The Girl Behind the Gates

Both novels uncover buried injustices against women in British institutions — Gunnis delivers the same slow-burn dread and archival authenticity Davies fans crave.

If you loved The Girl Behind the Gates and are searching for books like it, Emily Gunnis's The Girls Left Behind is the closest companion read available. Like Davies's story of Nora Jennings locked away in a 1939 psychiatric institution, Gunnis builds her novels around women whose voices were systematically suppressed by the very establishments meant to protect them. Gunnis brings the same dual-timeline structure and document-driven authenticity that makes historical injustice feel viscerally real rather than abstract. Readers who were gripped by the claustrophobic atmosphere of the asylum and the moral outrage at how women were disposed of by their families will find the same emotional gut-punch in Gunnis's work. This is essential reading for anyone asking 'what to read after The Girl Behind the Gates' who wants that same slow-building rage and grief.

Children and women stripped of identity by corrupt institutions — Wingate mirrors Davies's blend of historical outrage and deeply personal emotional stakes.

Readers who were devastated by Nora Jennings's confinement in The Girl Behind the Gates will find a powerful companion in Lisa Wingate's Before We Were Yours. Both novels are rooted in true historical abuses — Davies in British psychiatric institutions of the 1930s, Wingate in the real-life Tennessee Children's Home Society scandal — and both make the reader feel the full weight of what it meant to be a powerless woman or child at the mercy of institutions that valued compliance over humanity. Wingate's dual-timeline structure and her ability to make readers both furious and heartbroken mirrors exactly what Davies achieves. If you've been Googling 'books like The Girl Behind the Gates' that are based on true events and centre women silenced by systems of power, Before We Were Yours belongs at the top of your list.

A woman's stolen autonomy and hard-won voice — Walker's landmark novel shares Davies's core fury at how systems and men erase women, told with unflinching intimacy.

The Girl Behind the Gates sits in a long, vital tradition of novels about women whose inner lives are denied and whose autonomy is stripped away by the people and institutions around them — and The Color Purple is one of the most powerful books in that tradition. Alice Walker's Celie faces a different era and geography to Nora Jennings, but the emotional architecture is strikingly similar: a young woman rendered voiceless, the slow and painful process of reclaiming selfhood, and a narrative shaped by moral outrage at the structures that enable such cruelty. Where Davies brings clinical precision from her psychiatric background, Walker brings a raw, intimate epistolary voice. Readers looking for 'if you liked The Girl Behind the Gates try...' recommendations that carry the same emotional intensity and feminist urgency will find The Color Purple essential.

Depression-era moral horror rooted in a true story — McMorris captures the same period atmosphere and institutional betrayal of the vulnerable that defines Davies's novel.

Set in the 1930s and drawn from a real historical photograph, Sold on a Monday by Kristina McMorris occupies a very similar emotional and historical space to The Girl Behind the Gates. Both novels ask the same urgent question: how did ordinary people allow such devastating things to happen to the most vulnerable members of society? McMorris centres children sold by desperate families during the Great Depression, while Davies focuses on a teenage girl committed to a psychiatric institution by her own family — but the betrayal at the heart of each story is almost identical. Readers who were gripped by the period detail and the slow-building horror of Nora's situation, and who are now searching for 'books similar to The Girl Behind the Gates' set in the same pre-war decade, will find Sold on a Monday deeply satisfying and equally hard to put down.

A woman fighting an indifferent system in the 1930s — Hannah's epic scope and emotional devastation match Davies's register for readers who want scale alongside heartbreak.

Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds shares a crucial DNA strand with The Girl Behind the Gates: both are set in the 1930s, both place a woman at the mercy of forces far larger than herself, and both are committed to making the reader feel the full human cost of historical injustice. Where Davies zooms into the claustrophobic world of one asylum, Hannah pans out to the vast American Dust Bowl — but the emotional experience of reading both books is strikingly similar: you feel trapped alongside the protagonist, furious on her behalf, and utterly unable to stop turning pages. Hannah is one of the most reliably devastating writers of women's historical fiction working today, and The Four Winds is among her very best. Anyone asking 'what should I read after The Girl Behind the Gates' who wants that same 1930s setting and emotional intensity should pick this up immediately.