Books Similar To Wuthering Heights [2026 Updated]

There is nothing quite like the first time you read Wuthering Heights. I still remember sitting in my drafty college dorm in New England, rain lashing against the window pane, completely unable to put it down. You don’t just read Emily Brontë’s masterpiece; you survive it. It’s wild, windswept, and possessed by a love so intense it borders on madness. It changes the way you look at the concept of romance forever, stripping away the polite courtship of Austen and replacing it with raw, consuming hunger.

If you’re here reading this, you’re likely chasing that specific high. You want the moodiness of the moors, the morally gray anti-hero, and a romance that transcends the grave. Well, you’re in luck. The literary world has spent nearly two centuries trying to recreate the lightning-in-a-bottle magic of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

Whether you are looking for a direct retelling, a modern spiritual successor, or a classic that matches Brontë’s intensity, this guide has you covered. We have updated our list for late 2026 to include the latest releases and enduring classics that capture that dark, obsessive, and atmospheric vibe we all crave.

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The “Heathcliff Factor”: What We Are Looking For

Before we dive into the recommendations, let’s pinpoint what we are actually looking for. Wuthering Heights isn’t just a romance; in fact, many would argue it’s a horror story disguised as one. To find a book similar to it, we need to look for a few key semantic elements that define the experience:

• The Setting as a Character: The Yorkshire moors aren’t just scenery; they are alive, hostile, and essential to the plot. The weather mirrors the internal turmoil of the characters.
• The Byronic Hero: Heathcliff is the blueprint—brooding, damaged, vindictive, yet undeniably magnetic. We want leads who are difficult to love but impossible to ignore.
• Gothic Atmosphere: Haunted houses, family secrets, generational trauma, and a pervasive sense of doom that hangs over every page.
• Transcendental Love: A connection between characters that is spiritual, eternal, and often toxic. It is the “I am Heathcliff” energy we are hunting for.

The “Vibe Check” for this list: Every book below has been carefully selected because it scores high on the “Heathcliff Scale”—meaning it features intense emotional stakes, lush atmospheric writing, and characters who love past the point of reason.

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The Classics: 19th Century Gothic & Romantic Cousins

If you want the prose to feel similar to Brontë’s—lush, archaic, and deeply descriptive—you have to look at her contemporaries. These are the books that shaped the Victorian Gothic tradition and stand toe-to-toe with Emily’s work.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

It feels almost like cheating to list Emily’s sister right off the bat, but you cannot talk about Wuthering Heights without mentioning Jane Eyre. While Wuthering Heights is chaotic, elemental, and ruled by passion, Jane Eyre is grounded, moral, and ruled by conscience. However, the DNA is undeniably shared. Mr. Rochester is the closest literary cousin to Heathcliff you will find in the canon. He is moody, secretive, cynical, and hides a dark past literally locked in the attic of Thornfield Hall.

But where Heathcliff seeks to destroy, Rochester seeks redemption. For the reader who loved the gothic romance tropes the mysterious manor, the brooding hero, the sweeping English countryside but perhaps wanted a protagonist with a stronger spine than Cathy, Jane Eyre is the perfection you seek. The interplay between Jane’s quiet fortitude and Rochester’s tempestuous nature creates a dynamic that is every bit as compelling as the Earnshaws’, but with a significantly more satisfying emotional payoff. It is the brighter, yet still shadowy, mirror image of Emily’s work.

• Key Themes: Redemption, social class, the gothic governess, moral integrity vs. passion.
• Why read it: To see the “Byronic Hero” tamed rather than unleashed.

2. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Let’s complete the Brontë trifecta. Anne Brontë is often the overlooked sister, but The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a powerhouse that deserves every ounce of your attention. Many critics and scholars view this novel as a direct response to Wuthering Heights. If Emily romanticized the brutish anti-hero, Anne fearlessly deconstructed him. The novel deals with Helen Graham, a mysterious woman who arrives at a dilated estate, fleeing an abusive and alcoholic marriage a shockingly taboo topic for 1848.

The narrative structure mirrors Wuthering Heights with its framing device (letters and diaries rather than Nelly Dean’s oral history), and the atmosphere is thick with the damp chill of the English north. However, the horror here is domestic and real, not ghostly. Arthur Huntingdon is a villain who shares Heathcliff’s selfishness and cruelty but is stripped of the romantic gloss. If you found yourself frustrated by the toxic relationships in Wuthering Heights and wanted a story where the woman fights to free herself rather than succumb to the darkness, this is the book for you. It is gritty, realistic, and incredibly ahead of its time.

• Key Themes: Domestic realism, the consequences of vice, female independence, atmospheric mystery.
• Why read it: For a “reality check” on the Heathcliff archetype.

3. Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

If you loved the tragedy, the pervasive sense of doom, and the rural setting of Wuthering Heights, Thomas Hardy is your next stop. Published in 1891, Tess is a devastatingly beautiful novel set in a fictionalized “Wessex” of rural England. It deals with fate, social class, and the crushing weight of the past. Like Brontë, Hardy treats the landscape not just as a backdrop, but as a force that shapes human destiny.

Tess Durbeyfield is a protagonist who, like Heathcliff, seems marked by fate from the very beginning. The novel explores how the sins of the past (and the rigid structures of society) can destroy a pure soul. The romance here is painful and complicated; Angel Clare and Alec d’Urberville offer two different kinds of destructive love—one idealized and cold, the other obsessive and possessive. The writing is lush and poetic, capturing the changing seasons of the countryside in a way that rivals Brontë’s description of the moors. Be warned: this is not a happy book. It captures the same elemental sadness and frustration of Wuthering Heights, leaving you with a “book hangover” that lasts for days.

• Key Themes: Fatalism, the loss of innocence, nature vs. society, the fallen woman.
• Why read it: If you loved the tragic, inevitable slide toward doom in Heights.

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The 20th Century Heirs: Atmospheric & Psychological

Moving into the 20th century, authors began to take the Gothic tradition and twist it into psychological thrillers. These books keep the spooky houses but add a layer of modern psychological complexity.

4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

This is arguably the single best recommendation for a Wuthering Heights fan looking for a 20th-century equivalent. Published in 1938, it tells the story of a young, nameless woman who marries a wealthy widower, Maxim de Winter, and moves to his ancestral estate, Manderley. There, she finds she is not the mistress of the house; she is living in the shadow of Maxim’s first wife, Rebecca, who died under mysterious circumstances but whose presence is felt in every room.

Manderley is as iconic as Wuthering Heights. The house feels alive, breathing with the secrets of the past. Maxim de Winter is the ultimate evolution of the Heathcliff/Rochester archetype: wealthy, temperamental, and hiding a secret that is slowly driving him mad. The dynamic of the “second wife” trying to live up to the memory of a ghostly, larger-than-life predecessor mirrors the generational echoes in Brontë’s work. The suspense builds slowly, layering dread upon dread until the explosive finale. It is a masterclass in atmospheric tension and obsessive love that has defined the Gothic genre for decades.

• Key Themes: Jealousy, identity, the haunting past, the “Bluebeard” trope.
• Why read it: For the best “haunted house” atmosphere in literature.

5. Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier

If Rebecca is the sophisticated, psychological older sister, Jamaica Inn is the wild, feral child—much closer in spirit to the ruggedness of Wuthering Heights. Set on the bleak, windswept Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, it features Mary Yellan, who moves in with her aunt and uncle at the isolate Jamaica Inn. She quickly discovers that the inn is the headquarters for a gang of vicious wreckers who lure ships to their doom to steal their cargo.

This book captures the isolation and the physical danger of the moors perfectly. The wind howls through this book just as loudly as it does in Brontë’s novel, and the mud and rain feel palpable. The character of Joss Merlyn is a terrifying, brutal figure who dominates the landscape, offering a look at the darker, non-romantic side of the “violent male” figure. However, there is romance here too—dangerous and thrilling—with the moral ambiguity that Brontë fans love. It’s an adventure story wrapped in a dark, gothic cloak, perfect for a stormy night’s reading.

• Key Themes: Criminality, isolation, survival, moral ambiguity.
• Why read it: If you loved the physical harshness and danger of the Yorkshire moors.

6. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

While this is technically a prequel to Jane Eyre, it fits the Wuthering Heights vibe perfectly because of its intense focus on madness, obsession, and atmospheric decay. Jean Rhys takes the “madwoman in the attic” Bertha Mason and gives her a voice, a history, and a name: Antoinette Cosway. Set in the lush, oppressive heat of Jamaica, the setting is a stark contrast to the cold English moors, yet it functions in the exact same way: a pressure cooker for human emotion.

The novel explores the toxic, confusing, and passionate relationship between Antoinette and her unnamed English husband (Rochester). It deconstructs the Byronic hero, showing the cruelty and colonialism inherent in his character. The writing is dreamlike, fragmented, and deeply psychological, mirroring the protagonist’s descent into madness. It touches on the same themes of spiritual connection and destruction found in Wuthering Heights, asking what happens when two people from different worlds collide and destroy each other. It is a short, powerful read that will haunt you.

• Key Themes: Colonialism, madness, displacement, the destruction of identity.
• Why read it: For a psychological deep dive into the “madness” of gothic love.

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Modern Masterpieces: Contemporary Gothic (2000-2025)

These books were written recently but feel like they could have been pulled from a dusty Victorian library. They are perfect for readers who want modern pacing but old-school atmosphere.

7. The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

This is a love letter to Gothic literature and arguably the most successful modern homage to the Brontë sisters. It involves Vida Winter, a famous, reclusive, and dying author who hires a quiet biographer, Margaret Lea, to finally tell the truth about her mysterious past. The story unfolds into a dark, twisted family saga involving feral twins, a burning estate, ghosts, and secrets that have been buried for generations.

The connection to Wuthering Heights is explicit. The “feral” children, Adeline and Emmeline, echo the wild childhoods of Cathy and Heathcliff. The bond between siblings is portrayed as something dangerous, exclusive, and almost supernatural. Setterfield captures the voice of the 19th-century gothic perfectly the prose is elegant, shadowy, and addictive. It explores how the past bleeds into the present and how stories can possess us. If you loved the “mystery of the past” aspect of Brontë’s novel, where a newcomer has to piece together the history of a broken family, this is your perfect match.

• Key Themes: Storytelling, twins, family trauma, the gothic estate.
• Why read it: It is the closest modern equivalent to the classic Victorian gothic mystery.

8. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Updated for a modern audience with a brilliant setting shift, this novel takes the haunted house trope to 1950s Mexico. Noemí Taboada travels to High Place, a rotting mansion sitting atop a misty mountain, to check on her cousin who has been sending frantic letters claiming her husband is trying to poison her. High Place is inhabited by the Doyles, a weird, old-money family with English roots who are obsessed with eugenics and their family bloodline.

Mexican Gothic nails the “trapped” feeling of Wuthering Heights. The atmosphere is stifling, moldy, and oppressive. The house itself is filled with spores and mushrooms, a biological horror that mirrors the psychological rot of the family. The male lead offers a softer, more mysterious counterpart to the villainous patriarch, giving us a romance that blooms in the dark. If you liked the more supernatural, eerie, and horror-adjacent undertones of Wuthering Heights—the feeling that the land itself is trying to consume the characters this is a must-read. It is vibrant, terrifying, and deeply romantic.

• Key Themes: Colonialism, eugenics, body horror, isolation.
• Why read it: For a fresh, terrifying take on the “girl trapped in a big house” trope.

9. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

One of the standout hits of late 2023/2024 that remains a staple recommendation in 2025, Starling House is a Southern Gothic masterpiece. It centers on a small, dying town in Kentucky and the terrifying, sentient house that looms over it. Opal, a young woman desperate to secure a better future for her brother, gets drawn into the orbit of the house and its reclusive, brooding warden, Arthur Starling.

Arthur is a fantastic modern reimagining of the Heathcliff archetype he is physically scarred, isolated, and duty-bound to a house that is essentially a monster. He is “unlovable” by design, yet Opal is drawn to him. The romance is slow-burn and prickly, built on mutual survival rather than instant attraction. The book deals with the “sins of the fathers” and the economic decay of rural landscapes, mirroring the decline of the Earnshaws. The prose is sharp and gritty, blending modern struggles with ancient, magical horror. It feels like Wuthering Heights meets a dark fairy tale.

• Key Themes: Economic class, monsters, duty vs. freedom, the sentient house.
• Why read it: For a gritty, magical realism take on the brooding warden of a haunted estate.

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The 2026 Update: New & Trending Recommendations

The literary world is currently seeing a resurgence of the Gothic, often dubbed “New Gothic” or “Dark Academia.” Here are the books making waves now that scratch the Wuthering Heights itch.

10. The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk

While released in translation recently, this book has gained massive traction in 2025 literary circles as a “horror-adjacent” masterpiece. Set in a health resort in 1913, it is often described as a response to The Magic Mountain, but its atmosphere is pure Gothic dread. The setting is isolated, surrounded by mountains and forests that seem to be watching the patients.

Why does it fit here? Because it deals with the obsessive, philosophical, and gendered nature of the world in a way that recalls the intellectual isolation of Brontë’s characters. It is a “sanatorium gothic” where the conversations are dense, the surroundings are eerie, and there is a pervasive sense that something non-human is controlling the narrative. For the reader who appreciated the complex, sometimes difficult, and deeply psychological nature of Wuthering Heights, this is the high-brow, intellectual successor. It explores the terror of nature and the frailty of the human body with exquisite, Nobel Prize-winning prose.

• Key Themes: Philosophy, gender, horror, nature as a force.
• Why read it: If you want a challenging, atmospheric literary read that feels like a classic.

11. The Favorites by Layne Fargo

This is a sharp, vicious modern reimagining that explicitly positions itself as a Wuthering Heights retelling, and it has found a dedicated cult following. Set in the cutthroat world of competitive tennis, it translates the obsessive rivalry and toxicity of Heathcliff and Cathy into a contemporary setting where winning is the only thing that matters.

Modern retellings often struggle to capture the “wildness” of the original, but Fargo understands that the core of Heights isn’t the moors; it’s the toxicity. This book explores how love can mutate into something destructive and competitive. The characters are unlikeable, driven, and obsessed with each other in a way that ruins everyone around them. It is fast-paced, sexy, and unapologetically mean. If you always felt that Heathcliff and Cathy were actually terrible people and you loved them for it, this book gives you that same energy in a package of tennis whites and broken rackets.

• Key Themes: Obsession, rivalry, toxic love, ambition.
• Why read it: For a modern, fast-paced version of the “we are the same soul” dynamic.

12. Wuthering Heights (The Graphic Novel) by The Classics Illustrated

Okay, this is a bit of a curveball, but with the 2025 rise in popularity of “Manhwa” and graphic novel adaptations of classics (like the viral Lore Olympus), new visual retellings of Wuthering Heights are hitting the shelves. A beautifully illustrated graphic novel version allows you to see the starkness of the moors and the brooding expressions of Heathcliff.

Reading the story in a visual format emphasizes the dramatic, theatrical nature of the dialogue. When Heathcliff screams at the ghost of Cathy to “Haunt me then!”, seeing it illustrated captures the sheer melodrama that prose sometimes softens. These adaptations are fantastic for younger readers or for superfans who want to experience the aesthetic of the novel in a new way. It highlights the Gothic fashion, the architecture, and the visual isolation of the characters.

• Key Themes: Visual storytelling, gothic aesthetic, accessibility.
• Why read it: To see the moors and the madness come to life visually.

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If You Loved Heathcliff: The “Villain Romance”

Let’s be honest. A lot of us read Wuthering Heights for Heathcliff. We know he’s bad news, but we can’t look away. If you are looking for that specific dynamic—the Byronic Hero who would burn the world down for the heroine—try these.

13. The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

Set during the siege of Leningrad in WWII, this is an epic historical romance that rivals Brontë in scale and emotional intensity. Tatiana is a young girl who falls for Alexander, a Red Army officer with a dark, dangerous secret past. Their love story unfolds against the backdrop of starvation, war, and totalitarianism.

Alexander Belov is a worthy successor to Heathcliff. He is strong, protective, occasionally ruthless, and deeply scarred by his past. However, unlike Heathcliff, his ruthlessness is directed outward to protect Tatiana, rather than inward to destroy her. The emotional stakes are incredibly high; every moment they spend together could be their last. The book captures that feeling of “us against the world” that defines the Cathy/Heathcliff bond. It is a long, heavy read that will wring every tear out of you, leaving you exhausted but satisfied.

• Key Themes: War, survival, forbidden love, sacrifice.
• Why read it: If you want the intensity of Brontë’s romance but with a hero you can actually root for.

14. Vicious by V.E. Schwab

This might seem like a strange recommendation—it’s a story about superpowered college students turned villains—but hear me out. The relationship between the two main characters, Victor and Eli, is a dark, academic rivalry that mirrors the obsession of Heathcliff and Hindley (or even Heathcliff and Cathy, in a twisted, non-romantic way).

The story revolves around two brilliant roommates who discover how to create superpowers, leading to a tragedy that turns them into bitter enemies. Years later, one breaks out of prison to hunt the other down. It deals with obsession, revenge, and moral ambiguity. Victor Vale is a textbook anti-hero: cold, calculating, and willing to do terrible things for his goals, yet strangely sympathetic. If you enjoyed the “revenge” plot of the second half of Wuthering Heights—where Heathcliff systematically destroys the lives of those who wronged him—this is the perfect modern parallel.

• Key Themes: Revenge, moral greyness, dark academia, obsession.
• Why read it: For the best “revenge plot” since Heathcliff took over the Heights.

FAQ: Finding Your Next Gothic Read

Q: Are there any books that are exactly like Wuthering Heights? A: Honestly? No. Emily Brontë wrote one novel and then died, leaving behind a book that defies easy categorization. It is a unique mix of realism, supernatural horror, and romance. The closest tonal match for the feeling of the book is Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.

Q: Is Twilight really based on Wuthering Heights? A: Yes, Stephenie Meyer cited Wuthering Heights as a major influence, particularly for the third book, Eclipse. Edward Cullen is essentially a “diet” Heathcliff brooding, possessive, and “dangerous,” but without the animalistic cruelty. If you want the teen drama version, it fits, but it lacks the literary depth.

Q: I want the moors. Which book has the best setting? A: The Return of the Native or Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Hardy’s “Wessex” is just as realized, atmospheric, and hostile as Brontë’s Yorkshire.

Conclusion

Finding a book that matches the raw power of Wuthering Heights is a tall order. It is a novel that broke all the rules of its time and continues to haunt us in 2026.

If you want the classic, heavy prose, go with Charlotte Brontë or Thomas Hardy. If you want the haunting atmosphere, pick up Daphne du Maurier or Diane Setterfield. If you want to see how that toxic passion translates to the modern day, check out Layne Fargo or Alix E. Harrow.

The wind is calling across the moors. Happy reading.