• THE SWAN'S DAUGHTER by Roshani Chokshi. I’m sure I’m on record somewhere saying that I struggle with the tonality of current young adult works—to me, what sees traction in the market has a tendency to sound very preachy, as if a chronically online adult is trying to explain complex social concepts in explicit terms to teenagers who know nothing. I don’t remember this being the case when I was young—I always felt like the works I really loved were in conversation with me. They met me where I was. And this is similar to what I loved about THE SWAN’S DAUGHTER, which is charming and whimsical and bursting with creativity in a way that made me feel like the books of my youth made me feel. It made me think of ELLA ENCHANTED by Gail Carson Levine and WHICH WITCH? by Eva Ibbotson, and I truly can’t recommend it enough. I loved the way it spoke to me as an adult just as much as I would have loved it as a younger version of myself. 

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• PRAIRIE FIRES: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Frasier. This is a rich, fascinating chronicle of not just Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but the context of American westward expansion and the pioneer era, which is rife with human-caused climate events, economic disparity, and social unrest that’s largely missing from basic curriculum. It fascinatingly interrogates the narrative of American individualism against a backdrop of community-driven survival; it’s page-turning despite being quite dense, because it is telling the story of this country at the same time as a central figure in American nationalist mythology takes shape. Someone recently asked me what they should read for their book club if they wanted to challenge certain viewpoints without explicitly appearing to challenge them—this is that book. I imagine there’s much to discuss here in unpacking Wilder’s own contrarian views, and which aspects of her story are the result of strategized myth and which are fundamentally shaped by lived history. 

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• THE COMPOUND by Aisling Rawle. Another page-turner that gives the same hit of seductive voyeurism as your favorite reality show. Set in a dystopian world, the narrator is a young woman and one of twenty people competing in a reality show where each member is constantly surveilled and shaped by “tasks” that are reflective of heteronormative constraints. Tonally set by an epigraph from ANIMAL FARM, it’s fairly overtly allegorical for our very online, very capitalist-influenced times, and yet it never stops being riveting. It satisfied my desire for mess as much as it spoke to a range of very grounded human emotions. The main character is a masterpiece: a young woman who is so bad at math it’s legitimately central to the plot. 

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• THE ARCHIVE OF THE WORLD by Stacie Turner. If you’re familiar with my time in fandom, then of course you know and are already salivating for Colubrina’s debut novel. I’m here to tell you, without bias, that it will not disappoint. This is very much inspired by Stacie Turner’s experience caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s—the way it engages with memory and mourning a person who is still technically there reminded me a lot of OUR WIVES UNDER THE SEA by Julia Armfield—but it also has Turner’s wit, her lovely turns of phrase, her dynamic characters. It truly, truly moved me. Do not miss this when it comes out next year—it’s one of those books that contains secrets of the universe. Not really a straightforward romance, it does have thriller-esque qualities—THE CHILDREN by Melissa Albert is another appropriate comp. But it will never leave you once you’ve read it.