I’ve really liked the last six books I’ve read and I think you will, too.
Here are your options…
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong — A part-memoir part-cultural criticsm on Asian American identity. Cathy is a poet writing in prose, one of my favorite genre-twists.
Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge — Libertie is a Black teenager living in Brooklyn after the civil war; her mom wants Libertie join her as a doctor but Libertie dreams of music and poetry. She ultimately runs off to Haiti to marry a man who promises her equality and freedom and instead finds herself just as trapped as she was in New York. This is not historical fiction but it is based on historical people, which took me a while to realize. Once I got over that, I loved it. (Especially the back third.)
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton — I LOVED this book. It’s an oral history of Opal, a fictional afropunk musician and her collaborator, Nev, narrated by Opal’s dead married lover’s daughter. (Roll with it.) If you liked Daisy Jones & the Six, you’ll love this even more. It’s so thoughtful about race and music and celebrity and all the ways Black women get torn down; I started reading it at 9am on a Saturday and basically cancelled the rest of my to-do list until I finished it.
Too Good to Be True by Carola Lovering — A psychological thriller with three initial points of view: Skye, a 20-something trustfund kid with severe OCD; Burke, the man she meets and falls in love with, as told through letters to his couples therapist he saw with his wife; and aforementioned wife Heather, as told in flashbacks to her teenage years. It takes a few twists and I did not see where it was going.
The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan — Hot hot hot romance novel about Naomi, a sex worker turned entrepreneur, who falls in love with Ethan, a very hot LA rabbi who brings Naomi in to teach a class on modern intimacy in order to bring energy to his struggling congregation membership. I cannot emphasize enough how Jewish this book is, and how it’ll make you want to either convert or start going to temple more. (This is the sequel to The Roommate, which is also a must-read.)
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano by Donna Freitas — Rose and her husband, Luke, have a fight about taking prenatal vitamins — Rose has never wanted kids and still doesn’t; Luke felt the same way at first but has changed his mind. From there, nine alternate timelines spin out on Rose’s life. This isn’t groundhog day style, in which she remembers them or there’s any science fiction; more it’s a rumination on what motherhood does to women, marriage, and the choices we make that can change the course of our lives versus the things that are immutable to who we are and are maybe even inevitable.
For the full reading list, check the spreadsheet! If this was forwarded to you, please subscribe.