Just finished Normal People? Here are 7 other brutally romantic book adaptations to watch on Stan.

If you’ve already blitzed your way through Stan’s critically acclaimed series Normal People, you might currently be dealing with a gaping hole in your heart the size of Marianne and Connell’s emotional issues and wondering what to watch next.

Now that you’ve got a taste for swoon-worthy, intricate and highly entertaining book to screen adaptions, after watching the series based on Sally Rooney’s best-selling novel of the same name, you’ll want to keep yourself nestled within this particular genre for the foreseeable future.

With that in mind, here are the seven most brutally romantic book adaptations you need to watch on Stan as soon as you’ve finished Normal People.

For a deeper dive on Normal People, listen to this episode of The Spill.

Looking for Alaska

Stan’s mesmerising drama Looking for Alaska is based on the beloved novel of the same name by author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars). The series was expertly crafted for the small screen by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, the producing partnership behind hit shows like Gossip Girl and The O.C.

The series kicks off with lonely high-school student Miles (Charlie Plummer) setting off for boarding school at Culver Creek Preparatory High School in Alabama.

Once Miles arrives at Culver he is immediately taken into a tight-knit little gang made up of his new roommate Chip “The Colonel” Martin (Denny Love), Takumi Hikohito (Jay Lee) and Alaska Young (Kristine Froseth), a charismatic girl who supplies her friends with contraband cigarettes and alcohol but is also hiding a deep lingering pain.

Looking for Alaska is all about young adulthood, ever-changing friendships and the aftermath of extreme heartbreak.

Everything, Everything

Everything, Everything is a romantic drama based on Nicola Yoon’s 2015 novel of the same name.

The movie tells the story of a young woman named Maddy (Amandla Stenberg) who has an immune disorder that prevents her from ever leaving her house, making friends or having the chance to fall in love. She spends her days locked alone in her house with just her mother, and dreams about one day being by the ocean.

Then her life begins to change when she meets her new neighbour Olly (Nick Robinson) who wants to help her really experience life. Over time, they start to fall in love.

Everything, Everything is a sweetly told and restrained story about young love that perfectly captures the magic of the book.

Take a look at the trailer for Looking for Alaska, now streaming only on Stan. Post continues after. 

Sweetbitter

This delicious and addictive restaurant drama is based on the novel Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler.

The TV show is about a young woman named Tess (Ella Purnell) who moves from a small town to New York City without friends, a place to live or any kind of job lined up, purely because she feels the need to shake up her life.

Through a twist of fate (and a slightly awkward interview) she lands a job at one of the city’s best restaurants and quickly becomes entwined in the lives of the people who work there, who all behave as one big and very dysfunctional alcohol-dependent family.

The series morphs into a romantic drama as Tess begins dating one of her colleagues while finding herself romantically drawn to another, all set against the backdrop of the scandalous New York restaurant world.

The Little Drummer Girl

The Little Drummer Girl is both a high stakes drama and a sweeping love story set in the late 1970s and based on the novel of the same name by John le Carré.

Oscar nominee Florence Pugh stars as young English actress Charlie, who meets Israeli intelligence officer Gadi Becker (Alexander Skarsgård) while on holiday in Greece and becomes immersed in a plan to infiltrate a Palestinian group plotting terrorism in Europe.

While the original novel by John le Carré is very much a solid spy thriller, the TV limited series has fleshed out the slow-burn love story that exists within the plot, making it into a truly lavish book to screen adaption.

If I Stay

Based on the 2009 novel of the same name by Gayle Forman, If I Stay stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia, a teenage girl who gets into a terrible accident on the way to visit her grandparents and while recovering in hospital, slips into a coma.

While in the coma she has an out-of-body experience and the movie moves between her present-day fight for survival in the hospital while also flashing back to tell the story of how she fell in love with her musician boyfriend Adam Wilde (Jamie Blackley) and her pursuit of auditioning for Juilliard.

As far as teenage drama tearjerkers go, this one is pretty high up on the list.

Little Women

There's no question that Little Women is one of the greatest books ever written and has been treated to numerous screen adaptions over the years.

But even if you loved the original novel and caught Greta Gerwig's latest adaption on the big screen, there's never too many ways to delve into the story of the March sisters.

The Stan adaption of Little Women really gives Louisa May Alcott's iconic novel and characters room to breath, thanks to the fact that we have many episodes available to watch the story unfold, which allows multiple moments from the novel to be included in a way that just wouldn't find a place in the film adaptions.

This version of Little Women stars Emily Watson as Marmee March, Maya Hawke as Jo, Willa Fitzgerald as Meg, Kathryn Newton as Amy and Annes Elwy as Beth.

Younger

Yes, before it became a delightful hit TV show, Younger was originally a book penned by best-selling author Pamela Redmond Satran.

Apart from the fact that the lead character's name has been changed from Alice to Liza, the TV series sticks pretty closely to the premise of the novel, particularly in the first season.

Liza (Sutton Foster) is a 40-year-old single mother who has just divorced her cheating husband and has to then pretend to be in her twenties in order to secure a job in the New York publishing world.

While it's a good career move, it's also a lie that threatens her relationship with her much younger love interest Josh (Nico Tortorella) and her boss Charles (Peter Hermann).

All of these titles are available to stream now on Stan. 

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