15 Best Books to Read After a Breakup

Breaking up is never easy, even if it’s amicable. A couple can realize they’re no longer a good fit for each other, maybe there’s infidelity, or perhaps one fight too many finally sealed the deal. Whatever the reason, they’re no less difficult to deal with. These books to read after a breakup help pick up the pieces left behind from a broken relationship and include tips on recovering, healing, and moving on.

Here are fifteen books on breakups to help you get through this difficult time:

1. The Breakup Bible: The Smart Woman’s Guide to Healing from a Breakup or Divorce

Every person is likely to suffer a breakup at some point. This guide is tailored to women, but anyone can benefit from relationship expert Rachel Sussman’s tried-and-true techniques. She helps readers create a personalized plan that walks through the three phases of a breakup: healing, understanding, and transformation, providing real stories from women at every phase to help heal from the breakup and prevent any future relationship anxiety.

2. Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Brené Brown’s book isn’t about breakups specifically, but it is about leaning into vulnerability and the lessons that can be learned from being emotionally honest. Brown’s work allows readers to tap into those emotional hurts, especially when we know it would be much easier to ignore them. Through a series of stories, advice, and reflection, Brown helps readers understand the strength of being honest with your emotional needs and working through grief after a breakup.

3. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

If you find strength in mindfulness and Buddhist practices, then When Things Fall Apart is a good book to have on your shelf when facing heartbreak. Pema Chödrön’s book is a collection of talks she gave as one of the more well-known contemporary spiritual leaders. It includes advice on breaking habitual patterns and commitment issues, finding peace in chaos, and communicating in ways that encourage openness.

4. The Divorce Recovery Workbook

Divorce is complicated. Between the legal ramifications, the expenses, the emotional weight of it all, maybe even having to tell the kids – it’s understandable to feel depressed, angry, or stressed.

This book walks through the stages of divorce while offering compassion, mindfulness, and positive psychology to help you get back on your feet.

5. Self-Love Workbook for Women

Breakups can be pretty impactful to your self-confidence. Even if you knew it was the right thing to do and you don’t regret it, it could still affect how you see yourself. If you were the one broken up with, your confidence could feel non-existent.

Take a little time to heal with this workbook designed to help you release doubt and loneliness, and fall in love with yourself again. Written by a therapist, it provides proven techniques, exercises, and more.

6. Maybe You Should Talk To Someone

Even therapists need therapy. That’s what happened to Lori Gottlieb after she faced her own crisis. The result ended up with her in a therapist’s office for the first time, seeing how it works from the other side.

While not about breakups specifically, this book, with its stories about other patients, her own therapy, and the similarities she noticed in both types of sessions, illustrates the wisdom that comes from dealing with feelings of emptiness and understanding yourself a little bit better than before.

7. Stop Overthinking: 23 Techniques to Relieve Stress, Stop Negative Spirals, Declutter Your Mind, and Focus on the Present

Can’t stop ruminating on what you did wrong, or all the ways you could have fixed things? Do you spend your days post-breakup analyzing every detail of your relationship, either to identify where they went wrong, how to not repeat it, or something else? You’re not alone. It’s easy to get caught up in the what-ifs after a breakup, but if you can’t stop thinking about someone, you may appreciate this guide.

8. Getting Past Your Breakup

Maybe you want your ex back. Maybe you’re still dreaming about them and you’ve concocted a plan to get them to fall back in love with you. Or maybe you just can’t move on because you’re still stuck in a relationship that no longer exists.

Whatever the reason, moving on isn’t just important; it’s necessary if you want to have a life beyond your ex. Susan J. Elliot offers techniques and advice on getting past the breakup, from going no-contact to healing from fear and rejection.

9. Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey

Heartbreak can be more than just hurt feelings: Often, these difficult and painful emotions physically resonate in the body. Author and journalist Florence Williams discovered this when her 25-year marriage ended. She lost weight and felt physically ill often. Inspired to find out why heartbreak can feel so physical, she wrote about her findings in this half-personal journal, half-scientific study.

10. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Dear Sugar was an anonymous advice column in The Rumpus a few years ago. Now revealed to be author Cheryl Strayed, this book is a collection of some of the best letters she received and the answers she provided them. Readers who had lost loved ones, wanted to leave toxic relationships, and more turned to Sugar’s column, where she provided witty, sage advice about being human. This book encapsulates the ups and downs of life and all it throws at you to remind readers that, while things can be hard, they can also be really, really good.

11. When You’re Ready, This Is How You Heal

Healing from any kind of loss, including a breakup, is a long journey. In this collection of essays, Brianna Wiest helps readers release any unhelpful personas they may have developed over time, embracing the full truth of who they are inside. All 45+ new pieces in This is How You Heal function as a “balm for the soul.” One reviewer says, “This is one of those books I’ll keep coming back to over and over again when I need a mental health boost.”

12. This Is Me Letting You Go

This Is Me Letting You Go by Heidi Priebe delves into the harsh reality of what it means to let go of someone you love. She knows that breakups don’t come naturally to us, and the world today actually encourages us to hold on and cling to people and situations, even when they don’t serve us anymore. If you are ready to embrace the next chapter in your life, explore this series of honest, poignant essays and learn the art of moving on.

13. After the Breakup: A Self-Love Workbook: A Compassionate Roadmap to Getting Over Your Ex

After the Breakup is an interactive, self-love workbook written by Tamara Thompson, LMFT. It helps readers access comfort and hope through guided exercises, relatable real-life stories, role-play exercises, and insightful prompts. Explore some of the root causes for painful emotions and redefine what it means to truly feel complete and confident within yourself.

14. Letting Go of Your Ex: CBT Skills to Heal the Pain of a Breakup and Overcome Love Addiction

If you have wondered if you will ever get over your ex, then this book is for you. Letting Go of Your Ex teaches cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills meant to heal the discomfort of a breakup and overcome symptoms of a love addiction. Author Cortney Soderlind Warren, PhD, helps readers manage their most intense emotions, get unstuck from the past, emerge from heartbreak stronger than ever, and avoid falling into old patterns and dynamics in future relationships.

15. Conscious Uncoupling: 5 Steps to Living Happily Even After

Author Katherine Woodward Thomas believes that relationships don’t have to go down in flames in order to end; instead, she thinks there is another path forward, one filled with mutual respect, compassion, and kindness. Conscious Uncoupling provides the roadmap for how to break up without bitterness, shame, or destructive rage.

It walks readers through five paradigm-shifting steps:

1. “Find emotional freedom”
2. “Reclaim your power and your life”
3. “Break the pattern, heal your heart”
4. “Become a love alchemist”
5. “Create your happy even after”

When to See a Therapist

Breakups can uproot your entire life and leave feeling lost. If you’re struggling to move on or find yourself overthinking everything you think you did wrong, it may be helpful to see a therapist. They can help you move forward and create healthy dating habits going forward. Find a therapist today.