I was skeptical about spending more time in Emily St. John Mandel's early noir period, but from the opening pages it's clear you're reading the same writer who would eventually produce "Station Eleven" and "The Glass Hotel."
The Lola Quartet – Emily St. John Mandel
This is early work, and it shows. The fluid dialogue, character interiority and structural confidence that made her later novels excellent is absent here. What you get instead is a choppy, noir-inflected mystery that is competently assembled, occasionally interesting and populated almost entirely by characters who are, without exception, kind of dumb.
In the Shadow of the Fallen Towers: The Seconds, Minutes, Hours, Days, Weeks, Months, and Years after the 9/11 Attacks – Don Brown
This is not a book for people who lived through it, at least not primarily. It's better understood as a primer for the generation that didn't — young readers who know 9/11 as a historical event rather than a lived experience, and who may not fully grasp the scale of what followed.
Voyagers – Meg Charlton
For a debut, "Voyagers" is impressive. Charlton has a real knack for character development, dialogue and world-building. I came expecting more science fiction and instead got a thoughtful, funny and occasionally unwieldy story that had shades of "Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,” which is high praise.
Stuck Rubber Baby – Howard Cruse
Howard Cruse's 1995 graphic novel is probably the best-drawn I've ever read — and the most demanding. Set in 1960s Alabama, it traces a young gay man's parallel awakenings around racism and his own sexuality, rooted in Cruse's real life. The artwork earns five stars, but the storytelling is closer to three.
A Year of Marvelous Ways – Sarah Winman
Before "Still Life," there was "A Year of Marvelous Ways" — Sarah Winman's 2015 novel about a 90-year-old Cornish mystic waiting for something she can't name, and the traumatized soldier who washes ashore to give her a witness. Gorgeous prose and an unforgettable protagonist, but also a structure that doesn't quite hold together.
Brawler – Lauren Groff
Lauren Groff's nine-story collection reads like a series of abandoned novels — and that's a compliment. The longer stories, particularly the near-novella "What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?", are genuinely captivating. The shorter ones are uneven, and Groff's own narration is flat.
Fruit Fly – Josh Silver
There is so much going on in "Fruit Fly," a novel that starts as a publishing satire, morphs into a character study about addiction and exploitation, takes a hard turn into a domestic thriller and somehow finds its way back around to where it started.
The Bright Years – Sarah Damoff
Sarah Damoff's multigenerational family novel has a genuinely strong first half and a gift for turns of phrase — but peaks at 50% and never fully earns the devastation it's reaching for.
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Susanna Clarke's beloved, award-winning novel was lost on me. A beautifully written, exceptionally narrated slog that I regularly considered abandoning.
Cat Love – Tomás Q. Morín
"Cat Love" has genuinely interesting ideas about empathy and desensitization buried under so many digressions it never comes together. I still can't fully explain or understand half of what happened in this novel.
The Road to Tender Hearts – Annie Hartnett
A morbid road trip comedy with a death-predicting therapy cat, two traumatized kids and a lottery winner with three heart attacks trying to win back his high school sweetheart. For two-thirds of the novel, it's genuinely funny and surprisingly moving. Then it jumps the shark and doesn’t know when to stop.
Whistler – Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett's latest is less about plot than about how memory, grief and perspective shape the stories we tell ourselves. My husband was "bored, but interested." I was taking hit after hit of literary catnip. A warm, occasionally too-precious novel that reminds you ordinary lives are worthy of extraordinary attention.
American Han – Lisa Lee
Lisa Lee writes about the Korean immigrant experience with genuine precision — the model minority myth, mobility as poison, cultural inheritance — but the present-day narrative is relentlessly toxic and the single POV leaves little room for connection.
A Parade of Horribles – Matt Dinniman
Eight books in, "A Parade of Horribles" is the course correction "Dungeon Crawler Carl" needed after the bloat of book seven. Chapter 57 — Carl and Donut dueting to A-ha's "Take on Me" — is the most purely joyful sequence in the series.
This Inevitable Ruin – Matt Dinniman
Six books of buildup, and the Faction Wars arrive with a whimper. "This Inevitable Ruin" is overstuffed, repetitive and 300-pages too long — a GoT "Long Night" moment for the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The emotional beats that define the series are still here, just buried under dungeon mechanics and escalating conflict from gods.
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride – Matt Dinniman
Book six of “Dungeon Crawler Carl” doesn't match the highs of its immediate predecessor, but the emotional core — Carl's devastating backstory, character sacrifices and Donut's vulnerability — keeps the series humming. An off-kilter audiobook narration and a slow first third test patience, but the back half delivers.
The Butcher’s Masquerade – Matt Dinniman
Five books in, "The Butcher's Masquerade" is the entry that finally earns the series' promise. As a literary fiction reader who came in skeptical and stayed cautious through four uneven installments finally found the payoff — cohesive, thrilling, genuinely funny and more emotionally sophisticated than the ridiculousness would suggest.
Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It – Greg Marshall
Greg Marshall wasn't diagnosed with cerebral palsy until he was 30 — despite a lifetime of surgeries, a limp and parents who knew all along. "Leg" is funnier than it has any right to be given its raw material, occasionally recalling early Sedaris, and sneaks up on you with genuine emotional weight by the end.
A True History of the United States – Daniel A. Sjursen
A West Point history professor and combat veteran makes the case that indigenous dispossession, racialized slavery, hyper-capitalism and militarism built modern America — and that questioning our national mythology is the most American thing we can do. Dense, deliberately uncomfortable and relentlessly bleak.