Spring reading season is just around the corner with so many amazing books that will be published over the next couple of months and I can’t wait to dive into them!
My recommendations for the best books to read spring 2026 include recently or soon to be published historical fiction, romance, literary fiction, and mysteries/thrillers that I have already read or that are on my TBR for this spring.
Happy spring reading!!
Note: I read across a lot of genres and I only choose books that I have already read or plan to read over the coming weeks for my book lists. If I haven’t yet read the book when I publish the book list then I include the blurb provided by the publisher and update the article with my own thoughts after I read it. I also make a conscious effort to try and include diversity in the books I choose to read. Some of the buzziest books of the season are on my lists but I hope I also introduce you to some titles that you might not have heard of otherwise.
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1. Love By the Book by Jessica George
Setting: London, England
Remy’s debut novel based on her three best friends was an instant bestseller but now she’s struggling to come up with an idea for a second novel at the same time as her friends have become less present in her life due to changing circumstances. Then an ill-advised one night stand further complicates her life leaving Remy feeling completely alone.
Simone is a passionate kindergarten teacher with a well-paying side hustle that helps her afford all the nice things in life but she’s so busy that there’s no time for a social life. Her close-knit family is all she needs but, when they cut her off after discovering the true nature of her work, Simone realizes how isolated she actually is.
When Simone and Remy bump into each other at a bookshop, it isn’t soulmates at first sight but they might be what each other is searching for.
Love By the Book is a heartfelt exploration of the importance of female friendship/platonic love. It has some great characters and I enjoyed how the author wrote Remy and Simone’s relationship like a romance with a meet-cute, tropes (grumpy/sunshine) and even a third act break-up. It’s slow-moving though and it took a while for me to get into the rhythm of the book – partly I think because there are long excerpts from Remy’s fictionalization of her friendship with Simone as she tries to work through her writer’s block which made the story a bit disjointed. I liked the author’s debut novel Maame better but overall this was still a good read.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
2. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth
Setting: Melbourne, Australia
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick is eighty-one years old. She’s lived on her idyllic street, Kenny Lane, for sixty years–longer than anyone else. Aside from being a curmudgeon who minds everyone else’s business, few would suspect that Elsie has a past that she has worked exceedingly hard at concealing. Because when it comes to murder, no one ever suspects little girls or old ladies. And Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, once a little girl and now an old lady, has a strange history of people in her life coming to a foul end.
When a new little girl (talkative, curious, nosy) moves into the neighborhood and stops at nothing to befriend Elsie, her carefully-constructed life threatens to come crashing down as the secrets in Elsie’s past start coming to light. Who was “Mad Mabel” fifty years ago? Who is Elsie Fitzpatrick today? And if the past has a habit of repeating itself, who has the most to lose?
3. Everyone In This Bank Is a Thief by Benjamin Stevenson
Setting: Australia
While visiting a rural Australian bank to apply for a loan to open a detective agency, Ernest Cunningham and his fiancée find themselves in the middle of a bank heist and are taken hostage by a masked bank robber along with a priest, a patient and her caregiver, the receptionist, the bank manager, the security guard, a teenage boy, and a film producer. The doors are chained shut and nobody can get in or out so when someone in the bank is murdered then everyone is a suspect.
This spin on the classic bank heist is the 4th installment in the Ernest Cunningham series and is as much fun as the first three were! If you’re new to the series, the author (and Ernest) adhere to the rules for Golden Age Mysteries which emphasize fair play and require that clues be transparent so the reader has the opportunity to solve the mystery along with the detective. The fun quirk of this series is that Ernest addresses the reader to explain things along the way. Well-written, entertaining and witty, Everyone In This Bank Is a Thief is a thoroughly satisfying locked room (bank) mystery!
Previous books in the series are: Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone, Everyone On This Train Is a Suspect, and Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret (a holiday novella).
4. The Brink of Something Beautiful by Bobbi French
Setting: St. John’s, Newfoundland
Ruby is a recent widow grieving the loss of her husband but also feeling some guilt over his death as their’s was a marriage that she had never wanted. As Ruby considers how to begin again in middle age, her elderly mother who is in a care home with dementia makes a shocking revelation and Ruby meets a pregnant teenager named Maxine who she is determined to help whether Maxine wants it or not.
Set over the course of one winter in St. John’s, Newfoundland with Y2K looming on the horizon, The Brink of Something Beautiful is a heartfelt story of resilience, found family and female friendship. The subject matter is heavy but this is ultimately a hopeful story that handles intimate partner violence in a very sensitive manner. The authentic characters, the St. John’s setting and the storytelling are all so well done – the author’s debut novel, The Good Women of Safe Harbour, is one of my all-time favourite books set in Canada and I will read anything she writes!
5. A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman
Setting: Australian Outback
Patriarch Phil MacBride, his wife, Lorna, and their three children, Warren, Rosie and Matt, are the current residents of Meredith Downs, a vast sheep station with a million acres of land in remote Western Australia, where the MacBride family have lived and worked for generations. In 1958, on an ordinary day on a lonely road, Phil swerves to avoid a kangaroo and the lives of the entire MacBride family are forever altered. The aftermath of this family tragedy reverberates through the following decades with the actions of one character resulting in a secret that becomes a burden to carry for a lifetime.
Spanning decades, A Far-flung Life is a story about the aftermath of a family tragedy that asks the question how do you go on living when you have done something that can’t be undone. It’s not possible to say much without spoiling the story but there are plot points which are uncomfortable to read. Storygraph lists a number of content warnings for anyone who wants to know prior to reading.
A well-written and thought-provoking story about grief, secrets, memories and forgiveness of self. The book has a very strong sense of place with the author’s writing bringing to life the vastness of the Australian Outback and its harsh and isolated beauty. This is a grim, heartwrenching story – slow at times, unbearably sad yet difficult to put down. I’m glad I read this but it won’t be for everyone as the premise makes for very uncomfortable reading at times.
Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
6. American Fantasy by Emma Straub
Setting: Cruise Ship sailing Miami to Bahamas
Annie, a recently divorced empty nester struggling with turning 50, had reluctantly agreed to go with her sister on a four-day themed cruise aboard the American Fantasy featuring the five members of Boy Talk, a famous nineties-era boy band that they had both loved when they were teenagers. When her sister has to cancel, Annie goes on the cruise alone and is assigned to share a cabin with a superfan veteran of several of these cruises. At first Annie feels out of place among the middle-aged women acting like lovesick teenagers but before long she finds herself caught up in the communal experience and befriending one of the members of the band who is going through a hard time himself.
As the cruise ship sails the loop from Miami to the Bahamas and back again, the story alternates between three perspectives – Annie, Keith who is one of the members of the boy band and Sarah the production manager. Not a lot of depth but still an enjoyable story about middle age and starting over after divorce filled with nostalgia about boy bands with a fun cruise ship setting – a book suited for summer beach bags!
7. Go Gentle by Maria Semple
Setting: Primarily New York City (also L.A. and Paris)
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Adora Hazzard has it all figured out. A Stoic philosopher and divorcée, she lives a contented life on New York City’s Upper West Side. Having discovered that the secret to happiness is to desire only what you have, she’s applied this insight to blissful effect: relishing her teenage daughter, the freedom of being solo, and her job as a moral tutor for the twin boys of an old-money family. She’s even assembled a “coven”—like-minded women who live on the same floor in the legendary Ansonia—and is making active efforts to grow its membership. Adora’s carefully curated life is humming along brilliantly until a chance meeting with a handsome stranger.
Soon, her ordered world is upended by black-market art deals, secret rendezvous, and international intrigue . . . and her past—which she has worked so hard to bury—lands like a bomb in her present. Inflamed by unquenchable desire, Adora finds herself a woman wanting more: and she’ll risk everything to get it.
Adora Hazzard’s journey of self-discovery will grip you from the start. Romantic, hilarious, intelligent, and bursting with the stuff of life, Go Gentle is a thrilling story of one woman’s mid-life transformation, cementing Maria Semple in the pantheon of our most exciting and important contemporary writers.
8. The Chambermaid’s Key by Genevieve Graham
Setting: Toronto, Canada
1929 – Roisin (Rosie) Ryan lives with her Irish immigrant family in a slum-like neighbourhood in downtown Toronto but believes she can work her way to a better life beginning with a position at the Dominion, a luxury hotel that will soon be opening in the city. Hired as a chambermaid by the kindly Mrs. Evans, Rosie is a diligent and conscientious worker who soon catches the eye of a charming waiter named Damian. Rosie finds it impossible to ignore her feelings for Damian despite warnings from Mrs. Evans to stay away from both him and a wealthy gangster who is the hotel’s most notorious guest.
2024 – While carrying out a routine post-renovation inspection at the historic Dominion Hotel, Bridget Kelly discovers a mysterious shipment of crates, a secret corridor and a long-buried clue to a decades-old murder but, as she tries to investigate, it soon becomes clear that somebody doesn’t want the truth to come to light.
There are two engaging timelines in this well-researched historical fiction novel inspired by the Royal York in Toronto – both with characters that felt authentic and relatable. The element of mystery and suspense blended with the historical fiction and romance kept me turning the pages and I loved the familiar setting of this Toronto landmark even though its history has been fictionalized.
I have read eight out of Genevieve Graham’s ten Canadian historical fiction novels and have loved them all. I know when I pick up one of her books that I’m going to enjoy a well-told story and also learn something new about Canada’s history and what life was like for Canadians at the time!
9. Last Night in Brooklyn by Xochitl Gonzalez
Setting: Brooklyn, New York
FROM THE PUBLISHER: SPRING, 2007
At twenty-six, Alicia Canales Forten feels smothered by her future. She’s in a long-distance relationship, living at home with her mother’s beliefs, saving up for her wedding to a future doctor. But after Alicia ventures out one night in the neighborhood of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, she finds herself lured by the siren song of youth and possibility that the striving crowd of creatives holds, and moves in.
No one embodies this milieu more than La Garza, a larger-than-life, up-and-coming fashion designer whose epic house parties fuel neighborhood lore. La Garza’s life, observed by Alicia from her apartment across the street, seems to hold the allure and fearlessness Alicia has never dared to imagine for herself.
But when Alicia’s wealthy banker cousin moves to the neighborhood, she finds herself increasingly drawn into both his and La Garza’s precarious lives.
Against the backdrop of a potentially life-changing presidential election and a looming once-in-a-generation fiscal crisis, Last Night in Brooklyn explores the dark compromise of the American Dream for people of color living, unknowingly, in the twilight of a cultural moment. It is a story about everything money can buy―and the destruction of what it can’t.
10. The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall
Setting: England and France
Twin siblings Theo and Tessa from Cambridge, England are both eager to do their part for the war effort despite the views of their pacifist father. In 1942, Theo has joined the RAF as a pilot and, unbeknownst to her family, Tessa has been recruited by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). After undergoing an intense training period, Tessa parachutes into France where she joins a cell of the Resistance in Nazi-occupied territory. Two years later, Theo comes home but Tessa does not. Decades later in 2003, Edie, a PhD candidate researching female agents in the SOE, contacts Theo and works with him to uncover the truth of what actually happened to Tessa in France.
A well-written historical fiction debut, this novel has a different angle than previous World War II novels that I have read as it’s the story of two siblings – one a pilot and the other a spy. There’s a great deal of historical information woven into the story about the brave English women who became SOE agents and lost their lives serving their country, life in Nazi-occupied France, the Nuremburg trials and how gay men were treated at the time when homosexuality was illegal but mostly it’s a story about the unbreakable bond between two siblings and wartime love and loss.
11. Lake Effect by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Setting: Rochester, New York
In Rochester, New York in 1977, Nina Larkin, mom to teenage daughters, Clara and Bridie, is gifted a copy of The Joy of Sex from a newly divorced friend forcing her to face the absence of intimacy in her marriage. Unbeknownst to Nina, Clara is falling in love for the first time just as her mother becomes involved with their neighbour, Finn Finnegan, risking the reputation of both families and completely unravelling seventeen year-old Clara’s world.
Years later, Clara is working as a food stylist in New York City but has never moved on from the scandal that upended her life in her senior year of high school. When she returns home to Rochester for a wedding all those old feelings rise to the surface resulting in her doing something that will turn their lives upside down again.
A well-written and enjoyable read, Lake Effect is a multiple POV family drama about the repercussions of an affair between neighbours in upper-middle-class Rochester in the ’70s and how it impacts the members of the two families. Told over three timelines, it’s a nuanced portrayal of messy family dynamics with flawed characters the reader can empathize with even when they’re making really bad decisions.
12. In My Tudor Era by Kate Bromley
Setting: England
Lily’s trip to England with her best friend was meant to be a reset after a stressful year of grad school and disastrous dates. But when a visit to Hampton Court Palace ends with the full Tudor experience, Lily needs a plan to make it back to the 21st century stat.
Everyone is calling her Catherine, and to her dismay, Lily learns that she’s caught the eye of the King—none other than Henry VIII. Lily’s PhD is in psychology, not history, but even she knows that being married to Henry does not bode well for her life expectancy.
As she navigates her precarious position, Lily can’t seem to stay away from Simon Gainsford, the king’s champion jouster. A jock with a heart of gold, Simon understands Lily better than any guy she’s met, and every dark corridor presents a new opportunity to continue their dangerous, white-hot affair.
Meanwhile, smoldering courtier Francis Dereham (who seems to think they are secretly married?!) won’t stay away, and the king’s sinfully handsome groom, Thomas Culpeper, is also quite…persistent.
In the Tudor era, rumors can get you killed. Lily is determined to change her fate, but everyone knows how this story ends…right?
13. The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín
Setting: Ireland and various locations
The News from Dublin is a collection of 9 short stories – many published for the first time – one of which is more of a novella at over 100 pages. Quiet, insightful and beautifully written stories with varied settings including Ireland, the U.S., Spain and Argentina about the lives of ordinary people dealing with loss, despair, and grief.
I don’t often read short stories because they often leave me wanting more but I’ll read anything written by Colm Tóibín. My favourites in this collection were The Journey to Galway about a mother who receives word of the death of her fighter pilot son in World War I and must travel to Galway to inform his wife and children and Sleep which is about an Irish man living in New York City who suffers from horrible nightmares as he grieves the death of his brother.
14. The Name Game by Beth O’Leary
Setting: Fictional island in the UK
Charlie couldn’t be happier to take the job of farm-shop manager on the remote, wild Isle of Ormer. She’s grieving, a little lost, and in desperate need of a fresh start.
Jones has come out of a difficult breakup and is looking forward to some peace away from the noise of his city life. Moving to Ormer couldn’t have come at a better time.
But when Charlie Jones and, ahem, Charlie Jones both turn up at Ormer’s one and only farm shop, claiming to have been offered the role of manager, everyone is baffled. How could this have happened? And just who is the real Charlie Jones?
15. Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
Setting: Saskatchewan, Canada
Torduvalle, Saskatchwan, 1946 – Florence Banks has created a beautiful life for herself in this small prairie town where she has been working as a secretary in an insurance office for the past 11 years. She’s a model employee and resident of the town, keeps an immaculate home filled with beautiful objects and her hair is the perfect shade of movie-star blonde because she’s meticulous about never letting her brown roots show. But one morning at the end of summer, Florence sees a group of Métis men hired for seasonal farm work and recognizes one who has a connection to her past that threatens to shatter her carefully-constructed life.
This dual timeline historical fiction novel set in a fictional small town in Saskatchewan (with flashbacks to the main character’s childhood and early adulthood) is a deeply personal novel. The author’s grandfather was Métis but when she was growing up her family told people they were French. As an adult, she sought to explore Métis history to better understand the decision her grandfather and others made to hide their heritage and also to reconnect to the Métis culture herself.
This is a gentle yet thought-provoking exploration of identity and the repercussions of one young woman’s decision to live her life as someone else. I also appreciated the history lesson woven into this novel as I didn’t know about much of what the Métis people endured during this shameful chapter of Canadian history. Tara Gereaux puts a very human face on the history by introducing us to characters living with the discrimination, mistreatment and pressure to assimilate and by showing the impact that government policy had on them.
Wild People Quiet is a beautifully-written, extraordinary story of one unforgettable woman finding her way back to her family and reclaiming her culture but also a story of the history, culture and resilience of the Métis people.
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing an ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
16. John of John by Douglas Stuart
Setting: Scotland
Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the island of Harris to find that little has changed except for him. He returns to the windswept croft where he grew up and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.
Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn’t the only one in the croft house keeping secrets. As lambing season turns to shearing season, everything seems poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly frayed, and nothing will remain as it was before.
John of John is a singular novel about duty, passion, and the transformative power of the truth. It is a magnificent literary work that cements Douglas Stuart’s reputation as one of our greatest working novelists.
17. The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout
Setting: Massachusetts, United States
Artie Dam is living a double life. He spends his days teaching history to eleventh graders, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbors, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation. He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: How is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?
And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.
Elizabeth Strout, as we have come to expect, delivers a moving exploration of the human condition—one that brims with compassion for each and every one of her indelible characters. With exquisite prose and profound insight, The Things We Never Say takes one man’s fears and loneliness and makes them universal. And in the same breath, captures the abiding love that sustains and holds us all.
18. Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict
Setting: Egypt
In the 1920s, archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert―daughter of Lord Carnarvon―whose daring spirit and relentless curiosity made the momentous find possible.
Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt’s lost pharaoh. Her reign was bold, visionary―and nearly erased from history.
When Evelyn becomes obsessed with finding Hatshepsut’s secret tomb, she risks everything to uncover the truth about her reign and keep valued artifacts in Egypt, their rightful home. But as danger closes in and political tensions rise, she must make an impossible choice: protect her father’s legacy―or forge her own.
Propelled by high adventure and deadly intrigue, Daughter of Egypt is the story of two ambitious women who lived centuries apart. Both were forced to hide who they were during their lifetimes, yet ultimately changed history forever.
19. Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Setting: United States
My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive.
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it.
Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible.
20. Hooked by Asako Yuzuki
Setting: Japan
Eriko is on the cusp of turning 30 and still living with her parents in her childhood home in Tokyo while working at a seafood trading company. Having no friends and an obsessive need for connection, Eriko becomes addicted to reading a lifestyle blog called The Diary of Hallie B, the World’s Worst Wife written by Shoko who describes herself as a laidback, unambitious stay-at-home wife. Using details from the blog, Eriko orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Shoko and initiates a friendship. She quickly becomes overly possessive, however, causing Shoko to withdraw and leading to dangerous obsession and stalking behaviour on the part of Eriko who will do anything to hold onto the best friend she has ever had.
Hooked is a dark and provocative character-driven story about female friendship and obsession – not sure what to really call it – a slow burn thriller?? black comedy? maybe weird girl lit?? The novel was translated into English this spring but was published in Japan in 2015 which makes some details of the story particularly related to social media to feel a bit dated – i.e. the blog comment section and starting a Twitter account. Disturbing and unsettling yet also a compelling read.
21. The Island Club by Nicole Harrison
Setting: Balboa Island, California
1956: Milly Kinkaid has recently moved from Hollywood to Balboa Island with her husband and two young children hoping for an improvement in their family life but her husband is more distant than ever. Sylvia Johnson and her husband have been pillars of the Balboa Island community for years and have recently opened The Island Club where members can play tennis, swim and dine but she fears losing everything after discovering that her husband’s decisions have put their family’s future at risk. Meanwhile Adele Lambert has been running from a shameful scandal for two decades but her identity is about to be exposed.
Set on Balboa Island off the coast of Southern California during the 1950s, The Island Club is a historical fiction novel about the friendship between three women each with a secret that threatens to unravel her life who bond over the game of tennis. This is a quick read with a glamorous setting that makes it feel perfect for summer beach bags!
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
22. The Complex by Karan Mahajan
Setting: United States and India
Set in Delhi from the late ’70s to the ’90s, The Complex is about several generations of the Chopra family living in the sprawling apartment complex built by their revered patriarch, SP Chopra, who was one of India’s political architects. Several family members make an appearance in the novel but the focus is on SP’s son Laxman, the youngest of his 9 children, and two of SP’s grandsons, brothers Sachin and Brij, as well as their respective spouses, Gita and Karishna.
Sachin and Gita emigrated to the U.S. and live in Michigan for many years while Brij and Karishna are raising their sons in the complex. Laxman, also resident in the complex, is a mediocre businessman, a ruthless politician and a sexual predator who assaults and abuses family members. The novel is narrated retrospectively by a great-grandson of SP’s who is now a middle-aged man living in the apartment complex awaiting his father’s release from prison after serving a 25 year sentence for murder.
The reader is slowly drawn into the layers of this compelling family saga. It’s a character-driven novel that takes place against the backdrop of rapid economic and political change that post-Independence India was experiencing in the ’80s and ’90s including the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, anti-Sikh riots, protests of the Mandal Commission report, political instability in Punjab and Kashmir, the rise of Hindu nationalism and economic liberalization. Interesting, informative and well-written – this is the first book by this author that I have picked up and I enjoyed the read.
23. This Story Might Save Your Life by Tiffany Crum
Setting: United States
Benny and Joy have been best friends for more than a decade and for the past four years have hosted a hugely successful comedy survival podcast about near-death experiences called “This Story Might Save Your Life”. In the midst of negotiations for a lucrative contract, Joy invites Benny over one night and tells him that she needs to take a break from the podcast and will explain why later. When Benny arrives the next morning for their recording session, both Joy and her husband, Xander, who produces the show are missing. Suspicion falls on Benny almost immediately and he launches his own investigation to clear his name and find Joy.
The story is told from two points of view/timelines and works really well with Benny’s narration in the present alternated with excerpts from the Joy-authored chapters of a memoir that they are co-writing providing the history of their relationship.
This debut novel is a “will they, won’t they” romance wrapped up in a mystery but I wouldn’t really classify it as a thriller. It is compulsively readable though and definitely kept me turning the pages to find out how it was all going to turn out. An interesting aspect of the story is that Joy suffers from severe narcolepsy which I don’t think I have ever read in a book before. I didn’t completely love the ending but this was a thoroughly enjoyable read.
24. The Paris Match by Kate Clayborn
Setting: Paris, France
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Physician Layla Bailey has spent over a year telling herself she’s moved on from a painful but amicable divorce from her college sweetheart. Staying friends with her ex seemed like the mature thing to do, but when Layla is invited to her former sister-in-law’s destination wedding in Paris—where Layla once spent her own romantic honeymoon—she knows her commitment to maturity might be her worst enemy…especially since her ex isn’t attending alone.
The only thing that could make the week more difficult is getting through it without the distraction of the wedding…. But when what Layla thought was a harmless conversation about the choices of her younger self leads to the bride getting cold feet, Layla finds herself facing down the groom’s mysterious, taciturn best man, Griffin, who will do anything to make sure this wedding happens.
Since she broke it, Griff demands she help him fix it. Going along with his plan to alleviate the engaged couple’s doubts seems like Layla’s best chance at maintaining a good relationship with a family she once called her own. But as she learns more about the past heartbreak that’s driving Griff to help his friend, she gets closer and closer to confronting the true depth of her own pain…while finding herself more and more willing to risk it all again for Griff.
25. Leave Your Mess at Home by Tolani Akinola
Setting: Chicago, Illinois
FROM THE PUBLISHER: The Longe siblings are really botching their parents’ American Dream.
Sola Longe, eldest daughter, estranged from the family, is secretly back home in Chicago for the first time in a decade. She’s a newly single and recently disgraced influencer trying to quietly put her life back together again. The other three Longe siblings aren’t doing much better.
Anjola is in love with her best friend, who just got engaged to someone else; Karen, a college junior and the baby of the family, is grappling with her sexuality and self-image; and Ola, the golden child with a baby of his own on the way, is questioning his marriage and how to raise a Black son in America.
Sola’s unexpected return sets them on a crash course towards each other, and when the four siblings find themselves together again at their Nigerian immigrant parents’ Thanksgiving table, a decade’s worth of secrets and a lifetime of resentments explode to the fore.
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