden Figures.

There is no wrong order, but there is a sensible one: start with The Secret Life of Bees for the same South and warmth, then To Kill a Mockingbird for the courage theme, then The Color Purple when you are ready for the deeper power, and let the others fill in as you go.

Reading the Shelf for the Voices#

There is one more thing worth naming about the Help shelf, because it is the thing the book itself would most want named: these are books about voices that give the reader voices to carry. The Help is a novel of voices - Aibileen’s, Minny’s, the women whose stories were never told - and the books on this list are the continuation of that project. They are books that listen to the unheard, that give the reader the experience of hearing stories that history forgot.

The reading is a form of attention. A reader who finishes The Help has been trained to listen for the voices beneath the surface - the work, the care, the lives hidden in plain sight - and the books on this list extend the training. Each one is a demonstration that every life contains a story worth telling, and that the telling matters. For readers who loved the voices of The Help, the shelf is a collection of voices to hear, and the hearing is the point. Read them with attention, and carry the voices with you after the book is closed.

It is also worth saying who the shelf is for, because it is wider than it first appears. The obvious reader is the lover of Southern fiction - but the deeper reader is the one who needs the book’s reminder: that the unheard voices are everywhere, and that listening is a form of respect. The Help and its companions are books to give to the reader who wants to understand a world from the inside - because they argue, better than any advice, that the story you have not heard is the one that will change you. The gift of the shelf is the gift of the argument, and the argument is for everyone who has ever wondered what the lives around them contain, and for every reader who believes a story can change how a person sees the world.

The Values the Shelf Carries#

The Help is, at its core, a book about values in action - the courage of telling the truth, the loyalty of the women to each other, the friendship that grows across the deepest divides. It belongs on the relationships shelf alongside the guides that explore those values directly. Our guide to sibling relationships walks through the value of loyalty under pressure - the women who choose each other, the bonds that hold - and it pairs naturally with this reading, because the novel is a demonstration of exactly what the guide describes.

The shelf also connects to the friendship themes, in a specific way: the book’s deepest subject is the friendship that is chosen rather than given - Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny, who see each other fully and risk everything for each other. Our sibling relationships themes and reading notes explore the bonds that the novel shows being built across its pages, and they belong with this reading because the women’s friendship is a study in the loyalty that makes a family of friends. Together these guides frame the fiction, and the fiction makes the guides feelable.

Conclusion#

The Help has been loved around the world because it is about the courage of telling the truth - the maids’ stories, finally spoken, become a form of resistance and connection. The books on this list are the honest responses to the question it leaves behind: what next?

The women of The Secret Life of Bees, the power of The Color Purple, the warmth of Fried Green Tomatoes, the courage of To Kill a Mockingbird, and the true stories of Hidden Figures - together they carry the same truth in different voices: the truth takes courage, the voices must be heard, and the hearing is the point. Read the notes, choose where you are, and let the books take their time.