Books To Read If You Love Severance

The best fiction to read while waiting for the next season of this mind-bending TV show.

I was late to the party in watching Severance and recently caught up, bingeing season one and going straight into season two, which releases its finale this week. It’s been a while since I’ve been this captivated by a TV show. Of course there’s the dystopian “The Office” comparison that’s commonly made, but Severance also builds on the legacies of other iconic shows: featuring the eerie sense of mystery and rich character-building seen in LOST and the mind-bending technological and moral questions evoked by Westworld.

Here are some book suggestions to tide you over as we await season three. Some of these I’ve read and loved, and some are highly acclaimed but still on my own TBR. Note this piece may look best opened in your browser or on the Substack app.

Surveillance State

The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami

• Genre: Speculative Literary Fiction

• Premise: Sara has just landed at LAX when she’s apprehended by authorities who inform her she’s about to commit a crime, against her husband. How do they know this? Using data from her dreams. From here, Sara is taken to a retention center and held for twenty-one days with other dreamers.

• Notes: This is at the top of my list to read soon and promises perfect eerie, invasively in-your-head vibes that perfectly match Severance. I love a speculative fiction book that’s set almost in our same world but with a slight twist.

The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan

• Genre: Speculative Literary Fiction

• Premise: Overwhelmed by a disappointing career, a recently collapsed marriage, and all of the stresses that come with being postpartum—protagonist Frida Liu one day has a serious lapse in judgment. This leads to her young daughter being taken away and Frida sent to a Big Brother-y institution to be rehabilitated as a “good mother.”

• Notes: I loved this book so much when it came out a few years ago and haven’t gotten it out of my head since. There are other reveals that I won’t share for fear of spoilers, but suffice it to say that the strangeness of the institution’s atmosphere and methods are a perfect fit for fans of Severance.

Something’s Rotten

Comfort Me with Apples by Catherynne M. Valente

• Genre: Fantastical Literary Horror

• Premise: Sophia was made for her husband. Their home and life is perfect. That’s what everyone tells her. But sometimes he stays away so long on trips, and she finds herself wondering where he goes, and why she’s not allowed to go into their locked basement…

• Notes: This is a short novella that packs a punch. If you’re obsessed with the bizarro way Mr. Milchick in Severance acts and speaks as though all is well when all is clearly not well on the Severed Floor—definitely give this one a try.

All Her Little Secrets by Wanda M. Morris

• Genre: Workplace Thriller

• Premise: Ellice Littlejohn has an Ivy League degree, a high-paying job as a corporate attorney in Atlanta, and a “for fun” relationship with company executive Michael. All is well until Ellice finds Michael dead in his office. Sold as a suicide, Ellice quickly begins to suspect that all is not as it seems…

• Notes: I devoured this book on audio a few years ago; it is dark-underbelly-at-work perfection. Layer on complications of race and gender and you get a thriller with depth.

How Did I Get Here?

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

• Genre: Speculative Literary Fiction

• Premise: Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

• Notes: I had seen this cover floating around but never actually read the description—and now it’s high on my list to read. Besides the more literal cage involved, this one gives perhaps the most Severance vibes at first blush.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

• Genre: Literary Fantasy

• Premise: Piranesi lives in a labyrinth filled with endlessly confusing halls, thousands of statues, and an actual ocean that occasionally floods the rest of the building. But Piranesi is familiar with the ebb and flow of this place and lives uninterrupted beyond occasional visits from a man called The Other. Until one day someone else appears in the house.

• Notes: If you love the sense of having to figure things out as you go watching Severance, you may enjoy this one. It takes time for the pieces to come together but the journey is almost as good as the payoff.

Adventures in Biotech

We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker

• Genre: Dystopian Science Fiction

• Premise: When teenage son David comes home one day asking for a Pilot, a new brain implant to help with school, parents Val and Julie reluctantly agree. Soon, Julie feels mounting pressure at work to get a Pilot to keep pace with her colleagues. Before long, the implications are clear: get a Pilot or get left behind. With government subsidies and no downside, why would anyone refuse?

• Notes: I’ve been extremely curious about this one for a few years now—in a world ruled by technology and obsessed with optimizing performance, it seems only a small step towards a device like this. It’s what makes stories like this, and like Severance, so deeply intriguing (and frightening).

Hum by Helen Phillips

• Genre: Literary Science Fiction

• Premise: In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.

• Notes: A buzzy 2024 release by a National Book Award-longlisted author, this one is described as both exploring these larger questions of global warming and over-reaching technology alongside themes of marriage, motherhood, and selfhood.

Not Quite Normal

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

• Genre: Literary Speculative Fiction

• Premise: Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. It’s only later once students Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy leave the school that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.

• Notes: A modern classic for a reason. This one to me best reflects the early episodes of Severance where the tone is quiet but with an eerie undercurrent you don’t yet fully understand.

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield

• Genre: Literary Horror

• Premise: Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah is not the same. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has brought part of it back with her, onto dry land and into their home.

• Notes: I’ve been eyeing this one since it came out in 2022 and am now especially eager to pick it up. The deep-sea mission element is super interesting but so is the slowly building sense back home that something isn’t quite right with Leah.

At What Cost?

Rouge by Mona Awad

• Genre: Literary Horror

• Premise: For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman appears at the funeral offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. Soon Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted.

• Notes: Beauty industry meets cult? Sign me up. Much in the way that Severance takes the concept of work-life-balance to the extreme, this one takes society’s obsession with beauty to a horrifying level.

Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang

• Genre: Literary Horror

• Premise: When an accident leaves her parents debilitated, our protagonist abandons her pianist future for a job at a high-end beauty and wellness store in New York City. Holistik affords her entry into a world of privilege and a long-awaited sense of belonging. Our narrator is plied with products that slim her thighs, smooth her skin, and lighten her hair. But beneath these creams and tinctures lies something sinister.

• Notes: Again, this question of striving for perfection or a higher level of living—but at what cost? I’m extremely excited to pick this one up (plus the author has a new book coming out this year).

Remember, Remember…

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

• Genre: Literary Speculative Fiction

• Premise: On an unnamed island off an unnamed coast, objects are disappearing—first small items, but then things escalate. Most of the island's inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few imbued with the power to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten.

• Notes: This cover has flirted with me for years in the bookstore and the way Severance has me questioning the workings of our memory and minds has made it feel particularly timely to pick up.

Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin

• Genre: Psychological Science Fiction

• Premise: Across the world, thousands of people are shocked by a notification that they once chose to have a memory removed. Now they are being given an opportunity to get that memory back. Four individuals are filled with new doubts, grappling with the unexpected question of whether to remember unknown events, or to leave them buried forever.

• Notes: This feels like a fit for fans of The Measure, as far as having that sense of choice: do you choose to know, or not know?

Dual Selves

The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitcsch

• Genre: Science Fiction

• Premise: Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family. Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra—a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work—hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself.

• Notes: The only times I put this book down while reading were the moments I had to simply try and wrap my head around what was happening. Described as Inception meets True Detective, this one is for you if you love mind-bending stories that play with space and time.

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

• Genre: Science Fiction

• Premise: Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there’s just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying—from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn’t outrun. Cara’s life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total. But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined—and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

• Notes: I’ve been shouting this book from the rooftop since it came out; it’s a perfect blend of sci-fi, thriller, romance, and corporate intrigue.

Corporate Nightmare

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

• Genre: Psychological Fiction

• Premise: A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

• Notes: For the millennials out here who are exhausted and disillusioned by the corporate machine (aka, me).

Severance by Ling Ma

• Genre: Literary Speculative Fiction

• Premise: Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

• Notes: The title makes this one an obvious shoe-in (and it also rose to popularity during COVID lockdown); but it’s a great fit for the TV show in how it explores our relationship to technology and the empty promises of higher powers.

Speculative Shorts

Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

• Genre: Speculative Fiction Short Stories

• Premise: These stories explore urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and the ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In “The Finkelstein Five,” Adjei-Brenyah reckons with the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In “Zimmer Land,” we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And “Friday Black” and “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by IceKing” show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

• Notes: I don’t read a lot of short story collections but this one was fantastic and has really stuck with me in how it portrays situations that are familiar but just a little bit dialed up in intensity, in a way that makes us question a society we take for granted.

The Last Catastrophe by Allegra Hyde

• Genre: Speculative Fiction Short Stories

• Premise: A vast caravan of RVs roam the United States. A girl grows a unicorn horn, complicating her small-town friendships and big city ambitions. A young lady on a spaceship bonds with her AI warden while trying to avoid an arranged marriage. In Allegra Hyde's universe nothing is as it seems, yet the challenges her characters face mirror those of our modern age.

• Notes: Like I said, I don’t read many short story collections—but this one has been calling to me and may scratch the itch left by Friday Black.

That’s a wrap! For more fun reading guides like this one, be sure to subscribe to Holly’s Literary Magic and follow on Instagram @hollyslitmagic.