This month, there are a ton of good books coming out, so gird your loins! I didn’t include Romance this month because, honestly, only one book stood out to me. I really focus on making these posts books that I myself have/would put on hold, so month to month the genres will vary.

PS: Just a reminder that you can tag upcoming releases as “notify me” within the Libby app. Then, when the book becomes available, you can place a hold and get a great spot in line. That’s how I got Whistler the day after it came out!

Table of Contents:

• Historical Fiction

• General Fiction

• Non-Fiction

• Thrillers

• Sci-Fi/Fantasy

• Horror

• Literary Fiction

  ---

Note: I’ve also decided to turn on paid subscriptions. Paid subscribers will have access to exclusive posts, reading challenges, printables, and locked portions of paid posts. From now through August 1, you can sign up for 60%, or $1.67 per month (less than the price of a cup of coffee!).

I hope to have you at the smaller table in the back, where we get to know each other a little better.

Subscribe now

Historical Fiction

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl by Clare Marchant

In this dual-timeline novel, Margery arrives in Saltmarsh in 1665 looking for her mother and instead finds a very closed-off group of villagers. After the Plague ravages the community, rumors of a demon dog and a girl who brought a curse begin to fester. Centuries later, an opera singer comes to the same marsh and starts digging into the old story. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 7

Share

The Song of Stork and Dromedary by Anjet Daanje

Eliza May Drayden writes a dark, cryptic novel that everyone calls immoral. After she dies, it takes on a life of its own. 11 interconnected stories then spiral out across 3 centuries, each generation offering a competing version of her life, her curse, and how exactly she slipped out of her coffin. De Standaard called it the Best Book of the Century. (book)

Release date: August 18

Fallen for France by Elizabeth Letts

Beddou is 6 when he’s sent from his Moroccan village to apprentice far from home, his mother pressing 6 amber beads into his hands to help him find his way back. The same month, an Arabian filly is born in the Sultan’s palace, and when a soldier steals her and takes her into France as the Great War begins, Beddou vows to find her. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 25

The Wreckers by George Makana Clark

Lisbon, 1954: someone steals the Last Will and Testament of Garoto Bárbaro de Castro. The thief is Nuno, Garoto’s descendant, an artifact hunter, grave-robber, conman, fake veterinarian, and agent of Angolan independence. He sets off to track down all 13 bequests and accidentally starts collecting the distant relatives of everyone named in the will, most of whom do not want to be collected. A darkly funny revenge saga that runs between Angola, Cuba, and Louisiana’s Angola prison. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 29

General Fiction

The Wild Beneath by Kelly Anderson

Annie grew up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures. Then, a tsunami takes everything and strands her on land, where she pulls a wordless man out of the wreckage who hums at a frequency only she can hear and whose touch shows her an underwater world she has been homesick for her whole life. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Take What You Can by Naima Coster

Val and Milly met as the only two Black students on a study abroad trip in France and became each other’s person immediately. A decade later, they’re both pregnant, and Val moves to New York so they can raise their daughters together. The only catch is that Milly is now an influencer married into restaurant money and Val is a journalist who can’t afford the block her best friend lives on. There’s also the secret they thought they left behind in France… (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Appraisals by Claire Boyles

Maggie Brandt is 3 seasons into a small organic farm in rural Colorado when the 2008 crash hits. Her unemployed husband takes a job with an oil and gas company, which is roughly the worst possible move in a house where his wife and daughter are both committed environmentalists. Meanwhile, a billionaire is quietly buying up the county’s water rights. Appraisals tells the story of 4 generations of women, one piece of land, and what you’ll actually do to preserve it. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Sunrise by Téa Obreht

A plane crashes, and Nina crawls out alive with a few snacks and no signal. She looks for the pilot, her missing boyfriend, but instead finds Sunrise, an Old West town that is perfectly maintained and yet completely empty. Inside Sunrise, she discovers the pieces of a mystery 100 years in the making. 3 timelines, 1 ghost town, and a gunslinger everybody has a different story about. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 11

Non-Fiction

The Vampire’s Cult by Chet Hardin

Aubrey Trail was an aging Nebraska con man who convinced people he was a centuries-old immortal being. Bailey Boswell called herself his queen. Together they used Tinder to pull vulnerable young women into a world of sex, theft, and total psychological control, until someone ended up dead. Hardin, who helped expose NXIVM, spent years going in and out of prisons to report this one out. Reads like a Stephen King novel, except that it really happened. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State by Jill Lepore

Lepore’s argument is that rule by machine is not the future arriving. Instead, it’s a very old idea with a long paper trail, running from the technocracy movement straight to the tech billionaires and the neo-monarchists currently redesigning your government. Shocking and ultimately a case that anything built by people can be taken apart by them. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 25

Thrillers

The Amateur by Chris Bohjalian

It’s 90 degrees in August 1978, and 18-year-old golf prodigy Mira Winston drives a ball straight through a practice net at her Westchester country club, killing a caddy. A freak accident, except the club wants a scapegoat, the detective remembers she has a history, and the dead boy’s father has seen her with her married lover. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd

Time travel exists. It’s legal, obscenely expensive, and approved for exactly one destination: London 1941, so that the very rich can stand in the street and watch the Blitz. A documentary filmmaker is on hand to film a tour group’s triumphant return, and instead films them staggering back bloodied, with one woman missing, a woman she recognizes, a woman who had every reason to hate her. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

The Women in White by Sarah Pekkanen

In 1964, 4 young women at an elite university were tested for precognition, telepathy, psychokinesis, and clairvoyance in a basement lab, until all 4 disappeared and the program was scrubbed from the record. 60 years later, a broke, newly divorced woman takes a caretaking job for an elderly widow, Betty, the last of the 4, who wants to find out what happened to her friends. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Freyja by Margrét Ann Thors

Unnur lives under a fake last name and does not think about the summer that ended with the disappearance of her friend Freyja. When her ex comes back to Iceland with a girlfriend who knows far too much about her, the cold case cracks open, and Unnur has to go back and retrieve a memory she has spent her whole life refusing to have. (book)

Note: I read an advanced copy of this and loved it. I want to read more from this author ASAP.

Release date: August 4

The Camino by Anya Niewierra

A year ago, Lotte’s husband walked the Camino de Santiago and killed himself somewhere along it. This made no sense to anyone who knew him, so she sets out to walk his exact route. Along the way, she starts noticing someone is following her… (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 25

Sci-Fi/Fantasy

The Shadows Tomorrow by Noëlle Michel

A clan of Neanderthals has been resurrected from scraps of ancient DNA and released onto a nature reserve to live as they once did. What they don’t know is that they are the cast of a hit reality show.

If you read my June 2026 Reading Wrap Up, you’ll already know I fell in love with this book. It brings so much more than the description hints at, and it was a 5-star read for me! (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Time Travel for Beginners by Jaclyn Moriarty

There’s a shopfront in Sydney that smells like coffee and sells trips to the past. You can visit any moment you want with no consequences and no butterfly effect. A single mother takes a job behind the counter, and her path converges with a man who books a trip to figure out where his marriage went. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

The Infinite State by Richard Swan

When her husband dies, Katherine Fuller inherits an unfathomable fortune inside the Decurion Empire, a fascist galaxy-spanning regime where every day is endured rather than lived. She could buy a virgin world and build something fairer, which is exactly the kind of idea the state cannot allow… (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Portrait of a Witch Undone by K.S. Shay

Maeve Ryan was the strongest witch of her generation until she botched a spell. Her best friend’s research into what went wrong keeps pointing at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the $500 million in art that walked out of it in 1990 and never came back. (book / audiobook)

Note: I read the ARC and didn’t love this. But I think a lot of people will find the merging of art and witch lit interesting, so I’m keeping it on the list!

Release date: August 25

Horror

The Unknown by Riley Sager

In 1926, 5 women vanished overnight from an island commune of spiritualists on a remote Vermont lake. A century later, a struggling actress arrives on that same island to film a movie about the disappearances, and they begin again. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Stay Buried by Jennifer McMahon

1919: an isolated Vermont town still reeling from a mysterious sickness is hit by a new illness that starts in the horses and spreads to people. Patient zero appears to be the knackerman, the recluse who collects dead animals. 2016: two siblings dig into what really killed their mother and encounter the locals’ strange customs. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 11

Reliquary by Hannah Whitten

Claire’s fiancé Elias dies unexpectedly, and his estranged, obscenely wealthy family invites her to a 3-day wake at Harrow Point, the family home on a private island. She goes, and everything is fine until she notices that the house is built downward, that the living quarters sit below the waterline, and that nothing is quite what it seems. This is Whitten’s first horror novel after building a name in fantasy, which I’m hoping translates to a fantastically atmospheric read. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 11

And the Sea Gave Up the Dead by William Friend

Morwenna finally goes to see her aunt, who has been wasting away alone in the family’s crumbling chateau on the French coast since her husband disappeared, a disappearance the locals have never stopped blaming her for. She brings her children and her new partner for a week, and the house begins to work on all of them. (book)

Release date: August 18

Literary Fiction

Between You, Me, and the Fence Post by Hunter Snow

Actress Claire Davis, who has spent her whole life performing, falls for Reed Hart, the charismatic frontman of a fading band who is addicted to more than fame. She waits, she hopes, and tries to save him. When he finally gets help, though, it turns out to be her wake-up call. (book)

Release date: August 2

Kitten by Stacey Yu

Katie is fresh out of college, broke, not speaking to her mother, months behind on rent, and perfectly content to let her wealthy boyfriend James make every decision for her. Then James takes her to his family’s seaside house and brings along Silver, his childhood cat, and Katie’s fascination with the life Silver has starts pulling her own life apart. (book / audiobook)

Release date: August 4

Precious Ugly by Rae Cline

It’s 1985, and 13-year-old Clementine is living at a riverside campground, hungry, pregnant, and eating fried snake for supper. All the while, her charismatic alcoholic father peddles sermons by the water and promises a miracle is coming. (book)

Note: There is a lot of sensitive content in this book.

Release date: August 18

Life of M by Rachel Cusk

M is a film star who has been recognizable since childhood. When a writer tells M she has been thinking of writing her autobiography, M likes the idea. What follows is a season of close observation of her privileged life.

Now, the gossip. A July column in UnHerd argued that M is a lightly disguised Natalie Portman, right down to the closing pages, where M’s unhappiness with the finished book is said to be true to life. None of this is confirmed, and none of the parties involved have commented at the time I’m writing this. But it only adds to my desire to read this book! (book / audiobook)

Note: If you’re in our subscriber chat, you know I’ve already been talking about this book!

Release date: August 25

What a Month For Readers!

The book I’m most excited about reading this month is The Unknown by Riley Sager. I had my notifications off and missed the Libby notification, so I’m like 40th in line. While I wait, I’ll be reading Life of M, for sure! It’s going to be part of the Summer Book Flights post, so keep your eye out for that later in August!

Now I want to hear from you! Which August new releases are you most excited about, or are you going to focus on clearing your TBR this month?

If this helped you find something new to read, consider becoming a paid subscriber for exclusive posts, printable reading trackers, and more. Until August 1, you can join for just $1.67 per month or $20/year!

Subscribe now

Read next….

This is a slightly longer list than usual because of it. Overall, it was an incredible month of reading, with no less than six 5⭐️ reads. I’ve ranked what I read this month from least favorite to favorite so you can easily find the cream that rose to the top.

Note: I’ve also decided to turn on paid subscriptions. Paid subscribers will have access to exclusive posts, reading challenges, printables, and locked portions of paid posts. From now through August 1, you can sign up for 60%, or $1.67 per month (less than the price of a cup of coffee!).

I hope to have you at the smaller table in the back, where we get to know each other a little better.

Subscribe now

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

19 - Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

After ten years on the run, a fugitive tells the story of her life in a confessional podcast, tracing a decade of false identities and near-misses across Tokyo, London, Colorado, and beyond. It’s pitched as a stylish, fast-paced thriller about immigration and belonging.

I picked it up for the thriller, and it delivered none of that for me. The prose never clicked, and I never engaged with the story enough to care what happened to the protagonist. There’s a real mismatch between how this is marketed and what it actually is, which is slower, more interior literary fiction.

Star Rating: DNF

Share

18 - Fever Dream by Elsie Silver

A bull rider signs on as the leading man of a reality dating show to save his family farm from bankruptcy, then falls for the one woman he isn’t supposed to want.

The reality-show framing was genuinely fun and what kept me reading, but the dialogue tips into cheesy territory. The chemistry reads as hot but not romantic, and I want a little more emotional swoon in my romance. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★

17 - The Crazies by Amy Gamerman

Nonfiction that follows a real range war in Montana’s Crazy Mountains, where a struggling fifth-generation rancher leases his land for a wind farm and runs straight into the billionaire neighbors who would rather protect their mountain views.

For some nonfiction, the asides make the story. For others, it seems like the author added a bunch of random stuff to hit a certain word count. This is the latter. It’s an interesting story but would have been infinitely better with a more focused scope. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★

16 - The Oracle’s Daughter by Harrison Hill

In 1999, twenty-six-year-old Sarah Green slipped out of a compound in the New Mexico desert and ran, escaping both the paramilitary Christian cult she’d been raised in and its leader, her own mother. Harrison Hill traces the rise and fall of that group alongside a wider history of American cults and the surprisingly porous line between fringe and mainstream belief.

Interesting story about one of the lesser-known American cults. It goes into a lot of backstory about cults and the religious history of the US. It’s a good book, but I ultimately like to feel more like I’m living inside the story than this delivers. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★

15 - Just Like a Dream by Lauren Evans

Olivia loves her small-town life and her job at the World Dream Center, where she designs the dreams that nudge people toward the choices that move the world forward. When an assignment stalls and she’s forced to partner with Connor, her unorthodox high school rival, the sparks between them start to make her question the course she’s been so sure of.

The premise was unlike anything I’d read, and it’s what carried me through. The characters fell flat, though: Olivia’s whole personality is being an eldest daughter, and the love interest reads like a one-dimensional golden retriever boyfriend. I never rooted for them. An interesting premise, hence the three stars, that might have worked better outside the romance frame. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on November 3, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★

14 - Take Me With You by Steven Rowley

Thirty years into their marriage, Jesse watches his husband Norman step into a strange beam of light in their Joshua Tree backyard and vanish. This event serves as the frame for the year that follows, as Jesse grieves, fields suspicion from neighbors, and works out who he is when he’s no longer one half of a whole.

The premise seems to promise quite a bit of sci-fi, and if that’s what you’re expecting, you’ll be disappointed. This is a story about relationships and growing older inside them. I didn’t find it as hilarious or poignant as the blurb promises. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★½

13 - Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

A bored teenage girl on the French Riviera meddles in her father’s love life, and the careless summer curdles into something with real consequences. Sagan was eighteen when she wrote it.

It reads like a teenager’s musings on a too-long beach trip, until the darkness starts to surface. The best thing I can compare it to is The Great Gatsby on the French Riviera, written by a teenager and with less overt plot. A vibe but not a love. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★½

Subscribe now

12 - People Watching in the Desert by Cali Adeline

Sonny Magee has spent her life on the margins. When she comes into money and lands at a luxury Arizona resort, the distance between the stories she tells herself and the people actually around her starts to close.

The midpoint twist is something I’d never encountered, and without giving anything away, it reframes the whole story. Where it fell short was the emotional connection: it read cool and detached. That distance may be right for its intended reader, so if you like your fiction cerebral and interior, this could land. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on July 14, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★½

11 - Strangers by Belle Burden

After twenty years of what looked like a happy marriage, Belle Burden’s husband announced with no warning that he was leaving, an affair behind him and the early pandemic closing in. Strangers is her reckoning with that.

As a reading experience, it’s not the best memoir I’ve ever read. It opens at the end so the dread burns off fast, the prose is controlled to a fault, and the privilege can make the stakes feel cushioned. So why four stars? Because I would hand this book to any woman entering a marriage, not for the writing but for the warning. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

10 - Lovers XXX by Allie Rowbottom

In 1982 Los Angeles, two best friends land in the neon world of the so-called golden age of porn, dancing and then performing as they try to build lives of their own. Told in two parts and stretching across three decades, the novel follows their love, rivalry, and survival.

The beginning of this book is especially bleak and gut-wrenching, and that darkness largely carries through the novel. I wasn’t sure if I could continue after the first few chapters, but I’m glad I did. Beneath the grit is a deep story about bodily autonomy, exploitation, and the relationships that define us. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★★

9 - Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

In Sublimation, crossing a border splits you in two: when you immigrate, one self enters the new country while the other stays trapped back home. Soyoung Rose Kang left Korea at ten and never spoke to her other self again, until her grandfather’s death calls her back for the funeral.

I immediately thought of Severance, but this is more literary, using its high-concept premise to dig into immigration, identity, and the ache of the life you didn’t choose. The conceit could have been a gimmick, but Kim treats it with real emotional seriousness. (get it here)

PS: I’ll be discussing this book live on Substack with Chanel Grant at 1 pm EST on July 10th. Don’t miss it!

Star Rating: ★★★★

8 - When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams

A widowed Lucy returns to her late father’s crumbling New England estate and gets pulled into the pirate-treasure legend that consumed his life. Three timelines weave together: her own teenage summer with Ben, the colonial winter of 1717, and the present-day reckoning with what her father left behind.

I really enjoyed this one. The cover suggests contemporary romance, but it’s so much more. The three timelines are pulled off spectacularly. The modern thread is the standout, fast-paced but still tender, and yes, there are pirates, handled in a way that stays fascinating without ever going cheesy. This is definitely a great “beach read.” (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

7 - The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

When Lili Lowe is caught on camera with her married politician boss, she turns to her mother Lydia, a former talent agent. Instead of helping her disappear, Lydia turns the scandal into a fame machine, and Lili and her three sisters learn exactly what public life costs a woman.

I expected a fluffy, scandal-of-the-week read and got something genuinely poignant instead. The premise has all the trappings of a tabloid story, but Alexander is just as interested in the interior lives of these women and the cost their fame creates. The perfect book club pick for summer, especially as a follow-up to Yesteryear. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★

6 - Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton

After graduating with a load of student debt, Kate Beaton leaves Cape Breton for the Alberta oil sands, where the money is good, and the work camps are remote, isolating, and overwhelmingly male. This graphic memoir documents what the place does to the people in it and to her.

This was my first graphic novel, and it won’t be the last. A poignant, dread-soaked account of how we treat women, what it costs to leave home for work, and how fast the rules that keep us decent to each other fall away. (get it here)

Note: there’s very sensitive content in this book, so please check content warnings.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

Share

5 - The Supper Club Saints by

After escaping a cult-like “mommune” where she fell under the spell of a mom influencer, Cass Simon comes home to small-town Wisconsin under a cloud, possibly facing child-endangerment charges. Her return stirs up the women of her family, each wrestling with her own idea of what makes a good mother.

A book hasn’t touched me this much in a long time. The Supper Club Saints has the emotional depth of an Ann Patchett novel paired with a story that feels urgently of this moment. Underneath the premise is something more lasting, a story about family, love, and forgiveness. I can’t stress enough how good this is. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★

4 - The Grapevine by Craig Robertson &

When her nineteen-year-old daughter vanishes, Lou Gomersall takes the family RV and goes looking for her across California, refusing to accept that the trail has gone cold. A year on, convinced the same predator has taken four other young women, she chases a fresh lead with help from an unlikely network of vanlifers, RVers, and truck-stop regulars.

This is the kind of thriller that doesn’t let you put it down, and I mean that literally: I kept telling myself one more chapter, and then it was suddenly two hours later. Lou is what really makes it land: her determination is relentless enough that you feel every mile of the search with her. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★

3 - The Shadows Tomorrow by Noëlle Michel

In the near future, a clan of Neanderthals has been recreated from fragments of DNA and released onto a nature reserve, where they unknowingly star as the cast of a hit reality show.

This was incredible and even better than I expected. I went in braced for something fast and plot-driven, which it is, but it’s far more literary than I anticipated. This is not a poppy reality-show romp but a beautiful, unsettling story that makes you think about how we define humanity. Fans of Sea of Tranquility will love it. (get it here)

Note: This comes out on August 4, 2026.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

2 - TRAD by

Hannah, a broke single woman in New York, starts a fake tradwife influencer account, never expecting anyone to take it seriously. Then the account goes viral, the brand deals roll in, and the line between satire and the life she’s only pretending to live starts to disappear.

I loved it. Elizabeth shared the ARC with me after publishing the first few chapters, and I read it in one sitting. It takes the tradwife theme and explores it from a totally unhinged perspective. The writing is impeccable, and I couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen to Hannah next. If you’re not already reading this book this summer, you’re missing out.

Read it on Substack here.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

1 - Whistler by Ann Patchett

When Daphne Fuller, an English teacher in her fifties, spots an old man following her and her husband through the Met, he turns out to be the stepfather she hasn’t seen since she was nine. Their brief reunion pulls Daphne back toward a childhood memory and forces that bound the two of them together decades ago.

What can I say that would come close to describing the beauty and perfection that is this book? All I can think to write is that it reminds me, as no book has in years, how marvelous it is to be a reader. If you read one book this summer, this is it. (get it here)

Star Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

A Month in Review

If you take one book from this list, take Whistler. It’s good enough to deserve a totally made up star rating.

Past that, The Supper Club Saints moved me more than anything has in months, The Grapevine kept me up well past any reasonable hour, and The Shadows Tomorrow really surprised me with what it delivered vs. what it promised.

Even my middle-of-the-pack reads had something to recommend them, which is part of why a sick month on the couch ended up being a genuinely good reading month.

Subscribe now

I’d happily take a less dramatic July, but I’m grateful for the books that kept me company through the worst of it this month.

What did you read this month? I’m always hunting for the next one, so tell me in the comments.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

Leave a comment

Read next…

That said, there are some genuine standouts this month, and a lot of solid, interesting books worth making room for.

I’ve sorted everything by genre and flagged the ones I’m most excited about.

To celebrate my new paid tier, I’m offering a crazy deal until Aug 1! You’ll lock in a 60% discount, paying just $1.67/month!! Get access to special paid posts, paid-only printables and challenges, and help me continue creating content like this.

Join for $1.67/mo!

Table of Contents

• Sci-Fi and Fantasy

• Nonfiction

• Thriller

• Contemporary Fiction

• Historical Fiction

• Literary Fiction

• Horror

• Romance

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love to buy a book or audiobook sometimes. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Habits of the Sea by Shea Ernshaw

There’s an island that won’t stay put. It drifts up the coast from Scotland to Nova Scotia, and the only person on it is a man who hasn’t aged a day in longer than anyone can explain. When a woman finds her way there, what unfolds is a strange, dreamy love story that bends time and folklore around itself.

It’s winter for me, so a book with a foggy and enchanted mood fits my vibe right now.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh

The Mintons are exactly as functional as you’d expect a family with a doomsday-prepper dad, a daughter in a UFO cult, and a mom keeping her diagnosis to herself. Then the end of the world actually shows up, right in the middle of the eldest daughter’s wedding.

I really enjoy post-apocalyptic books, and this sounds like it takes on the end of the world from a slightly “lighter” place. I’ve never come across a premise quite so unusual, and I really hope it delivers.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

A Fate Worse Than Drowning by Sarah L. Hawthorn

To save her dying sister, a Nova Scotia lighthouse keeper strikes a bargain she can never take back: she has to lure passing ships onto the rocks. She’s made her uneasy peace with it, until one of the people she’s meant to drown survives and washes up at her door.

Odyssey parallels anyone? The Odyssey has completely taken over my life and interests while I wait for the movie to come out.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

Henry Tudor Must Die by Jillian Laine

On the eve of her execution, Anne Boleyn gets an impossible visitor: Catalina de Aragón, her old rival, with an escape plan and just as much hatred for Henry VIII. The two queens join the Hellebore Sisterhood, a clandestine society of women with a score to settle.

You already know I’m a Tudor nerd. Add genre-blending witchy revenge fantasy on top? Yes, please!

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Nonfiction

How to Kill a Language by Sophia Smith Galer

A journalist travels the world to report on linguicide, the slow death of roughly half the planet’s 7,000 languages within this century, starting close to home with her own grandmother’s northern Italian dialect.

One of my greatest interests is languages and linguistics. Another is history. This is a literal no-brainer and will be one I put on hold the second it’s ready.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

Sisters of the Midnight Sun: A Murder in Arctic Alaska by Rebecca Wright Stevens

A public defender in Utqiagvik, on Alaska’s Iñupiat North Slope, takes the case of a drifter accused in the still-unsolved 1993 murder of the Ipalook sisters.

Part true crime, part memoir, and a portrait of a community most of us will never have seen up close.

Release date: July 14 / (book)

The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby by Michael Blanding

An investigative look at how the Green family has used the Hobby Lobby fortune to push a Christian-nationalist agenda, fund the Museum of the Bible, and acquire looted antiquities along the way.

I recently read Dark Money by Jane Mayer, and this is the perfect deep dive into the topics discussed in that book, namely money, power, and how billionaires are shaping our culture.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir by Emilee Hackney

An eighth-generation Appalachian from Tazewell, Virginia writes about her Pentecostal upbringing, escaping a controlling and abusive engagement, and the long road that took her to Harvard.

This made me think of Educated meets A Well-Trained Wife, both of which I gave 5 stars. Stories like these are difficult, but are some of the most important for us to read.

Release date: July 28 (book / audiobook)

Honorable Mentions: There are so many fantastic nonfiction books coming out, and I didn’t cover any nonfiction in my roundup last month! Here are a few that I recommend but that didn’t quite make the list above:

• Catch the Devil by Pamela Colloff / July 14

• The Renoir Girls: A Hidden History of Art, War & Betrayal by Catherine Ostler / July 14

• Biological War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen / July 28

  ---

Thriller

Get Lost by Justin Halpern

The first novel from the guy behind Sh*t My Dad Says. A woman gets roped into finding her missing mother, and her only partner in the search is the deadbeat ex-ballplayer dad she’d happily never see again. Add Russian thugs and a few crooked politicians, and you’ve got a fast-paced ride.

The premise and cover make this book seem light, but reviewers have commented on how deep and emotional the book is. I like thrillers that really make me think.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

The Man by Laura Sims

A 1960s housewife picks up a camera and starts taking self-portraits, and slowly realizes there’s a dark figure standing at the edge of every frame. She becomes convinced it’s a man from her past, the one she’s spent years trying to forget.

This sounds terrifying.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

The Parisian Heist by

This one threads together a broke American art student in 1990s Paris and Jo van Gogh, the real woman who fought to make Vincent’s paintings matter after his death. A lost canvas links them, and the whole thing builds toward a heist inside the Musée d’Orsay. It’s part art history, part family secret, part proper caper, and is overall an incredible ride.

If you read my posts, you’ll know I’ve already read this one. It was easily a 5-star read, so if this appeals to you, reserve/pre-order it without thinking twice. Jo is a master of her craft.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Share

The Dahlia Suite by Carinn Jade

A blocked novelist, an actress coming apart at the seams, and a concierge who knows where every body is buried, all circling the same exclusive Caribbean resort as guests start vanishing.

This has that glossy, sun-soaked menace where everyone’s hiding something, plus a faint supernatural shimmer at the edges. That makes it the perfect thing to read in a lounge chair while pretending I’m somewhere with sand and better cocktails.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

Contemporary Fiction

Make Nice by Ryan Effgen

A comedy of manners about the estranged Pickford family, including a snail scientist and a grifter traveling with five pounds of cocaine, all forced together on a ritzy Lake Michigan island.

This is being billed as Sandwich meets The Wedding People, which definitely caught my attention. The Wedding People is one of the novels that most surprised me with its perfect balance of fun and depth, and I’ve been chasing something similar ever since.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Hustle, Baby by Priya Guns

A story about a family of Sri Lankan Tamil refugee women scraping by on the margins until a swaggering day-trader promises to turn their tiny stake into a fortune. They become his most devoted believers, right up until the markets turn.

The premise has a real bite about how seductive the rags-to-riches promise is for the people it never actually pays out, a topic we discuss often in the Corporate Gossip podcast book club I’m part of.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder

A London debut about an age-gap situationship between a thirty-five-year-old lead copywriter and a twenty-four-year-old barista and poet, and all the small power imbalances modern love papers over.

It’s been compared to Sally Rooney and seems to offer a deeper, darker look into modern love. Seems interesting.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

City of Widows by Nadia Hashimi

Set after the Taliban’s 2021 return to power, City of Widows follows Marjan, a former Afghan army soldier who was raised as a bacha posh, as she fights to protect her daughter in a country that has narrowed sharply around them.

A timely story that shows us just how much our world and our rights can change in an instant.

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

Historical Fiction

Single Girls by John Searles

A novel built around Helen Gurley Brown in her Cosmopolitan heyday, back when she was rewriting, almost single-handedly, what a single woman was allowed to want. It’s the 1960s, it’s glossy and a little ruthless, and it’s about the woman who told a whole generation they didn’t have to wait around to start living.

Did anyone else watch Minx? I loved that show, and this premise reminded me of it. I hope it’s a similar story!

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton

At the height of the 1968 space race, an astronaut is lost on a lunar mission. Back on Earth, his wife, a journalist who has spent years being “the astrowife,” starts receiving messages she’s certain are coming from him.

Interstellar is one of my top 5 favorite movies. I generally love space-themed books (but not space operas - important distinction!), and this seems like it packs an emotional punch while also offering a magical twist. Perfect.

Release date: July 7 / (book / audiobook)

White Elephant by Jeyamohan, translated by Priyamvada Ramkumar

During the Great Indian Famine of 1878, an Irish officer policing colonial Madras starts to see the machinery he serves for what it is: a brutal system of forced labor and caste cruelty propping up the ice trade. Watching him reckon with his own complicity gives the book its slow burn. The Tamil-to-English translation won a PEN/Heim grant.

I don’t know much about this period in history. This also feels like a great one to read after finishing Land by Maggie O’Farrell.

Release date: July 21 / (book)

The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson

This one moves between the London Blitz and the Łódź ghetto, following the people who kept secret libraries running while the world around them burned. It’s about books as a form of survival, the thing you hold onto when everything else is being taken.

If a story has ever made you believe a library can save a life, like me, this is your kind of book.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Literary Fiction

Should the Waters Take Us by Stephanie Soileau

This debut novel follows one Acadian family across four hundred years, from France to the Louisiana bayou, landing in the present as the Deepwater Horizon spill poisons the water they have always lived on.

It is a big, ambitious book about place, family, and the compromises people make to survive. I generally love a big family saga, so this is right up my alley.

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

In Wonderland by Joyce Maynard

One golden Maine summer, a working-class teenager named Frances takes a job as a mother’s helper at a glittering lakeside estate and gets pulled into a world of privilege that is not nearly as charmed as it looks. By Labor Day, someone is dead, and the summer she thought she understood looks very different.

Rich people behaving badly in gorgeous, summery settings is the perfect premise for a summer read.

Release date: July 14 / (book)

Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead

The final book in Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy brings furniture-salesman-slash-fence Ray Carney and his dangerous associate Pepper back for three connected heists set across 1980s New York.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this will be one of the biggest books of the summer. If you haven’t read the others in the trilogy, remedy that ASAP. I’ve been obsessively refreshing Libby, waiting for this to come up for hold.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli

A mother and her twelve-year-old daughter take a road trip through Sicily in the wake of a divorce, with a volcano smoking in the background and four generations of women threaded through the story. Luiselli folds in Greek myth and the slipperiness of memory in a way that feels both intimate and enormous.

At the time of writing, Mt. Etna is actively smoking, and The Odyssey will be released later this month. Is it a sign that it’s time to read this book?

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

Horror

Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle

A fashion influencer and part-time grave robber in Palm Springs has to survive the night when the dead rockstar she is transporting wakes up. Campy, gory, and weirdly tender, this is being pitched as Drive meets Beetlejuice.

I’m not sure it’s something I’ll pick up myself quite so soon, but I’m including it because so many of my readers have asked about it, and it’s one of the most important horror releases of the year!

Release date: July 7 (book / audiobook)

The Sea Hides Its Dead by Megan Bontrager

A debut about a grad student and a group of academics trapped in a collapsed sea cave while studying a cult devoted to a leviathan, facing trials that demand they atone or die.

I hope this skews darker instead of campy, because the premise sounds like this could be a book that gives you nightmares!

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Cross My Heart, I Hope You Die by Mallory Arnold

Three women who all dated the same man gather at a snowed-in cabin to plot revenge, the man turns up dead, and then they turn on each other.

This sounds delightfully unhinged and like the perfect thriller to cool off on a long, hot summer night. Also, that cover!

Release date: July 14 / (book / audiobook)

Carry Me to My Grave by Christopher Golden

In 1956, a Korean War vet has two days to carry his dead mother’s body home to Shediak, Maine, while an ancient evil hunts them both down the road.

I love a lean, eerie chase novel. As always, ancient evil can run deliciously disturbing or a bit cheesy, but early reviews make it seem like a good bet.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Romance

Yes, Chef by Grace Reilly

A grumpy chef and a sunshine influencer team up to save a failing Florida restaurant, with all the forced proximity and enemies-to-lovers heat you could want.

I love watching shows about food and chefs and am always on the hunt for my next cute romance read, so this is high up on my list. Will report back.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

If Books Could Kill by Kate Eberle

Roxie wishes herself into the heroine’s role in her favorite romance author’s next book, only to discover the next book is a thriller, not a romance. This is a genre-bending comedy for anyone like me who has ever talked back to a novel >.<

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Just a Highland Fling by Naina Kumar

Neelu flies to Scotland for her estranged father’s wedding, accidentally sends the bride running, and ends up road-tripping the Highlands with her dad and the desi bagpiper she had a one-night stand with.

I’m not ok with the end of Outlander. I need something romantic to transport me to the Highlands asap.

Release date: July 21 / (book / audiobook)

Meet Me in Paris by Kristin Harmel

Nine Americans and seven love stories unfold over one week in Paris. I won’t go into each of the stories, but they range from a rockstar to a woman who just discovered her husband is having an affair.

What better way to visit The City of Light this summer than with a romance story? (If you’re looking for another great story set in Paris coming out this summer, check out The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza in the Thriller section above!)

Release date: July 28 / (book / audiobook)

What I’m Reaching For First

The book I want most this month is Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead. There are books I wait the whole year for, and this is one of them. It’s the end of a trilogy by one of my favorite authors, so I will definitely be buying the book if the wait time is too long.

I also can’t wait for The Secret Society of Librarians by Kate Thompson. Books about libraries have a Fast Pass to my heart, and this one is no different.

My wildcard pick is The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby. I’ve been reading a lot in this general vein lately, and as a kid who spent lots of afternoons following my mom around the store, I can’t wait to dive in.

Did any of these books stand out to you? Share in the comments what you’re most excited to read this month.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider becoming a paid subscriber! Until August 1, it’s just $20/YEAR (less than $2/month) to join and gain access to exclusive posts and paid benefits.

I want to join the inner circle!

I was also approved to read Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs), which was the exciting fulfillment of a lifetime goal. This won’t change the fact that I’m a library-first reader. What it will do is allow me to bring you 2-3 recommendations per month so you can get early holds set up for the books I think are going to wow you!

Because I had more time on my hands to read, May was a busy month. There were 18 books in all, including the buzziest book of the year, a shocking memoir, and 2 DNFs.

Read on to find out what I think is worth your time!

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

Yesteryear has a premise built for the cultural moment: a tradwife influencer wakes up in 1855 and confronts the reality behind the fantasy.

This could have been a scathing, high-concept critique of social media tradwives. Instead, it’s a lukewarm thriller without the teeth for real satire.

The first 200 pages flew by, and there were some genuinely good lines (hence the 3.5 stars). The historical sections should have been the heart of the book. Instead, they lack intrigue, and the twist didn’t land for me. Wait for the library hold.

PS: I’m working on a project to read and review multiple tradwife-themed books. Watch out for the article later this year!

Star Rating: ★★★½

Subscribe now

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings

There are a lot of books about tradwives on the shelves right now. This is the most important one.

Levings writes a raw, unflinching portrait of what white Christian patriarchy actually costs the women and children living inside of it.

Strip back the social media glamour, the homemade bubblegum, the likes, and the views, and what remains is a system that strips away agency and identity in the name of godliness and submission. Levings exposes that system from the inside.

This might be the most important book you read this year.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle

The first half delivered exactly what the premise promised: quiet, meditative, deeply interior. The second half becomes repetitive in a way that may be the point, but it doesn’t earn what it costs for me.

I kept waiting for a real reckoning with what it means to live outside of shared time, and it never quite came.

Star Rating: ★★

Darkening Song by Delphine Seddon

Dual storylines tracing a young star’s rise and the cost of fame, written in prose I kept stopping to highlight. Call it “sad girl lit” if you must, but that label may cheapen what is actually a layered, heartbreaking story.

Bonus: the audiobook includes original songs.

Star Rating: ★★★★½

Go Gentle by Maria Semple

A complete identity crisis of a book that careens between stoicism, #MeToo, art theft, and romance without ever committing to any of them. Additionally, the “coven of middle-aged women” premise that drew me in turns out to be little more than marketing window dressing.

I know a lot of my bookfriends on Substack enjoyed this one, though, so if the premise appeals to you, it might be worth a try. It just wasn’t my cup of tea!

Star Rating: ★★

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

A frothy-looking beach read that turns out to have real emotional depth, following an outsider who falls for a man in a tight-knit friend group and watches the delicate balance unravel.

Reading it kind of feels like watching your high school friends grow up if everyone had stayed in your small town, with a meditative, interior quality that reminded me of Tom Lake.

Star Rating: ★★★★½

Homebound by Portia Elan

This didn’t land at all. The multiple timelines are confusing and messy, and jumping between them was jarring. The world building was underdeveloped, which only made the structural problem worse. The characters felt equally thin, and I never felt anything for anyone on the page.

I wish I’d skipped this one.

Star Rating: ★★

Bog Queen by Anna North

I was expecting something more focused and investigative. What I got instead was a beautiful meditation on the connection between past and present, mediated by chapters told from the moss’s perspective. It’s slow, but gorgeously written, and well worth a careful read.

This was supposed to be a June read, but my hold came in early, and I flew through it!

Star Rating: ★★★★½

American Fantasy by Emma Straub

A 90s-nostalgia cruise with a fictional boy band should have been the perfect palate cleanser between heavier reads, but the characters and story never developed depth (I was still flipping back to figure out which band member was which halfway through).

The whole thing felt flat, and I quit around 50%. A skip unless you fit a very particular niche.

Star Rating: DNF

The Parisian Heist by Jo Piazza

A dual timeline mystery that braids together the story of Jo van Gogh fighting to prove Vincent’s genius in the late 1800s, with a struggling American art student pulled into the ruthless world of high-end art dealing in 1990s Paris.

With intrigue, art, history, and even a little romance, both timelines work beautifully, making this a perfect pick, even if books about art aren’t your typical pick.

Star Rating: ★★★★★

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown

A bit like oil and water: two timelines that really should have been two separate books.

The modern academic mystery had great pacing and just the right level of intrigue. However, every cut back to the historical timeline felt like an interruption rather than a deepening. This would have worked beautifully as a single-timeline novel.

Star Rating: ★★★

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy

I go into most celebrity memoirs braced for the worst. So many are poorly written, vague, and feel like fluff. This is not that.

The prose is sharp and controlled, the structure does real work, and she trusts her reader to sit with the discomfort instead of rushing to package it into a lesson. The result is genuinely devastating, especially the chapters where she’s still loving her mother even as she’s laying out exactly what was done to her.

It’s the rare memoir where the title isn’t a provocation; it’s a thesis. By the end, I agreed with it. I’m glad her mom died, too.

Star Rating: ★★★★

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

A scatological fever dream.

The opening intrigued me, but the further I got, the more it felt like Moshfegh was just trying to outdo her last shock. Body horror may not be my genre (Tender Is the Flesh didn’t land either), so take this with a grain of salt, but I don’t think the grossness is doing as much thematic work here as she thinks it is.

By the end, the disgust felt like the point rather than a vehicle for one.

Star Rating: ★★

The Spin by Faith Gardner

A retro-set psychological thriller about a 1950s housewife. A 1950s housewife is institutionalized after a breakdown, and her advertising-exec husband slowly comes to suspect was no accident. The book has a hooky setup and sharp early pacing that ultimately sags in the middle and lands on a quieter resolution than I wanted. A quick, easy read, but a bit of a disappointment by the end.

Note: This is out on June 16th!

Star Rating: ★★★

One Day by David Nicholls

I went in expecting to be wrecked. People talk about One Day like it’s going to leave a mark, and I was ready for the longing, the joy, and the gut-punch. What I got instead was a book I quietly liked but never really connected with.

It’s a perfectly fine novel that wasn’t the emotional event I was promised.

Star Rating: ★★★½

Trad Wife by Sarah Langan

A trad wife influencer with a 300-acre farm, seven perfect children, and a journalist arriving to expose her. What starts as a tidy media takedown spirals into something genuinely sinister, with Langan’s slow-burn dread accumulating until you can’t look away. Delicious, atmospheric horror with a fantastic resolution. A must-read for anyone craving a darker angle on the tradwife trend.

Note: This one comes out September 29th, so make sure you set up a notification in Libby!

Star Rating: ★★★★★

The Society of Unknowable Objects by Gareth Brown

The Book of Doors is one of my favorite books of all time. I was expecting more of that breakneck pace and whimsical magic. But this book did not deliver. It took them forever to explain the mechanisms of the magic in the story, and none of the characters were particularly memorable. I only finished this because I loved Doors so much. I’d suggest you pass.

Star Rating: ★★½

Perfection by Vincenzo Latrionico

To me, the book reads like an inventory, not a story. Twelve pages describing an apartment, the plants, the natural wine, and the carefully curated everything.

I can see what he’s doing, and I think some readers will appreciate the slow indictment of a generation that substituted aesthetics for a life. For me, it just didn’t hook me enough to keep going.

Star Rating: DNF

The Month in Review

Eighteen books, and the prevailing theme was tradwives. If you have not seen me mention it yet, I am releasing a larger piece on “tradwife lit” later this year, and this was the month the reading really began. I’m really looking forward to bringing that post to you.

Note: I’ve been reading Elizabeth Richardson’s serialized novel TRAD right here on Substack. If you want to read along with me, you can start here!

The other accidental pattern was dual timelines. I lost count of how many books split their story across two eras, and I came away with strong opinions about when that structure earns its keep and when it just gets in the way. The Parisian Heist is the case for it. The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton is the case against. (Seriously, put a “notify me” out for The Parisian Heist if you like historical fiction!)

Subscribe now

The best book I read was A Well-Trained Wife, and the worst was Homebound.

I read most of these from the library, as usual. But if one of them grabbed you and you’d rather own it, here’s a link for 20% off at Bookshop.org, which supports independent bookstores instead of you-know-who. The complete list of books mentioned in this post is here. Happy reading!

What were the best and worst books you read in May? Let me know in the comments!

Leave a comment

Here’s what to read next…

But that doesn’t mean we’re getting fluff this month. Far from it! We’ve got Pulitzer winners circling back with their next titles, beloved romance authors dropping the books their readers have been waiting for, and debut novelists arriving with the kind of premises that make you say, “Wait, what?” out loud.

So get your library card ready and check out everything this month has in store! (The thriller shelf this month was so packed I could not, in good conscience, narrow it down to four!)

Table of Contents

• Thriller

• Contemporary Fiction

• Historical Fiction

• Literary Fiction

• Nonfiction

• Horror

• Romance

• Sci-fi/Fantasy

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Subscribe now

Thriller

The People Next Door by Carla Kovach

When Gemma inherits her late aunt’s house on Clover Lane, she reluctantly moves her family back to the street where her childhood best friend vanished decades ago, only to find a series of disturbing letters circulating through the neighborhood.

A haunted house thriller in June? Fantastic to mix up my summer reading slate.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Rich Little Liars by AJ Carter

This is the first of AJ Carter’s new line of glossy psychological thrillers for Boldwood, all set among the affluent and the morally compromised. In Rich Little Liars, a single discovery threatens to unravel the carefully constructed lives of an enviable inner circle.

I’ve been on a kick lately for books that lean into the wealth-and-secrets angle (think glittering surfaces, rotten cores).

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 5

Restless Bones by Gillian French

Maine fingerprint analyst Shaw Connolly is pulled into a fresh case when a missing woman’s body is found in a submerged car, all as her sister’s killer continues to haunt her from prison while awaiting trial.

I love a good cat and mouse thriller. The description reminds me of the dynamic in The Silence of the Lambs!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Someone Else’s Husband by Kimberly McCreight

A Park Avenue wife’s seemingly charmed life unravels after her husband returns from a Kilimanjaro expedition with one fewer person in the group than when he left, setting two women on a collision course over a deadly love triangle.

Love triangles? Lives of the rich and famous? Thriller pacing? This sounds like the perfect poolside read.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Two Missing Girls by Kerry Wilkinson

Seven-year-old Cassie vanishes from her bedroom without a trace, and years later, when her grieving mother is finally finding solace in her best friend’s young daughter, history repeats itself with surgical precision.

I love a missing-child thriller that focuses on the long, hollow aftermath rather than the immediate frenzy. The “history repeats itself” hook is the kind of premise that’s almost impossible to put down.

Release date: June 17

Names Have Been Changed by Yu-Mei Balasingamchow

A Singaporean woman who has spent a decade on the run from a long-ago crime begins recording a confessional podcast that follows her across Tokyo hostess bars, London noodle houses, and a snowbound Colorado town.

The premise alone (Catch Me If You Can meets a true crime podcast, narrated by a globe-trotting Singaporean ex-con) is the most original thriller pitch I’ve heard all season, and I’m itching to see if the debut delivers.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Montecito by Michael Cox

A struggling family who moved to California’s wealthiest enclave to give their kids a better shot finds itself drawn into the orbit of a newly arrived ultra-wealthy family whose job offer comes with very dangerous strings.

Cox lives in Montecito and spent years on Wall Street, so I trust the insider detail. The wealth-and-corruption setup feels right for this particular cultural moment.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

The Au Pair by Teddy Wayne

A once-acclaimed Brooklyn novelist whose career and marriage are crumbling finds dangerous solace in his family’s young Norwegian au pair, setting off a scandal that turns into a headline-grabbing trial.

Wayne’s particular brand of literary thriller (sly, knowing, faintly autobiographical) lands more sharply for me than many of the genre.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Contemporary Fiction

Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi

A teenage girl and her actress mother, displaced into the glass pool house of their own Hollywood property after the death of the mother’s secret lover, find themselves pulled back into the picture-perfect lie of the main house.

Choi’s first adult novel after years of writing YA. I think this might be one of the most talked-about books this summer. And just look at that cover…

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander

After a young woman is caught having an affair with her married politician boss, her former talent agent mother turns the scandal into a media empire that reshapes the lives of all four Lowe sisters.

Pitched for fans of Blue Sisters and Margo’s Got Money Troubles, I love the idea of a book based on exploiting your own scandal for fame. I’m reading the ARC right now, so check my June round up for my thoughts! You can always find me on Goodreads if you want to read my reviews in real time.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Subscribe now

Long Island Girls by Gabrielle Korn

Tracing the on-and-off love story between two women from a 2005 indie rock concert through post-COVID Los Angeles, this novel captures the ache of first love and the slow shaping of a life across two decades.

I loved her first novel, and the nostalgia of this time period calls to me.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

The Shampoo Effect by Jenny Jackson

A young writer arrives at a New England beach town for an eighteen-month residency and quickly inserts herself into the tight-knit social circle of a charismatic local, with consequences that ripple through every long-held secret in the town.

Elin Hilderbrand is already calling it a summer must-read. The newcomer-disrupts-the-friend-group setup is one of my favorite structures.

I’m reading the ARC right now, so check my June round up for my thoughts!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Historical Fiction

Land by Maggie O’Farrell

In 1865, a father and his ten-year-old son set out to map a windswept Irish peninsula still scarred by the Great Hunger, until a strange encounter in the woods changes them both.

O’Farrell, after Hamnet, is an automatic yes for me. I’ve had my eye on this book for months.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

What Came West by Josh Weil

Just before the Gold Rush ignites, an outsider who has never belonged anywhere but the wilderness flees west into the Sierra Nevada, where a single act of violence sets a manhunt in motion.

Pitched as Cormac McCarthy in lush mode. I’m interested in reading more Westerns, so this appealed to me!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Daffodil Days by Helen Bain

Set in a small Devon village in the early 1960s, this debut reconstructs the final year of Sylvia Plath’s life through the eyes of the locals who watched her marriage to Ted Hughes unravel.

Plath is endlessly compelling, and telling her story through the village GP, the dress shop assistant, the church bellringer could make for an unforgettable book.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

Ghost Eye by Amitav Ghosh

A three-year-old girl in 1960s Calcutta who begins to recall a previous life as a fisherwoman becomes the heart of a story that stretches forward to a present-day Brooklyn antiquarian investigating a family mystery.

I have to admit, I’m a little on the fence about this one. The past life angle appeals to me, but the fisherwoman part? Not as much.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

Literary Fiction

Whistler by Ann Patchett

A fifty-three-year-old Manhattan teacher runs into the former stepfather she has not seen in forty-four years and is pulled back into the orbit of a man she loved deeply as a child but barely knew as an adult.

Another one I’ve had my eye on for months. I just adore Ann Patchett.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Sourland by Ariel Delgado Dixon

After the matriarch of a Northern California weed farm disappears under suspicious circumstances, her two former lovers and rival successors fight for control of the next harvest and the very different futures they each imagine for themselves.

I have never seen a mystery book with a plot even remotely like this. Interest piqued.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Close Relationships with Strangers by Krista Diamond

A Las Vegas wildlife photographer turned LA paparazzo becomes consumed by his pursuit of one elusive A-list star, losing his morals and his grip on reality along the way.

Another for the celebrity/rich-and-famous category. The obsession angle, however, is what really drew me in.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Tangled Roots by Maria Turtschaninoff

A retired seventeenth-century soldier carves a homestead out of the magical Finnish forest, and across four hundred years, his descendants live, love, and quietly tangle with the forest folk who never quite leave the land alone.

I love family sagas that span centuries. The Finnish mythical folklore angle really drew me in, since it’s something I’ve never read about before.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Nonfiction

The Wreck of the Mentor by Eric Jay Dolin

The true story of the 1822 wreck of the British merchant ship Mentor on the coast of what is now Libya, and the crew’s eighteen-month captivity in the Saharan interior, told by one of America’s finest maritime historians.

I love ship and shipwreck non-fiction, so this was a no-brainer.

Quick teaser: I’ll be doing a roundup of my favorite ship and shipwreck-themed books later this year, so keep an eye out!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Decoding the Devil by Sarah Valentine

The untold story of the segregated unit of Black women cryptologists who broke Soviet codes in the early Cold War, working in degrading conditions for a country still denying them civil rights at home.

I also love books about codes and code-breaking, especially when it involves a group of women whose story was previously untold!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

A Resistance History of the United States By Tad Stoermer

A reframing of American history through the lens of resistance, from Bacon’s Rebellion and the Salem Witch Trials through the Underground Railroad and beyond, arguing that resistance has shaped this country more than its founding documents.

I really enjoy history, especially when explored through new lenses. The range covered in this book made it instantly appealing.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Secret History of the Universe by Mark Booth

A sweeping, character-driven history of mysticism’s influence on modern science, tracing how figures from Marie Curie to Alan Turing walked the line between rigor and the metaphysical.

The exploration between science and magic is an ever-evolving topic, and I’m here for it. Magic today. Science tomorrow.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Honorable Mentions: There are so many fantastic nonfiction books coming out, and I didn’t cover any nonfiction in my roundup last month! Here are a few that I recommend but that didn’t quite make the list above:

• Centennial by Fergus M. Bordewich / June 2

• Lightning Beneath the Sea by James M. Tabor / June 9

• The Yahoo Boys by Carlos Barragán / June 9

• By the River’s Edge by Gregg Olsen / June 23

Share

Horror

Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller

In 1987, sixteen-year-old Ursula falls in with a group of squatters at a sinister house called the Underwood and carries out a dare that will haunt her for decades.

I’m a big fan of the slow-creeping kind of horror, rather than the jump-scare kind. I like to read horror year-round to mix things up!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Obstetrix by Naomi Kritzer

After her acquittal for performing the last legal abortion in North Dakota, Doctor Liz is kidnapped by a fundamentalist cult that desperately needs an OB-GYN, and the longer she’s held at the compound, the more she begins to understand just how terrifying the place really is.

Pitched as Gilead meets Waco. I’m a big fan of books related to cults, and of speculative fiction, so I’ve already got this one on hold.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

The Sixth Nik by Daniel Kraus

Aboard a living spaceship woven from biomatter, a brain-modified nine-year-old cultist named Sisilla has been sent to investigate a plague-riddled planet that has gone rogue, with a crew that includes a faceless assassin, a peyote-addicted medic, and a non-modded captain who wants her dead.

This is one of the weirdest book descriptions I’ve seen in a while. Color me intrigued.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay

A semi-professional gamer is hired by her estranged tech-CFO mother to remote-control a man in a vegetative state (with proprietary AI implanted in his head) across the country, while inside his mind, he wakes into a shifting nightmare with no memory of who he is.

Another book I think we’re going to see everywhere this summer. AI/Tech horror is here to stay, and I’m here for it.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 30

Romance

They All Fall in Love at the End by Haili Blassingame

It’s the fall of 2024, and a twenty-four-year-old MFA student in an open relationship with her college boyfriend finds herself drawn to his best friend and then to his best friend’s girlfriend, all while she tries to write her way to a happy ending.

We haven’t really had a truly standout polyamorous romance novel hit the scene. Will this be the one? The title is also very, very clever.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2, 2026

The Missed Connection by Tia Williams

After a sparks-flying flight to Paris with a stranger ends without contact information exchanged, a casting agent accidentally emails the entire global staff of her company asking for help finding him, and ends up hiring a smolderingly familiar detective to track him down.

I keep seeing this one everywhere. It sounds cute and like a great armchair travel read, since I’m not jetting off anywhere anytime soon.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

Leave and Come Back by Lavanya Lakshmi

After avoiding her family for seven years, a young Tamil woman returns home for her cousin’s two-week wedding extravaganza with her new white boyfriend in tow, and they hatch an elaborate scheme to win over her judgmental aunt.

A Bollywood-inflected debut rom-com with a big-fat-wedding setup!

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 16

When You Loved Me by Beatriz Williams

A young widow returns to her late father’s debt-ridden New England estate to grieve, only to be drawn into his obsession with a legendary pirate’s buried treasure and back into the orbit of the football star who broke her heart thirteen summers ago.

Williams weaves 1717 and the present together with treasure, second chances, and Winthrop Island atmosphere. Exactly the kind of dual-timeline I love sinking into.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 23

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden

The young Duchess Anne of Brittany, facing forced marriage to the King of France, stages a unicorn hunt in the enchanted forest of Brocéliande as cover for a secret betrothal, only to find that the magic she meant to use as theater is very real.

The medieval period is my favorite to read about. Mixing history and fantasy in this way sounds divine. The library wait for this one is going to be excruciating.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim

In a world where immigrating across a border literally splits you into two instances of yourself, a Korean American woman who has not spoken to her left-behind self since she was ten is forced to reckon with the other life she might have lived.

I loved Severance, and this is giving off the same vibe.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 2

The Zen Time Traveler by Stephen Billias

A modern-day Massachusetts Zen student finds his consciousness flung into the body of a thirteenth-century Japanese monk traveling through Song Dynasty China, where the koans he has been studying become matters of life and death.

An unexpected blend of mindfulness, Song Dynasty China, and time travel from an author who is also a longtime Zen practitioner. Sometimes the wildest premises produce the most interesting books.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 21

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher

Briar Jones spent their entire childhood dreaming of admission to the elite Temple School of Thaumaturgy, and seven years after they were rejected and their best friend Seb was accepted, Briar finally arrives at Temple as a summer temp sorting through the attics, only to discover that Seb has become the school’s most feared villain and that Temple’s secrets reach far beyond its gilded walls.

Pitched as Casey McQuiston meets The Secret History. I love a dark academia premise where the magic is the least sinister thing happening.

(Get it on Bookshop)

Release date: June 9

What I’m Reaching For First

JUNE HAS SO MANY GOOD NEW RELEASES!

The book I want most this month is Maggie O’Farrell’s Land. After Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait, there is no question, no debate, no hesitation. I placed a hold the minute it became available.

On the fantasy side, I’m reaching for The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden. It’s been a while since I read a good book set in the medieval period, and I’ve been longing for one.

And my wildcard pick is Isabel J. Kim’s Sublimation. A world where immigrating across a border literally splits you into two versions of yourself, one of whom you may never see again. As an immigrant myself, I’m curious to see how Kim explores this.

Did any of these books stand out to you? Share in the comments what you’re most excited to read this month.

Leave a comment

That’s because a few things shifted this month.

The first is that I got approved to start reading ARCs, which is a thrill. I’m only planning to take on two or three a month, because I want this Substack to continue being a tool for helping you decide what to put on hold, not a treadmill of reviews on books you can’t actually check out. My hope is that, by bringing you a few previews per month, you can keep an eye out for books you’re excited about and snap them up before the holds line gets depressingly long.

The second is that I am working on an article about housewife and tradwife literature, which means that May and June picks have been shaped by research for that article.

The third is that I am, by nature, a reading goldfish. I make plans. Then a shiny new release floats by, or three Substackers I trust all rave about the same book in the same week, and suddenly my plan is unrecognizable. June is no exception.

So, without further ado, here are the books I’m *planning* to read this month.

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

The Tradwife Research Pile

Reading Yesteryear in May sparked a plan to write a more comprehensive article about what’s going on with the “tradwife lit” trend right now. I read several of these types of books in May, and the trend continues in June. These two books constitute my next round of research.

Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza is a tradwife murder mystery. A wildly popular momfluencer’s picture-perfect online life is hiding very dark secrets. When tragedy hits her seemingly idyllic family, a journalist with a dying career is assigned to figure out what’s actually going on. Piazza has been reporting on influencer culture for years on her podcast Under the Influence, so this is a writer who has done the homework.

Subscribe now

The Mad Wife by Meagan Church is not exactly tradwife, but it serves as a historical counterpart. A 1950s housewife named Lulu has spent five years molding herself into the perfect midcentury wife, gelatin salads and all, until her second baby arrives and the whole carefully crafted life starts to crack. The 1950s and the 2020s are running a similar playbook on women, so reading them side by side feels essential.

The Literary Heavyweights

I am once again returning to my 2026 promise of reading more classics, and this month I’m pairing this goal with a buzzy new book that feels like it belongs in their company.

Lázár by Nelio Biedermann is the one everyone is calling the literary event of the year. A multigenerational Hungarian family saga that opens at the turn of the 20th century with a baby born to a noble family on a rural estate at the edge of a sinister forest, and follows the Lázárs through two world wars, revolutions, and the slow collapse of an aristocratic world.

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald has been sitting on my classics shelf for years. Wealthy expat Americans on the French Riviera in the 1920s and the slow corrosion underneath all of it. People who rave about this book love it more than Gatsby, which is the kind of literary claim I’ve always wanted to investigate myself.

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector is the one I should have read by now, given its prominence in the Brazilian canon. A slim, devastating final novel about a poor northeastern girl named Macabéa who arrives in Rio with almost nothing, narrated by a man who is openly inventing her as he goes.

Share

Women, Across Time

These three books all do the same trick: a present-day woman investigating, remembering, or being haunted by another woman whose story she has to piece together.

Lucky by Jane Smiley follows a folk singer named Jodie Rattler from her 1955 St. Louis girlhood through the rise of the Joans and Janises and Judys. The reviews promise something quieter and trickier than a standard rock ‘n’ roll novel: a woman allowed to live entirely on her own terms, no man required. I’m in.

Bog Queen by Anna North has one of the best premises I’ve read all year. A perfectly preserved body turns up in an English peat bog. The American forensic anthropologist called in to identify her realizes the woman is over 2,000 years old, a Celtic druid from the dawn of Roman occupation. North alternates between the two women’s lives, with chapters narrated by the bog itself.

Artifacts by Natalie Lemle is for everyone who loves The Cloisters. A trusts and estates lawyer is pulled into a repatriation case involving a rare piece of art, which forces her to revisit the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps. Stolen antiquities, organized crime, and an Italian first love. If you’ve been reading along for a while, you know how much I love a good art book.

Scandal, Office Dread, and Other Modern Diseases

Both of these picks live in the same emotional neighborhood: women whose public lives are immaculately stage-managed while something much messier seethes underneath.

The Lowe Job by Grace Alexander is a debut novel about a young woman caught having an affair with her married politician boss. She turns to her mother for help, only for her mother to weaponize the scandal instead of containing it. Vanity Fair meets the Kardashians is the official pitch.

Discontent by Beatriz Serrano is a translated Spanish debut about a Madrid advertising executive whose carefully curated office persona is barely holding together while she self-medicates to get through the day. As a corporate dropout, this is right up my alley.

Don’t want to wait for the recap? Let’s be friends on Storygraph or Goodreads, where I post longer reviews for each book I finish.

The Pre-Adaptation Read

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller is set nine years after a flu pandemic wiped out almost everyone. The story follows a grieving pilot who lives in an abandoned Colorado airfield with his dog and a gun-toting survivalist roommate. Quiet, lyrical, post-apocalyptic. Ridley Scott’s adaptation comes out in August, so I have a hard deadline. The book is almost always better than the adaptation, so I want to read before I hit the theater.

The Nonfiction Pair

Saving Five by Amanda Nguyen is a memoir I have been meaning to read since it came out. Nguyen was assaulted at Harvard in 2013 and refused to let it derail her dream of going to NASA. The book braids her activism with imagined conversations with her younger selves.

How to Be a Renaissance Woman by Jill Burke is the one I’m sneaking in for myself. An Edinburgh professor’s cultural history of Renaissance beauty culture, from market-square cosmetics to court intrigue, with actual 16th-century beauty recipes at the end of the book. Maggie O’Farrell blurbed it.

Substack Made Me Do It

The Compound by Aisling Rawle has been showing up everywhere on my Substack feed, and it looks so good. A reality TV dating-show-meets-survival-game set in a luxe desert compound while the world quietly falls apart outside the camera frame. Reality TV is having a literary moment, which is probably a future post :)

Subscribe now

Still Serving Time on my Kindle

A few books from May’s TBR didn’t get finished in time and are coming with me into June:

• The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva

• My Friends by Fredrik Backman

• Permanence

• Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

• So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

Books I Reshelved

I’m not above getting really excited about a book, checking it out, and then changing my mind. These are the books I checked out in May but shelved for the moment.

• Love by the Book by Jessica George (I know, I know. It looks really good, and I will get back to it.)

• Westward Women by Alice Martin (I love speculative fiction/dystopian lit, but this just didn’t stand out once I got back around to it. Not sure if I’ll pick this one up again.)

What I’m Reaching For First

If I get through even half of this list, I’ll consider it a win.

The ones I’m reaching for first are Everyone Is Lying to You and The Mad Wife, because the tradwife article isn’t going to write itself, and I genuinely cannot wait to read these two back to back. Bog Queen is the one I’m most excited about on pure premise alone. A body in a bog, chapters narrated by moss, a Celtic druid timeline. I have been thinking about it since I requested the hold.

Lázár is the wild card. It could be the literary event of the year, or it could be 400 pages of unearned hype, and I genuinely don’t know which. It’s got everything to be one of my favorite books of the year, though!

Then there’s The Dog Stars, which I have to finish before August or I will absolutely cave and see the movie first.

I’ll also fit in a few ARCs, but since I can’t predict what they’ll actually approve me for, I’m not including them on the list. Make sure you check out my June recap later next month to see what made the cut!

In the meantime, tell me in the comments: what are you reading in June?

Leave a comment

So when I found out that my favorite library, the legendary New Orleans Public Library, is no longer allowing for online card renewals, I panicked. They have a top-tier catalogue and criminally small wait lines for books.

Since my current library made a change and now only allows for 5 holds at a time (cue the revolution…), there was only one solution: take out as many books as possible and put my Kindle in airplane-mode “jail” until I’d read them all.

So read on for a list of the prisoners I’m holding captive in my Kindle this month, and the audiobooks I can’t wait to start.

The Buzzy New Releases

April was an incredible month for new releases, which completely changed the TBR list I thought I’d have this month. Here are the books I’m reaching for first; the ones I’d sneak into a beach tennis tournament if I thought I could read between sets. If I only get through four books this month, it’ll be these.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke has been everywhere, and I refuse to be the last person on Substack who hasn’t read it. The premise is camp perfection: tradwife influencer wakes up in 1855. I’m a sucker for a time travel book, and I want to know if the hype holds.

Darkening Song by Delphine Seddon is a teen pop star from Manchester and her ambitious young manager ride a viral hit straight into the meat grinder of the music industry. The vibes read like S1/S2 Euphoria, and the current dumpster fire that is S3 has me feeling nostalgic for when that show was good.

The Lost Book of Elizabeth Barton by Jennifer N. Brown is one where I don’t need anyone else’s buzz because I’ve been a Tudor nerd for 20+ years. A medievalist unearths the long-lost prophecies of a real Tudor nun who got herself executed for shading Henry VIII, then ends up at a creepy English country manor where her academic dream retreat turns into an actual murder mystery. I took out the audiobook within thirty seconds.

Love by the Book by Jessica George is a rom-com about platonic love, which is a premise I have genuinely never seen before. A blocked novelist whose tight friend group is fracturing collides (literally, in a bookstore) with a guarded kindergarten teacher whose family just disowned her over her secret side hustle. Substackers I trust have loved it.

Share

The Art Heist Double Feature

My favorite movie of all time is The Thomas Crown Affair, so any book that centers around art or art heists is pretty much an instant yes from me. This month, there are two that really stood out!

Go Gentle by Maria Semple is a new release about a divorced stoic philosopher whose tidy Manhattan life gets blown up by flirtation, an art heist, and the desire she swore off. Semple writing a midlife unraveling sounds like exactly my kind of mess.

Woman on Fire by Lisa Barr is the bigger, splashier sibling: a scrappy young Chicago journalist races a ruthless gallerist across Europe to recover an Expressionist masterpiece the Nazis stole. WWII art recovery is a whole subgenre, and I am here for every page of it.

The Backman Experiment

Confession: I DNF’d A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman a few years ago and felt vaguely guilty about it ever since, because it’s one of my closest friend’s all-time favorite books. Now My Friends is out, and everyone’s talking about what an amazing book it is. So it’s time to give Backman a second chance. Either I’m going to discover I was wrong, or I’m going to confirm that he’s just not for me and finally let myself off the hook.

My Friends: a grieving foster kid inherits a world-famous painting and goes on a road trip to unravel the four scrappy teens who inspired it twenty-five years earlier. Art stories plus promised tears. If any Backman is going to win me over, it’s probably this one.

A Man Called Ove: grumpy Swedish widower who just wants to die in peace keeps getting interrupted by his wildly inconvenient neighbors. I know how this is supposed to land. Whether it lands on me after a few years away is the experiment.

Classics I Keep Meaning to Read

One of my goals for 2026 is to read more classics, which mostly means finally picking up the books I’ve been quietly ignoring on my TBR for years. Both of these are sad in the quiet midcentury way, and both have strong reputations that definitely precede them.

Stoner by John Williams is a book everyone tells me will wreck me. A quiet Missouri farm boy becomes an English professor and lives a small, mostly disappointing life. People keep saying it’s one of the most devastating novels they’ve ever read. I’m suspicious and intrigued in equal measure.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell is a quick read at 135 pages: an old man circles back to a 1920s Illinois murder that touched his childhood, trying to make sense of a friendship he abandoned. I love slow, sad books that let you inhabit another person’s inner world for a few hours. This sounds like exactly that.

Dystopian Fever Dreams

I love dystopian fiction in all of its many iterations. This month, there are quite a few spanning across various genres and themes, ranging from new releases to literary giants.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh is a medieval grotesquerie pick. A peasant village ruled by a vain little lord descends into famine and violence. I added it to my Met Gala reading guide and immediately put it on hold for myself.

Westward Women by Alice Martin is the Atwood-coded fever dream. 1970s America, but a mysterious illness is hitting only women: itch, then memory loss, then an unstoppable pull toward the Pacific. Three women get tangled up with the man driving the infected west.

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is another second chance. I have never read an Ishiguro I liked. The film adaptation is coming this year, so I’m giving him one final shot. In this one, a solar-powered AI companion robot watches from a store window until a sickly girl picks her. If this one doesn’t work, I’m officially closing the file on Ishiguro.

The Radiant Dark by Alexandra Oliva was another standout on April’s new release list. An Adirondacks family in 1980 has just had their first kid when humanity discovers we’re not alone. The next fifty years follow how that quiet bombshell warps a mother, son, and daughter across generations. Generational sci-fi, when it’s done well, is one of my favorite things in the world.

Wildcards

I picked up two books a bit randomly. One, because it’s all over social media (and is receiving incredibly polarized reviews), and the other because it randomly showed up on the same list as another book I was checking out and caught my attention.

On the Calculation of Volume (Vol. 1) by Solvej Balle: a woman gets stuck living the same November 18th over and over. The internet made me do it.

Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico is one of the lowest-stakes picks on the list at 137 pages. Two millennial digital nomads build the Instagram-perfect Berlin life: monstera, Danish furniture, and freelance creative work. They then slowly suffocate inside it as the years and the oat-milk lattes pile up. As a millennial fascinated by how my generation talks about itself, I want to see what he does with it.

The parole board convenes on June 1

That’s 16 books and 1 Kindle that doesn’t get released before I finish them all. I’ll tell you in the May recap which ones were winners and which ones were literary crimes.

Don’t want to wait for the recap? Let’s be friends on Storygraph or Goodreads, where I post longer reviews for each book I finish.

Subscribe now

In the meantime, what’s on your May TBR? If you’re a fan of Backman, please tell me in the comments that he deserves a second chance!!

Leave a comment

Being able to read without a timer for the first time since Summer 2007 healed my inner child. I had the chance to read through a lot of fiction and non-fiction, and had quite a mixed month. I also launched this very Substack, which was a huge accomplishment for me.

So without further preamble, here’s the wrap-up of everything I read in April!

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, contemporary, romance

I loved Great Big Beautiful Life. I did not love this one. It just felt hollow? Entertaining but there’s better romance out there.

Star Rating: ★★★

Share Elle Reads Library Books

Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, literary, romance

File under books that leave you with a wild sense of longing and make you think about the life that could have been. It reminded me of a modern, British take on Bridges of Madison County, which is one of my all-time favorites.

Star Rating: ★★★★

Adult Braces by Lindy West

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, memoir

Millennial cringe in book form. This was also marketed as being about polyamory, so I was expecting something like More. Polyamory felt almost like an afterthought, though.

Star Rating: ★★★

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, romance

A stack of tired tropes, a completely unrealistic premise, and mediocre execution. Had me asking, “Is romance actually not for me?”

Star Rating: ★★½

One Beautiful Year of Normal by Sandra K. Griffith

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, mystery, thriller

Plot hole in book format. There are better thrillers out there.

Star Rating: ★★

Burn Book by Kara Swisher

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, memoir, business

Kara is such a pick-me girl who wishes she were one of the Silicon Valley weirdos she writes about. Skiiiiip.

Star Rating: ★★½

In Time With You by Kristin Dwyer

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, romance, YA

I didn’t realize this was YA (oops). It’s a cute little book snack between heavier reads and is perfect for a day at the beach or by the pool.

Star Rating: ★★★

The Day the World Stops Shopping by J.B. MacKinnon

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, sociology

Several passages turned into journaling prompts. Makes you think about how and why you consume the way you do.

Star Rating: ★★★★

The Housemaid by Freida McFadden

Format: audiobook | Shelf: fiction, contemporary, thriller

Why is this book so famous? I’m sorry, BookTok, but I don’t get it. It’s perfectly mediocre. Maybe my cult-obsessed soul just needs something darker.

Star Rating: ★★★½

The Science of Serial Killers by Kelly Florence & Meg Hafdahl

Format: paperback | Shelf: non-fiction, science, true crime

Speaking of darker, this did NOT do the trick. I read a lot about serial killers (passion project?), and this felt like AI slop. Worst book I’ve read in a long time.

Star Rating: ★

No One Would Listen by Harry Markopolos

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, business, economics

Picked up as part of my Corporate Gossip book club. Fascinating yet technical read about Bernie Madoff and history’s largest Ponzi scheme.

Star Rating: ★★★★

Proto by Laura Spinney

Format: ebook | Shelf: non-fiction, history

Friend recommend! Quite technical, but if you like genetics, linguistics, or anthropology, this is a delicious non-fiction read. It feels like going back to school in the best possible way.

Star Rating: ★★★★

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, business, economics

This started out as a viral essay and probably should have stayed that way. If you feel like you have a bullshit job, the full book might be for you.

Star Rating: ★★★

The Month in Review

If you’ve read to the end, thank you! This was a bit of a rough month. I read 13 books and would only recommend 2 of them. Both are non-fiction, though, so I’d only recommend them to you if you have these interests :)

Fortunately, I’ve got some amazing new releases on my list for May 2026.

Subscribe now

The best book I read was Broken Country, and the worst was The Science of Serial Killers.

What were the best and worst books you read in April? Let me know if you were as disappointed by some of these “hits” as I was, or if I’m totally wrong!

Leave a comment

I love to read. It’s the true joy of my life and, honestly, is the thing that’s kept me going throughout the hardest seasons. I’ve shared my favorite picks and scathing critiques with a few friends and family members over the years, but I never had the guts to share my passion for books with people like you.

After recently quitting my job, I decided to go for it, and here we are. Am I starting off a bit easy with a very, very late post about what I read in March? Yes. This feels like a terrible way to start a Substack, but I decided that waiting for the perfect moment would mean waiting forever.

So: March. 6 books (quitting my job took up a lot of time and energy - most months will have more), and overall a bit of a disappointing month. But let’s get into it!

A note on links: I’m an advocate for library books, but I also love a good hardcover. If you want to support indie bookstores and my work, consider using the affiliate links in this post. Thank you!

Subscribe now

The Once and Future Queen by Paula Lafferty

Format: ebook | Shelf: fiction, fantasy, romance

Only my second five-star fiction read this year out of forty books. What. A. Find. An Arthurian retelling where modern-day Vera gets pulled back to seventh-century Camelot and told she’s the long-lost Queen Guinevere, married to a legendary king she doesn’t remember. The romance is genuinely swoony, I cried more than once, and I’ll be recommending this all over the place.

Star Rating: ★★★★★ / Get it on Bookshop

Poland by James A. Michener

Format: Paperback | Shelf: Fiction, Historical

Most books take me a few days. Poland took me over a year, and I only finished because I’d bought the paper copy and felt guilty. Michener’s characters feel less like people and more like delivery vehicles for history, walking you through centuries of Polish upheaval without ever letting you sink into their interior lives. I now have a shelf of other Micheners I’m quietly plotting to donate.

Star Rating: ★★½ / Get it on Bookshop

The Idaho Four by Vicky Ward & James Patterson

Format: ebook | Shelf: non-fiction, true crime

The incel angle is compelling and timely, and the authors do a decent job with what was known at the time of writing. My issue is structural: the book went to print before the main suspect’s case was resolved, which I personally can’t stand in true crime. Worth reading if you’re following the case, otherwise wait for the better book that’s almost certainly coming.

Star Rating: ★★★ / Get it on Bookshop

They Poisoned the World by Mariah Blake

Format: audiobook | Shelf: non-fiction, business, crime, health

This is a book that everyone should read, and no one will want to. It’s depressing how much chemical giants knew and buried while poisoning us all with PFAS for decades. The closest thing to hope it offers is that citizen activism has moved the needle before, and might again.

Star Rating: ★★★★★ / Get it on Bookshop

The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton

Format: audiobook | Shelf: fiction, historical, literary

The feminist in me wants to support this. The reader in me likes the darker, weirder, more salacious version of this story that this book deliberately chose not to be. It’s worth reading if the reframing-a-maligned-woman premise appeals more than the horror.

Star Rating: ★★★ / Get it on Bookshop

Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling

Format: audiobook | Shelf: fiction, dystopian, sci-fi

A weird little book, and I mean that as a compliment. This one will sit in your head longer than you expect, especially the next time an algorithm recommends you something suspiciously perfect. My only real complaint is that the satire is too on-the-nose to tip into the unsettling register the best dystopias live in. Qualityland is always winking at you.

Star Rating: ★★★★ / Get it on Bookshop

The Month in Review

A bit of a meh month, honestly. There were a few real standouts, but too many books left me feeling neutral. One left me furious on behalf of everyone drinking tap water.

On the bright side, I’ve not got a LOT more free time, which means a lot more time to read in April :)

Subscribe now

The best book I read was The Once and Future Queen, and the worst was Poland, though that’s not really fair to James Michener because it’s really a reflection of me vs my guilt about a book I should have DNF’d a year ago.

What were the best and worst books you read in March? Have you read any of these?

Leave a comment