For readers who grew up loving the Choose Your Own Adventure series, here are 10 contemporary interactive books for adults. From horror to romance to memoir to thought-provoking literary fiction and more, there’s something for everyone in this list. And all of these books encourage the reader to participate in the story by making decisions and following specific paths.
But why make the leap from a conventional structure to an interactive adventure? I posed that exact question to the authors featured in the list. Enter your email address in the form below to download their answers.
Interactive Books for Adults
Love Is Not Constantly Wondering If You Are Making the Biggest Mistake of Your Life by Anonymous
On the surface, you are an ace starfighter pilot whose ship has been shot down over a distant planet. There, you have been taken prisoner by a colony of giant, superintelligent ants. But the real story is a purposeful memoir about a relationship with a woman struggling to cope with her alcoholism.
If by Nicholas Bourbaki
In this experimental novel of ideas, you control a young Californian dreamer traveling the world. With a choice at the end of each chapter leading to 22 possible endings, Bourbaki constantly probes the limits of human freedom. In doing so, If forces readers to examine the control they have over their own lives.
My Lady’s Choosing by Kitty Curran and Larissa Zageris
Readers fed up with some poor decisions made in traditional romance novels will fall in love with this romantic interactive book for adults. As the eighteenth-century heroine, readers can choose their perfect match in this novel of multiple, intersecting courtship storylines.
What Lies Beneath the Clock Tower by Margaret Killjoy
Combining steampunk, fantasy and political allegory with an interactive format, this story descends into the depths of a French undercity where colonialist gnomes battle indigenous goblins amidst a fanciful medley of absinthe, monsters and zeppelins.
Pretty Little Mistakes by Heather McElhatton
The world is your oyster after you graduate high school at the start of this novel that features over 150 possible endings. Will you end up rich or destitute, happily married or desperately alone, a Zen master in Japan or morbidly obese in a trailer park?
Life’s Lottery by Kim Newman
Little decisions can have monumental consequences in Newman’s literary interactive novel. With their first choice as young Keith Marion, readers set him on a path that determines his lifelong friends, enemies and opportunities, leading to myriad outcomes ranging from winning the lottery or becoming a famous novelist to having an incestuous affair or committing murder.
To Be or Not To Be by Ryan North
North reimagines Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the first of his interactive books for adults. Readers can play as Hamlet, Ophelia or Hamlet’s father, and with over 100 different endings, there are plenty of opportunities to reinvent a classic.
Infected by James Schannep
Will you survive the zombie apocalypse? Test your doomsday prepping plans against legions of the undead in this apocalyptic horror novel that features three unique storylines and more than fifty possible endings.
Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz
A different approach from other interactive books for adults as Schwartz combines a memoir of her early twenties with a book-length personality quiz. Combining humor and honesty, Choose Your Own Disaster explores the millennial experience, modern feminism and the challenges of finding your true self among many possible versions.
The Friar’s Lantern by Greg Hickey
Shameless self-promotion alert! My genre-bending novel incorporates science fiction and courtroom drama and asks readers to consider the nature of choice itself. Will you win $1,000,000? Will you convict a man of murder? Choose wisely—if you can.