This is very long so not a ton of time for intro text! Some Lindy West stuff at the bottom for those who partake, and Summer House (Westmandoval? Amanda Goes West? Scamanda?) recap here (YouTube).
October
What a Time to be Alive, Jade Chang
A lofty novel about a woman who goes viral giving a funeral speech for her former crush and decides to scam her way into being a self-help influencer, this book tackles spirituality, scamming, grifting, and what it means to be a person. Ultimately, this is a book about honesty: being honest with what you want, not knowing how to get it, saying the hard things, and how to be a person— even a floundering, messy person in their thirties— in the world.
Chang writes messy characters beautifully, and touches on a Mother Wound (the MC’s mom disappeared and she was raised by a family friend) and the pain of becoming. This was big-hearted and radical in its portrayal of both devastation, grief, and the work of being an adult when you’re too fucked up to know how to start.
The Ten Year Affair, Erin Somer
One of my favorite books of 2025, and right up my alley. A prickly, quotidian marriage study that’s actually about ambition, seething, and success: would you rather be married to someone kind or someone impressive? Would you rather marry the charming guy or the nice guy? How far would you go for passion?
The standout characters are Cora’s mother and Jules, and the way she compares/contrasts herself against strong, strident women who look down on her— chef’s kiss. The marriage is the vehicle, this book is actually about making peace with the smallness of your life: will you be okay if this is all you’ve ever done?
Video review + Infidelity book recs.
Girl on Girl, Sophie Gilbert
Essential reading for millennials who need to understand how utterly we were inundated with horrific, violent, warping messaging about what it means to be a woman— this succinctly explains the mess we’re in now and makes you question how easily the progress of the 2010s was lost.
I saw Gilbert speak to Monica Lewinsky at The Atlantic Festival and was so shaken by her stark examination of misogyny’s effects on everything right now.
Video review (my mustache era omg).
The Catch, Yrsa Daley-Ward
Really enjoyed the first half of this magical realism journey into the psyches of two sisters. One sister lives hard and was a lot of fun, while the other is obsessed with healing and getting to the root of their joint trauma. I think the second half— where we get a little too caught up in the magical mystery part of it— will lose people who are interested in the more realistic parts.
The writing is absolutely gorgeous and it’s clear the author was a poet first. I liked a lot of this and recommend for people who love spec fic, magical realism, confusion, and really great writing about change, shifting, transforming, and gently making fun of wellness culture. Goes for a very big swing about mothering and becoming a mother that sort of divided the reception of this one.
The Macabre, Kosoko Jackson
This is being marketed as a horror but I think it’s right on the border of YA and Adult Urban Fantasy?
Immerses you right in a world of magic, monsters, traveling unethical organizations, a fabulous female villain, and a queer Black artist trying to make sense of his mother’s death.
Themes of grief, loss, and loneliness abound, and this is a book that attempts a lot— overlaying an entire magic system and lore alongside a cast of MCs AND a MacGuffin travelogue journey— but mostly sticks the landing. if you like fantasy, witches, dark stories of revenge and loss, budding queer relationships alongside a pretty cool magic system, this is for you.
The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo
Read this for a book club and randomly loved it? There is a bit of a bait and switch here— billed as Historical Fantasy with a tinge of Romance, but the historical details were excellently rendered. This is a book about a girl with secret magic who ends up competing for the favor of Spain’s King in a magical tournament. There is one part of the tournament that made me cry from laughing so hard, but this story of love, magic, betrayal, and the things we’re willing to give up for both love and honor moved me.
November
Who Knows You By Heart, CJ Farley
A dense thriller in the skin of a tech romance, this was a tougher read, but interesting. Jamaican American coder Octavia Crenshaw leaves her nonprofit job after an AI-related mishap, taking a high paying job at an audio tech giant that predictably ends up being evil. The book is written in a second-person POV, and the romance at its heart is contentious before becoming sweet (Octavia and her coworker Walcott bond over racism in tech before teaming up to take down the company.)
Roxane Gay gave this a good review, and I’d recommend this for people interested in exploring the connection between tech and ourselves, and a muscular exploration of racism and tech culture.
The Children, Melissa Albert
Dark, terrifying, haunting, creeping— this book about a woman contending with the legacy of her mother’s Art is a prickly look at authorship, consent, family, and trauma.
I famously hate Trauma Plots, but Albert does something fascinating here— by setting the story across two timelines and letting the pain unfurl slowly, we find ourselves in a similar position to the children in the books Guin’s mom, Edie writes— you embark on an adventure and find the darkness midway through. The pain of being ignored, the pain of having a cold, indifferent mother, the pain of raising yourself when your parents are obsessed with themselves, their art, their friends, anything but you— Guin wants us to believe her childhood was idyllic, and the deeper we get into the book, the more we flinch and squirm.
A *beautifully* written story of generational curses and pain that echoes across generations. I’m so excited for Albert to jump into adult fiction, and I’ll be checking out some of her YA stuff because her writing is absolutely insane. So talented, so good, so evocative. Stephen King just blurbed this one, and it’s going to be a huge book for 2026.
I was invited to read this early as part of William Morrow x Page Break’s reading retreat! Will likely discuss again as it releases in June and is genuinely That Good.
Lightbreakers, Aja Gabel
Loved. A speculative marriage in crisis story about a scientist and artist who can’t communicate, can’t connect, and can’t overcome the husband’s insurmountable grief.
I also loved all the depictions of artmaking, the process of painting, and descriptions of the Marfa landscape. The book delves into the science of it all, but behind that, this is a story of two people wondering if moving backwards is easier than moving forwards, and dealing with the consequences of choosing old lives over new ones. My favorite character is introduced 1/3rd of the way through, frozen and stoic, and her arc is just as good as those of the main couple.
Town and Country, Brian Schaefer
A quiet, interior novel about a cast of characters in a town upstate: I loved the look at the way gentrification doesn’t solely occur in cities, and the focus on queer men as the interlopers— well dressed, snippy, and rich, but interlopers nonetheless. Some unexpected plot points but great writing about loneliness, addiction, queerness, and a very specific type of moneyed gay guy in his forties.
Heart the Lover, Lily King
Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.’
Everyone is talking about this book, and for good reason: it’s gorgeous. I stupidly didn’t read Writers and Lovers before this one, (the two are connected) but I loved it nonetheless.
A dual timeline story about a young woman named Jordan who finds herself in the middle of a friendship between boys named Sam and Yash, Jordan’s college years are marked by reading, writing, manuscripts, and literary arguments with the boys. Things go haywire, and we pick up with Jordan in the present— a married mother with a heavy heart.
This is a book about the roads not taken, forgiveness, love, and the weight of the past. It’s short, tight, impactful, and gorgeous.
(I’m a huge fan of King’s short story collection, Five Tuesdays in Winter, as well. I think about the final sentence of the final story once a week.)
‘Othello places his trust in Iago, not Desdemona. Anna Karenina’s society does not allow her to be with Vronsky. Love is not the weakness. People get in its way. People are weak and perilous, not love.’
December
What We Can Know, Ian McEwan
A story of love, obsession, intensity, suffering, and history. The dystopian half of the book takes us into a future ravaged by climate change, the great disaster of our modern lives ignored to our peril. McEwan’s language is removed— beautiful but formal, so your mileage may vary.
I loved the second half of this, which takes us back to the present and the immortal dinner that historians of the future are obsessed with. Seeing the way our tweets, emails, journal entries and correspondence can be used to paint pictures of us— inaccurate pictures, but pictures nonetheless— was fascinating. Some fun plot machinations happen here that made me really enjoy the book, but I wish the first half had been a smidge shorter.
Dominion, Addie E. Citchens
Stories about religion can be tricky, but Citchens executes this one perfectly. A sickly sweet journey into the heart of a Black Church Family, the sons of the Winfrey family are protected, revered, untouchable, which naturally makes them monstrous.
This book alternates between the POV of their mother, a woman trapped by bourgeois propriety and the unbearable expectations placed on First Ladies, and a girl swept up in the chaos wrought by the youngest son.
At its heart, this is a book about weight: the weight of the Church, the weight of fitting into the Black middle class, the weight of gender and motherhood and love and deceit. This is a book about how you can blind yourself to pain and believe that something will come save you: a man, or God, or Community, and how often, the only thing on the other side of waiting is pain.
Seduction Theory, Emily Adrian
Loved. Excellent. Nails the petty savageries of career academics and the people obsessed with them, and uses the premise of an affair novel to tell a story about love— writing yourself in and out of cliches and choosing your person again and again and again.
If you have a mean bone in your body, this book is also very funny. Genuinely hopeful when you see past the snideness (but I do so *love* the snideness).
A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar
When I was a kid, I read a Charmed fanfic where each of the sisters had children, and the author delighted in drilling down on all of the malapropisms and misspellings to show just how young the characters were. The experience is sort of like babysitting: if you dig it, you really dig it. If you don’t...
A brutal story of climate change and survival. Beautiful sentences, tight plotting, great structure. Having 30% of the book be a two year old’s dialogue didn’t work for me, but your mileage may vary.
Below are my ten favorite books of 2025:
Flashlight, Susan Choi
Genuinely a masterpiece. Epic in scope, intimate in detail, kaleidoscopic and fascinating, Choi is a master.
The plot is simple: a man disappears while walking alongside the beach with his daughter. The rest of the book takes us into the pasts and futures of the three principal characters, their quirks, foibles, heartbreaks, inner workings, and hearts. Believe the hype. This is a life-changing work.
Kitten, Stacey Yu
I got an early arc of one of the great books of 2026! Stacey is on here and is a friend, and this book took my breath away from the very first sentence. Pre-order, believe the hype, it’s g o r g e o u s.
Pre-order at Stacey’s Substack here to enter a giveaway!
Lost Lambs, Madeline Cash
Fun, funny, witty, smart. The family drama and dynamics are a pleasure to read through, and the parents are wacky but believable. The plot takes a bit of a hard pivot in the middle of the book but Cash lands the plane with a heartwarming ending.
There’s been a lot of discourse around this one, and I simply thought the book was fine: I laughed at the quips, raised an eyebrow at some of the choices, and generally thought the middle section could have been tighter/stronger, but I’m on the outside of all of the discourse so as always: your mileage may vary.
Just Watch Me, Lior Torenberg
Incandescent. A new masterpiece of the modern internet age, Torenberg creates a dynamic, brutal slimeball of a protagonist you can’t help but root for. Tackling the dystopian nature of streaming, attention, performance, fame, the voyeuristic clawing of strangers demanding things from you, and the horror of the modern hospital and insurance system.
This is a story of a desperate woman at her lowest crashing out and cashing out, showing how grief can transform a person and render them illegible and illogical. I loved this, and the writing is so easy to sink into while sticking with you. The last 25% is transformative.
Half His Age, Jennette McCurdy
Interesting! A lot of decent ideas sort of mired in the obsession with being shocking. Something here about emptiness, longing, and low self worth related to class and men. A real razor sharp look at a particular type of loser from the outside, but I think the hype and conversation around the book does it a disservice: a truly interesting story bogged down in the Lolita of it all prevents it from standing on its own.
Focusing on Waldo’s emptiness would have made for a stronger story, but I did love the very (very) end. The character of Korgy also helped inspire The Year of Pathetic Men, so!
Sheer, Vanessa Lawrence
I loved this— if it had been published last year, definitely would have been included in my Year of Evil Women video.
Maxine Thomas is a closeted woman running a makeup empire, using her desire for other women as inspiration behind highlighters, glosses, lip balms, and other products. Told over nine days, we begin with Max being ousted from the company she founded and awaiting her fate. As we dive into her past, Lawrence paints a picture of a ruthlessly ambitious, emotionally closed off workaholic— Betty Draper as girlboss.
Max’s frigid emotional landscape becomes a battlefield, and was some of my favorite writing in the book. Lawrence clearly is an expert when it comes to makeup and women, and her writing about color, desire, beauty, and clothing is top notch, in addition to the vivid portrait of New York in the nineties and early aughts (my favorite time period to read about as a NYC native).
I loved this book because it’s obvious Max is delusional, and while Lawrence convincingly brings us into her inner world, a woman who does not see herself is a woman who does not know herself. The felling of the mogul is inevitable, and Lawrence tells a story of a woman brought low after being on top— the modern Icarus story, and one we’ve seen time and time again with about a dozen women from the original girlboss era. It’s an interesting line to thread, and I really enjoyed reading this book.
February
Strangers, Belle Burden
“I loved him so completely.”
Harrowing. An unputdownable marriage thriller in the skin of a memoir.
Burden takes us inside the demise of her marriage with grace and takes accountability for the way being married occluded her from pursuing anything else— friendships, work, close relationships with anyone outside of her husband. For twenty years, her husband was the center of her life— until in March 2020, he admitted to having an affair and walked out, leaving her to brave the pandemic and raise their kids alone.
Burden’s book needs to be handed to every SAHM and every member of Gen Z clamoring to be a stay at home girlfriend— giving your financial, legal, and personal agency to a man who can walk out and leave you with nothing is a horror movie, not a romcom. Burden acknowledges how blinded by love she was and how foolish it made her, and this needs to be blasted across the airwaves: not knowing how much money is in your bank account isn’t something to brag about, it makes you a mark.
Ultimately, I was furious for most of the book, but this is a story of reclaiming one’s agency after horror. Burden grows because of this experience, entering the world again, and is stronger for it. Her clear eyed frankness about how blinded she was and her grace when discussing how badly she messed up save this book, but every single word is compelling.
I also wrote about this one in A More Perfect Union.
Video review. More on Strangers: What are we meant to learn from an affair book? How important is nepotism in getting your story told?
Little One, Olivia Muenter
A fascinating look at the traumatic after effects of living in a cult, being molded by a cult leader and the pressures of modern life while hiding this secret. Catharine’s struggles with her weight, discipline, and control are deeply relatable, and the book’s thrust being the uncovering of the mystery of the cult was deeply engaging.
I highly recommend this for thriller heads! Well written, dark, and engaging without being pat or offering neat solutions to really complex characters. The last 100 pages might be tough once you connect the dots before the MC does, but the ending is worth it.
Clutch, Emily Nemens
A beautiful mediation on friendship told in a kaleidoscopic, wide ranging omniscient POV. Immediately you’re plunged into the worlds of all five friends, simultaneously and continuously dipping in and out of their lives as they process the chaos of being in their forties.
Dense at times, and definitely some chapters that were there for texture and color— Nemens is a great writer who created five swirling lives for the reader to immerse themselves in and ponder the meaning of connection across decades.
So Old, So Young, Grant Ginder
Read this in two sittings and absolutely loved it. A strong entry into the decades spanning friendship novel genre, this book follows six friends across five parties and how their lives and friendships radically shift across twenty years of Millennial touchpoints.
Ginder has a way of evoking time and place—MGMT on the radio, the East Village in 2007, Cardi B soundtracking a summer house party in 2018— that instantly transport the reader into a specific mood and moment.
While the hook of the book is gripping, the emotional core of the novel is the connection across time, and how those fray and tatter: the most powerful storyline was the slow dissolution of a particular friendship due to motherhood and marriage. I’ll say more about this on TikTok (as I always do), but the real pain of being forgotten about as friends progress into new versions and visions of their lives is always ripe for dissection and startlingly real for people single in their thirties or forties.
Honest, incisive, particular, and smart: I loved this book.
Combined video review of Clutch and SO,SY.
If I Ruled the World, Amy DuBois Barnett
Fun, propulsive look at 90s magazine culture in New York. Drops you right in alongside big names, big magazines, big spots, and served as a walk through memory lane for Black millennials or anyone interested in hip-hop and entertainment culture in NYC, and the ways misogyny bleeds into reactions, reputations, and colors livelihoods. Expansive on how the actions of men can affect women for decades, and how culture protects them from facing consequences if they make money for corporations.
Nikki Rose is a flawed, frustrating protagonist, but it added to the reading experience— she will always make the wrong choice, but you will always root for her. Really enjoyed the scenes of her with her friends as well.
Brawler, Lauren Groff
A trio of female friends visit their fourth member at her deathbed, asking plainly: what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
Additionally, generational trauma, addiction, and the patriarchy are crystallized and immortalized in a story of rebuilding a life after rock bottom. These are only two of the pitch perfect, sharply drawn, brilliantly constructed stories in this book.
Groff is an expert of her craft, her use of language is always sharp, incisive, and obsessed with the human condition: Groff excavates not only our relationships to nature, but to desire, wanting, fleeing, arriving, hurting, and being. I am a super fan but genuinely, these stories are that good.
I’ll be thinking about Birdie and What’s the Time, Mister Wolf? forever.
March
Lake Effect, Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
What would you do if your mom ran away with your boyfriend’s dad?
I talk a lot about cheating on TikTok— some would say it is my brand- and this book still shocked me. A stolen moment, a lifetime of regret, a quickie divorce in the DR, and all of the sudden the book plunges us into the antithesis of American Cheating: everyone knows exactly how this couple got together, it’s 1977, and no one is letting them live it down.
The real benefit of the novel is its kaleidoscopic narration style, taking us inside the heads of every single character involved: we watch the car crash happen in slow motion, and the timeskip occurs much later than you’d expect. We get a day by day play-by-play of the disaster, of the couple returning to the detritus of their lives and how their spouses, friends, and children are all affected.
Fun, messy, smart, tender. The back 20% felt a little condensed— this felt like it should have been a tad longer? But Sweeney landed the plane beautifully. Gorgeous ending.
Funny Story, Emily Henry (audio)
Read this book because of PWMOV, where I craved a story from the perspective of the person abandoned in the friends to lovers love story. The first third of this tries to delve into the heartbreak and pain of sudden abandonment, but not really? We quickly go into vibes and food and banter and chemistry— which I liked a lot of, but the novel trades meat for quirk, plot advancement for charm, emotion for quips.
The love story was lovely, and I appreciated that they got into it without a ton of buildup. I wanted more sadness and a deeper exploration of the heartbreak before the love, I fear!
Video review of People We Meet on Vacation (a truly evil story).
Kin, Tayari Jones
What does it mean to be haunted by your mother?
Kin explores haunting via Mother Wound, friendship as family, choice as destiny, and sadness as fate.
A historical story of two Black women in the fifties, Vernice and Annie take vastly different paths to reconcile the pain of growing up motherless: Vernice goes to Spelman and is inducted into the world of the Black bourgeoisie, finding sisterhood, love, and rules in Atlanta. Annie seeks her missing mother in bars, landing in sticky situation after sticky situation, propelled by yearning for the woman who abandoned her.
The book is written beautifully, sinking the reader into the various worlds the women traverse, and my favorite part was the foiling: everywhere both women go, they meet Mother and Sister characters who reflect, refract, and reframe their journeys.
Ultimately, this book is singular, a force of nature, breathtaking, devastating. Believe the hype.
In my video review, I discuss the bad faith review that sort of assumes Jones’ intent with a specific story point. I did not agree, but didn’t go into a ton of detail to avoid spoilers.
Cruelty Free, Caroline Glenn
This was nuts. There’s been a wave of books and movies interrogating the beauty industry: The Substance, Natural Beauty, Rouge, Youthjuice, Ravishing, Skincare, Shell, et al. I think it’s interrogated!
This combined the skincare industry with a plot about the weight of fame and the horrors of being a woman in Hollywood, torn asunder by people hungry for profit. This also takes a Sapphic subplot starring a Lizzie Grubman-esque assistant, and sort of throws everything together into a murderous blender.
If you LOVE thrillers, then I recommend. Truly wild plot twists.
200 Monas, Jan Saenz
Sort of a hybrid romance-thriller, this book is wild and nuts in the best way— Arvy is tasked with selling pills that can induce female pleasure and teams up with hot “entrepreneur” Wolf.
What began as a series of coincidences takes us into the murky Texas underworld, with a fun cast of characters (Betty Mayo ftw) and wacky situations that interrogate desire and grief. This book covers up a lot of the heart with a lot of spice, but ultimately the true core of this book is about losing one’s mother, mourning, pretending not to be in pain, and choosing joy over suffering.
Fun! Recommend if you like spicy romances with teeth, or a thriller with a beating heart— moves quickly and goes down easy.
I tried to finish Whidbey before this was set to publish, but I didn’t get there in time! I have one thing I want to work on for next time but a little worried… watch this space….
Lindy West Discourse roundup:
My final video on the situation (including the ICYMI drama)
Bad Faith NYTimes Article: She Wrote a Book About Her Throuple. The Internet Lost Its Mind.
Facile. Gen X era commenters is obsessed with the identity as shield argument— LW is an adult, we cannot physically extract her from her situation, but saying we can’t criticize her because she’s a woman is so ridiculous as to be insulting. Free Gen X from idpol PLEASE WE BEG
Good NYTimes Article: She Was a Famous Millennial Feminist. Her Polyamory Memoir Is Heartbreaking.
They also published this, wherein the writer agreed that LW is in a bad situation and can’t see her way out of it because she’s too in it and needs to both perform progressivism and pay her (and Aham and Roya’s) bills.
Other stuff I’ve been reading:
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