With people being indoors due to lockdowns all over the world, now is a good to revive our love for reading. 

Most libraries are closed but eBooks are still available on apps such as Kindle or Google books.


Here are 5 Love stories you need to curl up to during the lockdown:

via GIPHY

5. The Great Gatsby, by F Scott Fitzgerald

What’s the difference between love and obsession? Not a great deal if you’re rich kid Jay Gatsby, standing on your lawn under the stars and sighing after Daisy Buchanan. This elegant and elegiac novel pairs a decadent moment in American culture with the solipsism of romantic fixation. Gatsby projects his own needs onto Daisy, and the gap between imagination and reality is beautifully exposed.

5 Love stories to read during the lockdown. Picture: Instagram

4. Under the Udala Trees, by Chinelo Okparanta

One of a number of Nigerian writers to draw inspiration from the country’s Biafran war, Chinelo Okparanta uses the conflict as a backdrop to this love story about two young women. Ijeoma is a Christian Igbo, and Amina is a Muslim Hausa. Suffice to say, things are complicated. This is an evocative portrayal of how passion pushes against the strictures of faith, family, class and pretty much everything in its path.

5 Love stories to read during the lockdown. Picture: Instagram

3. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

From the red room of childhood nightmares to the mad woman locked in an attic, this Victorian novel has lent us some powerful symbols. It also stands as an enduring love story between the overlooked but fiercely intelligent governess of the title and Mr Rochester, who gradually learns to value what’s in front of him.

5 Love stories to read during the lockdown. Picture: Instagram

2. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green

Even while dealing with terminal illness, the teenaged characters in this book pulse with life. A support group for kids with cancer isn’t the obvious setting for a romance, but this emerges as a tragicomic triumph. It’s a hymn to the importance of being in the moment, with a twist at the end that would make a sociopath snivel.

5 Love stories to read during the lockdown. Picture: Instagram

1. Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen

There is a reason this novel is basically synonymous with romance, spawning endless tributes and adaptations over 200 years after it was written: it captures what so many people long for in a relationship. No, not an ornamental lake and a man in britches, but for someone to see your true value. Darcy puts aside his concerns over Elizabeth’s lower social standing; Elizabeth moves past his terrible line in small talk. There’s a beautiful symmetry in the way their relationship sloughs off faults on both sides, while Austen’s barbed prose is a timeless joy.

5 Love stories to read during the lockdown. Picture: Instagram

-Adapted from the Independent