All in Fiction
Thanks to non-stop social media recommendations and the book’s silly cover design, I didn’t expect The Wedding People to have so much emotional depth or narrative finesse. However, it ended up being my favorite read over the winter holidays. So if you’re like me and get skeptical when a book is ‘too’ popular, don’t let that stop you from reading Alison Espach’s delightful novel.
When a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright publishes her first novel, and that novel is recommended by Lin Manuel Miranda, it doesn’t take long for me to request it from my local library and devour it as soon as it arrives. This slim and poetic debut is heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measure, and certainly not to be missed.
Two friends recommended The Correspondent to me and it was one of my favorite books of 2025. I’ve since learned that its journey to becoming a bestseller mirrored the experience I had. The book wasn’t picked for any celebrity bookclubs or placed on anyone’s most-anticipated books list. Maybe because the novel consists entirely of letters and emails, some readers were scared away. But, wow, for those of us who took the plunge, what an incredible book!
For those of you who read and loved Remarkably Bright Creatures and can’t believe there is another new novel about octopi, you can rest easy because in The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus, the octopus is a metaphor, not a character. Emma Knight’s The Life Cycle is a brilliant coming-of-age novel about a young Canadian woman who sets off for the University of Edinburgh to complete her undergraduate study.
In this beautiful, pastoral novel, the main character Bo lives on his own in the small house he was born in, with only his dog Sixten and his caregivers for companions. Bo is in the late stages of his life and just barely managing to live independently.
With our matching names and home states, I have always supported Lily King’s books, and a little clue in the dedication makes me think we also both have a daughter named Eloise! King reliably balances an inventive and surprising plot with a romantic view of her protagonists and an insightful perspective on human nature. Heart the Lover is the latest in her wonderful collection.
I love books with intelligent female protagonists whose adventures are compelling and whose emotional development feels real. And when the story is also historical fiction and I can learn something new, I can’t buy these books fast enough. Austen at Sea checks all these boxes and is so much more. It is entertaining and smart, while also telling a breathlessly suspenseful story.
I had never heard of How to Read a Book or its author, Monica Wood when my friend Pam recommended that I read it. I am so glad that she did. Wood has a great premise for her novel and she develops her characters beautifully. But it is her clear, straightforward writing style that really stands out.
You all know from our many reviews of the Hogarth series and others (read reviews here) how much we love a Shakespeare adaptation. So when I saw Lady Macbeth at the checkout of a bookstore in Stratford, Ontario, it wasn’t just the hot pink-edged pages that caught my eye.
Continuing with my all-Irish-author reviews this month, I want to praise Tana French’s The Hunter, which is absolutely riveting. French’s genre is entirely different from Williams’: The Hunter is a mystery that may or may not involve a murder. Where she and Williams are alike is in setting their books in small Irish towns and creating memorable characters who are so authentic and believable that they add to the sense of place the authors so expertly develop.
My husband Rufus and I just took an amazing trip to Ireland—a place I have wanted to visit my entire life. Given how I fell in love with the country and my current fascination with Irish authors, it makes sense that I keep reading Irish books. Niall Williams’ This Is Happiness (read review here) and The Time of the Child are two of the best books I’ve read in the past few years. So, I decided to dip into some of his earlier books. History of the Rain (2014) is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read.
Let me start by saying this was definitely not the right book to read a week after I signed up my daughter for her first-ever sleepaway camp. Yet despite the circumstances, I couldn’t put it down.
The much anticipated sequel to Fortune’s breakout hit Every Summer After (read review here), One Golden Summer is the sentimental, sexy summer read we all needed this year. And rather than just extending the story of her first protagonists, she introduces Alice, a lonely photographer taking care of her grandmother for the summer in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. (Lily)
Perhaps not a completely typical beach read due to its darker subject matter, I nevertheless found myself unable to put The Pilot’s Wife down for the three days it took me to binge read it. The story begins with a knock at the door in the middle of the night, which is never good news for anyone, but especially not for the wife of an airline pilot.
I borrowed Sea Wife from my mom the minute she finished reading it because she strongly endorsed Gaige as a writer (read review of Heartwood here) and particularly this book. Gaige drew me in immediately with her premise of a family of four leaving their lives behind to sail around the Caribbean for a year.
I loved Charlotte McConaghy’s Migrations which was published in 2020. So, when my friend Jane told me I would love her latest book, Wild Dark Shore, I got right on it. And, although quite different than her first book, Wild Dark Shore is a must-read. The novel is set on a very remote island close to Antarctica with nothing else around it for thousands of miles.
The most astonishing feature of The Names isn’t Knapp’s beautifully written story of one woman’s decision about what to name her son and how that decision affects the rest of his life and the lives of the other members of his family. What is truly remarkable is that Knapp has written three different captivating stories about the same family, each one different from the others because the name she chooses for her son is different.
Heartwood gripped me from its first page and I was spellbound until the end. I didn’t want to stop reading even to sleep at night. I’ve been recommending it to everyone and now recommend it to you our L&L readers!
Eddie Winston is 90 years old and volunteers at a second-hand store, sorting through donations, assigning prices and occasionally pilfering items for himself that he finds particularly touching or tender. One day, he accepts a donation from Bella, a 20-something woman, who has suffered the loss of her boyfriend.
Although my daughter Charlotte has become a voracious reader in her own right, I am holding on tight to our read-aloud bedtime routine that we established when she was a baby. Our book choices vary widely from classics like Mr. Popper’s Penguins and The Little Princess to newer books that we get to experience for the first time together. Polly Horvath’s Library Girl jumped off the shelf at our local bookstore, and Charlotte and I agree that it is one of our favorite stories we’ve ever read together.
