I should preface this by saying I haven’t finished The Umbrella Academy yet, but boy, am I loving it! Heroes with complicated backstories, questionable villains, robotic mothers, time travel, family drama, space, intriguing dystopian plot points, crazy family dynamics, and the end of the world as we know it. If you love any of these things, you should absolutely watch The Umbrella Academy and meet the complicated Hargreeves family, and then read some of the books below!
6 Books to Read if You Love The Umbrella Academy
1. Fate of Flames by Sarah Raughley
This is the story of four girls with the power to control the elements having to come together to save the world from a terrible evil. Plus, it has some really complicated villains. Superheroes! Not knowing who is with you and who is against you! Secrets abound! I’m seeing some similarities…
2. The Last Magician by Lisa Maxwell
Talented thief, Esta travels back in time to find a mysterious book to save her future in this fantastical story. In The Umbrella Academy, Number Five can jump through space and finds himself stuck in the future when he decides to jump through time for the first time. When he eventually gets back to modern day he must utilize the knowledge he procured while stuck in time to save the world before an apocalypse will dawn mere days later.
3. Sanctuary by Caryn Lix
Kenzie is a prison-guard in training, taken hostage by super-powered criminal teens housed on the Sanctuary space station that she must now work together with as the space station is attacked by mysterious creatures. When we first meet Luther Hargreeves, conveniently referred to as Spaceboy and also Number One, he is isolated on the moon for a four year mission in a prison of his own making.
4. Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card
Rigg is well trained at keeping secrets. After all, he can see into people’s pasts. But when his father dies, Rigg is stunned to learn just how many secrets were kept from him—most important of which is that he has the power to not only see into the past, but to also change it. Sounds a lot like Number Five’s habit of manipulating timelines if you ask me.
5. Rabbit & Robot by Andrew Smith
Cager Messer is stranded on his father’s lunar-cruise utopia with insane robots as Earth burns beneath them in the midst of thirty simultaneous wars. The fate of Cager’s Earth is similar to the fate that the Hargreeves family is desperately working to stop from happening with Number Five at the helm. Plus, his insane robot caretakers seem to remind me a lot of Mom in The Umbrella Academy.
6. Cape by Kate Hannigan
Alright, so maybe the release of this book is still several months away and it’s a Middle Grade book, but hear me out and get hyped! Set during WWII, this follows Josie, a brilliant puzzle solver who soon finds herself as part of the next generation of girl superheroes working to change the world for the better. Kids with newly emerging abilities being trained to be the world’s best superheroes? Let’s hope they turn out better than the Hargreeves family.