Books Like The Scorpio Races

Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races is one of the most unusual books in young adult fiction: a novel set on a fictional island where, every autumn, the capaill uisce - the water horses - rise from the sea. They are beautiful and lethal, creatures of myth that devour their riders, and every year the island’s young people risk their lives racing them. The book follows two of them: Sean Kendrick, the quiet, brilliant rider who has won the race four times, and Puck Connolly, who must enter to save her family’s home - the first girl ever to race.

It is a book about horses and the sea, about island communities and the myths that bind them, and about a love story that grows slowly, out of danger and respect. If you have finished it and want more, here is where to go next.

If You Loved the Water Horses: Mythic Creatures Made Real#

The capaill uisce are the book’s great invention: creatures of Celtic myth, rendered with such care that you believe in them completely. These books have creatures of the same kind.

The Scorpio Races, and the Horses of the Sea#

The water horses are the book’s engine: beautiful, terrifying, and completely real. They rise from the sea each autumn, drawn by the island’s traditions, and the book’s greatest passages are the ones where the horses appear - the gleam of their wet coats, the wildness in their eyes, the sense of something ancient and dangerous surfacing from the deep. Stiefvater never explains the horses away; she lets them be myth, and the book is richer for it.

The Scorpio Races (Maggie Stiefvater), and the Bond With the Horse#

The book’s deepest relationship is between Sean and his horse, Corr - a bond built on violence and trust, on the shared danger of the races, on the understanding between a man and a creature that could kill him. The book is an argument about animals and the people who love them: that the bond is not sentiment but something harder - respect, understanding, the willingness to meet a wild thing on its own terms.

Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)#

The classic horse story: a horse’s life, told from the horse’s point of view. It shares the Scorpio Races’ love of horses and its conviction that the bond between human and horse is one of the deepest there is, in a gentler register.

If You Loved the Island Setting: Communities Cut Off From the World#

The book’s setting - the island of Thisby, with its cliffs and its sea and its traditions - is one of its great strengths. The island is a world apart, bound by its myths and its rhythms. These books are set in communities of the same kind.

The Scorpio Races, and the Island of Thisby#

Thisby is the book’s other great character: a small island where everyone knows everyone, where the autumn races are the center of the year, where the sea is both livelihood and danger. Stiefvater renders the island with loving specificity - the weather, the food, the gossip, the families - and the book is saturated in its place. The island is what makes the myth feel real: a community that lives close enough to the sea to believe in its horses.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows)#

A novel told entirely in letters, set on the island of Guernsey after the Second World War. It shares the Scorpio Races’ love of islands and their communities - the sense of a place cut off, made of its own people and stories.

The Secret of Roan Inish (Rosalie K. Fry)#

A story about a girl, a seal-woman legend, and an island off the coast of Ireland: it shares the Scorpio Races’ Celtic myths, its island setting, and its conviction that the old stories are alive in the places that remember them.

If You Loved the Competitors: Races With Real Stakes#

The Scorpio Races is a competition story - the race that the whole island lives for - and the book is about what it costs to enter it. These books are about competitions of the same kind.

The Scorpio Races, and the Price of the Race#

The race in Stiefvater’s book is not a game: it is deadly, and everyone who enters knows it. The book is about why people risk their lives - for glory, for money, for family, for the terrible beauty of the thing itself - and about the difference between the riders who race for the prize and the riders who race because they cannot not. Sean and Puck both enter for reasons that have nothing to do with glory, and the book is about what that means.

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)#

A competition with even higher stakes: Katniss volunteers for the Games to save her sister, and the book is about her survival and her defiance. It shares the Scorpio Races’ structure - a deadly competition, a protagonist who enters for love - and its conviction that the competitors who are not playing for glory are the ones to watch.

Red Rising (Pierce Brown)#

Darrow enters a brutal competition to rise through the castes of a future Mars - and the book is about what the competition costs him. It is darker and more violent than the Scorpio Races, but it shares the structure: a deadly contest, a protagonist with a hidden purpose.

If You Loved the Slow-Burn Romance: Love That Grows From Danger#

The romance in the Scorpio Races is one of the great slow burns in young adult fiction: Sean and Puck, thrown together by the race, falling for each other the way people do - slowly, awkwardly, out of shared danger and mutual respect. These books have romances of the same register.

The Scorpio Races, and the Quietest Romance in YA#

What makes Sean and Puck’s romance so memorable is how quiet it is: no grand gestures, no declarations, just two people who notice each other, who understand each other’s silences, who choose each other one small moment at a time. The book trusts the reader to feel what the characters will not say, and the romance arrives the way the water horses do - slowly, from the deep, inevitable.

The Raven Boys (Maggie Stiefvater)#

Stiefvater’s other great series: Blue Sargent, the only non-psychic in a family of psychics, is told she will kill her true love with a kiss - and then she meets the Raven Boys, four boys from the local private school, searching for a dead king. It shares the Scorpio Races’ slow romance, its mythic underpinnings, and its gorgeous prose.

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Sáenz)#

A very different kind of slow burn: two boys, Aristotle and Dante, become friends and slowly, over years, discover what they mean to each other. It shares the Scorpio Races’ patience and its conviction that the best romances are the ones that take their time.

If You Loved the Myth: Old Stories Made New#

The Scorpio Races is rooted in Celtic myth - the capaill uisce of the Scottish and Irish coasts - and the book is about what the old stories mean to the people who live with them. These books share that reverence for myth.

The Scorpio Races, and the Myths We Live By#

The book’s deepest subject is myth: the water horses are not just creatures - they are the island’s story, the thing that makes Thisby Thisby. The book is about what it means to live inside a myth: to believe in the horses, to race them, to lose people to them, to keep the tradition alive anyway. It is an argument about the stories that bind communities together - the ones that are dangerous, and the ones we cannot let go of.

The Bear and the Nightingale (Katherine Arden)#

Vasya lives in medieval Russia, where the household spirits are real and the Church is turning people away from them. It shares the Scorpio Races’ reverence for myth and its conviction that the old stories matter - that they explain the world, and that losing them is a kind of death.

Circe (Madeline Miller)#

A novel about the witch of Greek myth, told from her own point of view: it shares the Scorpio Races’ love of myth and its willingness to take the old stories seriously, with a more literary register.

If You Loved the Sea: The Ocean as a Character#

The sea is the Scorpio Races’ element: the source of the horses, the danger and the livelihood of the island, the constant presence at the edge of every scene. These books live on the same water.

The Scorpio Races, and the Sound of the Sea#

The book is saturated in the sea - the smell of salt, the sound of the waves, the sense of the water as something alive and watching. The sea is the book’s mood: beautiful, dangerous, full of things that rise from the deep. For readers who love the ocean in fiction, this is the essential version.

The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)#

The classic sea story: an old fisherman’s struggle with a great fish, and his voyage back. It shares the Scorpio Races’ sense of the sea as a worthy opponent, and its conviction that the struggle with the natural world is a struggle with something sacred.

The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak)#

A different kind of island story: a novel about a divided island - Cyprus - and the love story at its heart, told through a fig tree that remembers everything. It shares the Scorpio Races’ love of islands and its conviction that place is destiny.

If You Loved the Voice: Prose You Want to Live In#

Stiefvater is one of the great stylists of young adult fiction, and the Scorpio Races is written in prose you want to underline. These books share her gift.

The Scorpio Races, and the Language of the Island#

The book’s prose is its signature: the rhythm of the sea in the sentences, the spareness of the island speech, the beauty of the descriptions. Stiefvater writes with a control that makes the myth feel real and the real feel mythic, and the book is full of sentences you will want to return to.

The Raven Boys (Maggie Stiefvater)#

Stiefvater’s prose in the Raven Cycle is even more self-consciously beautiful - full of the strange, the lyrical, the mythic. If the Scorpio Races made you want to live in her sentences, the Raven Cycle is the essential next read.

The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern)#

Morgenstern’s prose shares Stiefvater’s lushness and her conviction that atmosphere is plot. The two writers are the great stylists of modern fantasy, and readers of one will adore the other.

Building Your Own Island: A Reading Order#

Here is a suggested path that moves from the closest match outward:

• Start with The Raven Boys for Stiefvater’s other great series.
• Move to The Hunger Games for the deadly competition.
• Try The Bear and the Nightingale for the myth with teeth.
• Pick up Circe for the myth with a literary register.
• End with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society when you want the island without the horses.

For more books with this kind of depth, our meaningful clean historical fiction list gathers substantial, wholesome reads, and our thoughtful guide to clean mystery books helps you find stories with real puzzles and real stakes. The stories section of our site is full of guides like this one, so there is always another island to visit.

The Horses That Rise From the Sea#

The Scorpio Races endures because it is a book about the things we cannot quite explain - the horses that rise from the sea, the myths that bind a community, the love that grows from danger. It is a book of silences and sea-sounds, of a quiet boy and a fierce girl and the race that brings them together, and it is written with a control that makes the myth feel real. The books on this list are water horses of a kind - creatures of myth made real, islands cut off from the world, love stories that take their time. The autumn is coming. The horses are rising. Hold on tight.