Fall is just around the corner and that means sweater weather, changing leaves, pumpkin spice everything and curling up with a good book to enjoy the change of seasons! And, fortunately, there are so many excellent Fall 2025 book releases to choose from!!
My recommendations for the best books to read Fall 2025 include recently published or soon to be published contemporary fiction, historical fiction, romance, and mysteries/thrillers that I have already read or that are on my TBR for this fall.
Happy fall 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. Wreck by Catherine Newman
Setting: Western Massachussets
This sequel to Sandwich which was set in the summer on Cape Cod takes place two years later back home in Massachusetts in the fall. Rocky and her husband, Nick, now have their daughter, Willa, living at home with them and Rocky’s widowed father has moved in as well while their son, Jamie, has taken a job in New York City. In the lead-up to Thanksgiving, Rocky becomes obsessed with a fatal car/train accident in their town while she also deals with a troubling health issue.
I enjoyed this slice of life that revisits Rocky and her family a couple of years after the first book. Rocky is a relatable character as a mid-aged woman worrying about her young adult children and navigating care for her elderly parent as well as her own health concerns and her anxiety is also very familiar to me. A wonderful story about marriage, family and dealing with life’s curveballs – funny yet also sentimental!
2. The Break-In by Katherine Faulkner
Setting: London, England
A disturbed young man breaks into Alice Rathbone’s upscale home in London while she is hosting a playdate with two other families. He grabs a large kitchen knife and heads toward the room where Alice’s nanny and the children are watching television and Alice kills him when she panics and hits him over the head with a barstool.
Alice is cleared in the investigation but can’t move on as she is drawn to the mystery of who her intruder really was – even in the face of disturbing online comments, mysterious phone calls telling her all is not as it seems, and small items disappearing from her home. As her perfect life unravels, Alice continues to dig until she uncovers a trail of dark secrets leading close to home.
Told from multiple points of view, The Break-In is a twisty, suspenseful pageturner and I could not put it down. This is Faulkner’s third psychological thriller centred around mothers in various London neighbourhoods (Greenwich Park and The Other Mothers were the first two) and I’ve enjoyed all three – and am definitely looking forward to whatever comes next!
3. And Then There Was You by Sophie Cousens
Setting: England
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Stuck in a PA job and living at home with her parents after a painful breakup, thirty-one-year-old Chloe Fairway isn’t where she wants to be in life. The last thing she needs is to face the people who once voted her “most likely to succeed” at her upcoming ten-year college reunion. And she definitely doesn’t want to see her former best friend, Sean Adler, who is now a hotshot film director living the life Chloe dreamed of. Desperate to make a splash—and to save face in front of the man who might be the one that got away—she turns to a mysterious dating service.
Enter Rob, her handsome, well-read, and charming match, the perfect plus-one to take to her reunion. The more she gets to know him, the more perfect he appears to be. Could it be that this dating service knows what she needs better than she knows herself? And can she overlook the one big catch? As Chloe reconnects with old friends, she begins to question everything she thought she wanted. Maybe, just maybe, revisiting the past is exactly what she needs to move forward.
4. The Austen Affair by Madeline Bell
Setting: England
Tess Bright and Hugh Balfour are playing the leads in an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey and are filming on location in England. It’s the role of a lifetime for Tess who is trying to revive her career and also honor her mother who was the biggest Jane Austen fan but things aren’t going so well on set with Hugh, a serious British method actor with several BAFTA nominations who scoffs at Tess’s Teen Choice awards.
Sparks fly between the two in the worst possible way when they suffer an electrical shock during a thunderstorm while in costume and wake up in a field in Jane Austen’s era. Two hundred years in the past and with only each other to rely on, Tess and Hugh have no choice but adlib their way through Regency England trying to find their way back to the 21st century without changing history.
This is a fun enemies to lover romance with a time travel element that was a creative twist – I love anything Jane Austen so this was right up my alley! There’s one spicy scene that I thought was a bit cringe but apart from that is was an enjoyable read.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
5. Deeper Than the Ocean by Mirta Ojito
Setting: Canary Islands, Cuba, New York, Key West
One hundred years after the shipwreck of the Valbanera, known to history as the “poor man’s Titanic,” Mara Denis gets an assignment to report on the Canary Islands, where, she has been told, her ancestors lived before they moved to Cuba. Unexpectedly, she discovers that the grandmother her mother cherished was listed among the dead of the Valbanera, years before Mara’s mother was even born.
This fateful twist changes everything Mara thought she knew about her family and herself, and sends her on a quest to find the truth about her family. If her great-grandmother is a ghost, who is she and where did she come from?
6. The Secret Book Society by Madeline Martin
Setting: London, England
London 1895 – Three women receive a mysterious invitation to afternoon tea at the home of the elusive Lady Duxbury (a thrice-widowed countess whose husbands’ met untimely deaths) – Eleanor Clarke, a devoted mother married to a wealthy tyrant; Rose Wharton, the American wife of an aristocrat struggling for acceptance in London society; and Lavinia Cavendish, a 19 year-old with an artistic soul who wants her family to accept her for who she is.
Lady Duxbury proposes that her guests join her in forming a secret book society and invites them to borrow books from her extensive collection and to meet regularly at her home. Over the following months, the four women develop a deep friendship as they share their love of reading as well as their secrets.
Told from multiple perspectives, this was a captivating historical fiction novel about four women from varied backgrounds who are all frustrated with the limitations placed on them by society and by the controlling men in their lives.
A story about friendship but also about the institutionalized misogyny and the woeful lack of rights for women in Victorian England with a particular emphasis on the practice of labelling women as hysteric and committing them to asylums to get them out of the way.
It’s an enjoyable and informative read – just don’t expect light historical fiction about a ladies book club as this is a much darker look at the subjugation of women in the 19th century.
7. The Lost Story of Eva Fuentes by Chanel Cleeton
Setting: Boston, Havana, London
London, 2024: American expat Margo Reynolds is renowned for her talent at sourcing rare antiques for her clients, but she’s never had a request quite like this one. She’s been hired to find a mysterious book published over a century ago. With a single copy left in existence, it has a storied past shrouded in secrecy—and her client isn’t the only person determined to procure it at any cost.
Havana, 1966: Librarian Pilar Castillo has devoted her life to books, and in the chaotic days following her husband’s unjust imprisonment by Fidel Castro, reading is her only source of solace. So when a neighbor fleeing Cuba asks her to return a valuable book to its rightful owner, Pilar will risk everything to protect the literary work entrusted to her care. It’s a dangerous mission that reveals to her the power of one book to change a life.
Boston, 1900: For Cuban school teacher and aspiring author Eva Fuentes, traveling from Havana to Harvard to study for the summer is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s a whirlwind adventure that leaves her little time to write, but a moonlit encounter with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. The story that pours out of her is one of forbidden love, secrets, and lies… and though Eva cannot yet see it, the book will be a danger and salvation for the lives it touches.
8. Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite
Setting: Lagos, Nigeria
When Ebun gives birth to her daughter, Eniiyi, on the day they bury her cousin Monife, there is no denying the startling resemblance between the child and the dead woman. So begins the belief, fostered and fanned by the entire family, that Eniiyi is the actual reincarnation of Monife, fated to follow in her footsteps in all ways, including that tragic end.
There is also the matter of the family curse: “No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace…” which has been handed down from generation to generation, breaking hearts and causing three generations of abandoned Falodun women to live under the same roof.
When Eniiyi falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family’s history. As several women in her family have done before, she ill-advisedly seeks answers in older, darker spiritual corners of Lagos, demanding solutions. Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak? Or can she break the pattern once and for all, not only avoiding the spiral that led Monife to her lonely death, but liberating herself from all the family secrets and unspoken traumas that have dogged her steps since before she could remember?
9. We Had a Hunch by Tom Ryan
Setting: Massachusetts
A pageturning mystery that asks a simple question: what happens when your favourite teen sleuths grow up?
Twenty-five years ago, Edgar Mills, Massachusetts had two sets of teenage sleuths – twin sisters Alice and Samantha VanDyne who helped their father Sheriff VanDyne to break up a drug smuggling ring and Joey O’Day who used his computer skills to expose an online grifter. As their reputation for solving crimes grew, the three teens became a media sensation and the pride of Edgar Mills but then a series of brutal murders rocked the small town and a miscalculation by the VanDyne twins led to the murder of their father and Alice’s boyfriend. The killer, Bruce Phillip Kershaw (aka The Janitor) was captured but Edgar Mills and the crime solving teens would never be the same.
Twenty-five years later, Edgar Mills is shaken by a copycat murder and Kershaw offers to provide information to the police but only if he can talk to the teen detectives who put him away.
This was a fun read about three former teen detectives who reunite to solve a new crime while confronting their pasts and mistakes they made. Perfect for a reader like me who was a huge Nancy Drew fan growing up! A well-plotted small town mystery with more than a few surprising twists that caught me completely off guard – I still wasn’t quite sure whodunnit until the last couple of chapters! The ending has a set up for a sequel and that’s okay because I will definitely be reading it!
Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for providing an ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
10. Every Step She Takes by Alison Cochrun
Setting: Camino de Santiago, Portugal and Spain
Thirty-five year-old Sadie Wells needs to shake things up in her life so when her sister is injured, Sadie agrees to take her place on a tour walking the Camino de Santiago across Portugal and Spain.
On the flight to Europe, Sadie, an inexperienced traveller, downs three glasses of wine before the plane hits severe turbulence. Convinced she’s about to die, she blurts out to her seatmate, Mal, that she thinks she might be a lesbian. Sadie is embarrassed but thinks she never has to see Mal again until she arrives in Portugal and discovers that they’re in the same tour group and will be spending the next two weeks together.
A charming sapphic romance about two women who get to know each other while walking 200 miles across Spain and Portugal that includes a fair bit of self-discovery as both Sadie and Mal are figuring out what they want and learning that it’s never too late to live their authentic selves. Both of the main characters are likeable as are their tour mates and I loved the European adventure – it almost made me want to add the Camino to my travel bucket list!
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
11. Heart the Lover by Lily King
Setting: United States
In this two part story, we are introduced to the narrator in the fall of her senior year of college when she meets Sam and Yash in an English Lit class. She is a gifted writer but is intimidated by the two guys who are not only the golden boys of the English Department but also living in a professor’s stately home while he is on sabbatical at Oxford. She is not named but the guys welcome her into their world of intellectuals and refer to her as Jordan in reference to a character from The Great Gatsby (and readers don’t learn her name until the very last page of the book).
‘Jordan’ soon finds herself caught up in a love triangle of sorts – dating one but falling in love with the other. Graduation comes and goes and choices are made that will alter the three lives forever. The second half of the novel jumps forward about 25 years and ‘Jordan’ is now a successful novelist when unexpected news brings the past crashing back forcing her to confront the decisions made by her younger self.
I absolutely loved this book – one of my favourites so far this year! It was deeply affecting – I was gutted and sobbing by the end of the book – and it also made me nostalgic for my own late ’80s university experience as this trio was in their senior year the same year that I was. The writing is raw and beautiful and the story an insightful exploration of friendship, love and loss, life and death and what really matters.
This is the first book that I have read by Lily King and now that I realize it’s related to her previous book Writers & Lovers I need to read that as well!
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for providing a digital ARC of this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.
12. The Guest in Room 120 by Sara Ackerman
Setting: Honolulu
A captivating dual timeline novel set at Honolulu’s iconic Moana Hotel inspired by the real-life unsolved murder of a prominent American philanthropist.
1905 – Jane Stanford, co-founder of Stanford University, fearing for her life after an attempted poisoning in San Francisco, travels to Honolulu with two staff members to stay at the Moana Hotel in Room 120 but, as fate would have it, the island is not as safe as it seems.
1905 – Iliahi Baldwin, a young Hawaiian woman who has recently started working at the Moana strikes up an unlikely friendship with Mrs. Stanford leaving her devastated when the unthinkable happens.
2005 – 100 years later almost to the day, bestselling author, Zoe Finch, is under pressure from her publisher to hand in her next novel and is desperately in need of inspiration. She makes a last-minute decision to travel to Honolulu for a writer’s conference at the Moana Hotel, registers under an assumed name and checks in to Room 120. As a powerful storm slams the island, Zoe starts having terrifying nightmares that seem strangely real and enlists the help of mystery writer Dylan Winters to help figure out what happened in her room in 1905.
This historical fiction novel based on the story of Jane Stanford’s mysterious death had me hooked from the get-go and kept my attention throughout as I raced through to the finish. Told from three points-of-view, Jane’s, Zoe’s and Iliahi’s journal entries, it’s a mystery with some supernatural elements and a bit of a romance storyline as well. Another enjoyable novel with a beautiful Hawaiian setting from Sara Ackerman!
Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
13. Little Movements by Lauren Morrow
Setting: Vermont
Layla Smart, a thirty-something Black choreographer, has been “living medium” but now she’s ready to take a chance at making her dreams come true. She has accepted an offer for a 9 month residency at Briar House, a prestigious arts institute in rural Vermont, and will be leaving behind her life in New York City to work on creating a transformative piece with a small group of dancers. Her husband, Eli, who works in IT but was once an aspiring filmmaker, is staying behind in Brooklyn and while outwardly supportive seems to be resentful of her opportunity.
Prior to arriving in Vermont, Layla hadn’t really thought about the fact that Briar House had primarily worked with white creatives in the past or that the institute was located in a predominantly white part of the state. She has always wanted to create art for art’s sake insisting that her choreography was about the movements but it’s made clear in Layla’s first meeting with the institute’s director that she is expected to dig into her people’s history to reflect the “Black experience” and create work that will become part of the canon of Black dance. When one of her four BIPOC dancers abruptly quits after the first day, it becomes apparent that there might be more going on behind the scenes than she anticipated that will make it more difficult for her to accomplish her goals.
Little Movements is a thoughtful, touching and insightful novel about the world of dance and creative fields in general. It’s a slow-paced journey of self-discovery as Layla finds her path as an artist and comes to terms with what she wants personally and from her relationships. The storyline also shows the racism and micro-aggressions faced by a Black woman in a creative industry where people of colour aren’t adequately respresented on the boards of arts organizations or in decision-making roles within those organizations. Overall, a well-written, enjoyable debut novel!
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
14. The Irish Goodbye by Heather Aimee O’Neill
Setting: Long Island, New York
The three Ryan sisters have returned to their childhood home on the eastern shore of Long Island to spend Thanksgiving weekend with their parents, Robert and Nora – the first time they have all been together in several years. Two decades earlier, a family friend died in an accident on their brother Topher’s boat and the resulting lawsuit almost bankrupted their parents. Topher spiralled into depression eventually taking his own life and the entire family has not been together since his funeral.
Arriving for the holiday weekend, each sister has a secret that she’s keeping from the rest of the family. Cait, the eldest sister, feels guilty about the role she played in the accident and has rekindled a flame with her teenage crush who was her brother’s best friend and older brother of the boy who died on the boat. Alice has been thrown a curveball that threatens both her fledgling career and her marriage. And the youngest, Maggie, has finally taken a chance at bringing home the woman she loves to meet her devoutly Catholic mother. Their parents meanwhile are struggling to keep on top of the maintenance of their home but are reluctant to ask for help.
Tension boils over when Cait invites a guest from their past to Thanksgiving dinner threatening the holiday as well as family relationships unless they can find a way to forgive themselves and each other.
Set over the course of Thanksgiving weekend with occasional flashbacks, The Irish Goodbye is a beautifully-written story about family, grief and secrets that also explores sibling, parent/child and romantic relationships in a quick read of under 300 pages. A family drama with well-developed characters, this Read with Jenna pick is a touching and thoroughly enjoyable debut novel – perfect for the fall season!
15. Town & Country by Brian Schaefer
Setting: Fictional town in Upstate New York
Town & Country is set against the backdrop of a congressional race in Griffin, a small Hudson Valley-esque town (although the state is never named) and follows the campaigns of two candidates from Memorial Day through Election Day in November. The town has become a trendy destination for weekenders and second home owners from the city (referred to as “Duffels” by local townspeople) are buying up real estate changing the landscape of the town.
One candidate, Paul Banks, is a young gay man who has recently purchased a home in Griffin with his much older husband, Stan, as it seemed like the ideal district to launch his political career. The second candidate, local pub owner Chip Riley, is a life-long resident of Griffin whose deeply-religious real estate agent wife is conflicted about selling homes to gay couples. Their elder son, Joe, is reeling from the recent overdose death of his best friend and fighting his own addiction while Will, their younger son who came out before heading off to his first year of college, is home for the summer working on his dad’s campaign but also working at catering gigs that place him in the orbit of the Bankses and their community of gay couples.
This impressive debut novel was not at all what I expected – I thought it would lean into humour and snarkiness but it actually addresses a number of serious issues with insight and empathy including the rural/urban divide in politics, gentrification, the opioid addiction crisis and the plight of modern day farmers as well as bigotry directed at LGBTQ individuals from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
This is a character-driven novel with a large cast of supporting characters which makes for a slow start while getting them straight but picks up as the plot progresses and nails the ending. It feels like a realistic portrayal of the polarization that currently exists in U.S. politics but is very balanced in its presentation of the two sides and never mentions Democrat or Republican. An engaging read with a hopeful message!
Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
16. The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten
Setting: Norway
Nils Vik wakes up on November the 18th and knows it will be the day he dies. He follows his morning routine as voices from his past echo in his mind, and looks around the empty house one last time, before stepping onto his beloved boat.
His dog, dead these many years, leaps aboard with him, and then the other dead begin to emerge – from the woods along the fjord, from each of the ferry stops along the route, from his logbook full of memories and quotations and jotted-down notes about the weather conditions. The people from the past accompany him now, prodding him, showing him what he might have missed before, as he waits for his Marta, his late, remarkable wife, to finally join him on the boat again.
17. Lauryn Harper Falls Apart by Shauna Robinson
Setting: Virginia, United States
After a misunderstanding at work, Lauryn Harper is demoted from the company’s DC headquarters to a small satellite office in her hometown Greenstead, Virginia – the town that she thought she had escaped for good. Greenstead is down and out but was once a thriving community before the industrial accident caused by the company that Lauryn now works for.
Lauryn arrives in Greenstead with a plan to get back in her boss’s good graces as soon as possible but, after meeting the handful of officemates who had also been banished and reconnecting with a childhood friend that she hasn’t spoken to in more than a decade, she agrees to lead this group of misfits in reviving the town’s fall apple festival as a fundraiser for the community centre.
The incident that leads to Lauryn’s return to Greenstead is a bit ridiculous and her plan to retire at age 40 is incredibly unrealistic but once you get past that then Lauryn Harper Falls Apart is a cute story. It’s a story of second chances (friendship not romance) and self-discovery with fun fall vibes – perfect for anyone looking for a lighthearted seasonal read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing a digital ARC of this book for review purposes. All opinions are my own.
18. A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar
Setting: Kolkata, India
In a near-future climate-stricken Kolkata, Ma along with her elderly widowed father, Dadu, and her toddler daughter, Mishti, are about to escape the collapsing city to join her scientist husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Passports and climate visas have been procured from the consulate and their flights are booked for departure. All they have to do is survive the next seven days. When they wake the following morning, Ma discovers that her handbag along with the precious immigration documents has been stolen from their home.
Over the course of the next week, Ma desperately searches for the documents while also trying to keep her family fed during the worsening food shortage. The fate of Ma and her family becomes intertwined with that of Boomba, the thief, who commits a series of escalating crimes in his desperation to provide for his mother, father and young brother who remained behind in their rural village while he sought work in Kolkata.
Set in the near future over the course of a week, A Guardian and a Thief is a gripping story of climate catastrophe, migration, inequality and the lengths to which a person will go to save their own family members. The compassionate portrayal of both Ma and Boomba (who are each both guardian and thief) shows just how thin the line is between the two in the desperate struggle for survival. A thought-provoking, heart-wrenching novel with a devastating conclusion!
19. Songs of Love on a December Night by David Adams Richards
Setting: Miramichi, New Brunswick, Canada
This was a disappointing read for me. I had considered David Adams Richards among my favourite Canadian authors since first reading Mercy Among the Children twenty-five years ago so this was one of my most anticipated books of the fall. Unfortunately, it was a letdown.
Set in the Miramichi River region of New Brunswick, Colonel Musselman is found in the study of his home dead from a shotgun wound. His teenage son, Jamie, claims that he ran downstairs when he heard the gunshot, picked up the weapon and accidentally shot himself in the leg. Before long, rumours that Jamie murdered his father are swirling around the small town. Several years later, Jamie is tried and convicted of the crime on scant evidence and few believe his claims of innocence apart from his fiancée, Gertie.
This is a story about the miscarriage of justice that sounded right up my alley, however, I found it to be a bit convoluted and I didn’t feel any connection whatsoever to the cast of characters. I was also put off by the anti-feminist/progressives comments laced throughout the book. Although it didn’t work for me, I’m sure other readers might have a completely different take on it – after all, not every book is for every reader and that’s okay!
20. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Setting: United States and India
When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that served only to drive Sonia and Sunny apart.
Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India. She fears that she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world.
21. Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser
Setting: Paris, France
Fearing that his granddaughter, Mona, might lose her sight permanently after an unexplained episode of blindness, Henry decides to take her to see great works of art so she can commit them to memory. Over the course of the following year, he picks Mona up after school each Wednesday and they visit the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay and the Centre Pompidou (which Parisians refer to as the Beaubourg) to view and discuss a single masterpiece. 52 weeks and 52 works of art.
Each chapter weaves together Mona’s story with the art lessons including what is happening in Mona’s life with her family, doctor visits and school as well as a detailed description of the week’s work of art followed by Henry and Mona’s discussion. It’s a heartwarming story about the special bond between a granddaughter and her grandfather but, over the course of the year, Henry also provides Mona (and the reader) with an overview of five centuries of art history.
This is a beautiful story and well-written but it’s unlikely that this book will appeal to anyone who doesn’t already have an appreciation of art. I enjoyed it but it was a slow read – partly because I paused to look up a photo of each work of art so that I could view it while Henry and Mona were discussing it. (The edition of the book that I borrowed from the library didn’t include photos of the masterpieces Henry chooses but it seems some do and it would have made for a smoother reading experience if I hadn’t been pausing to google during each chapter.)
22. Listen by Sacha Bronwasser
Setting: Paris and the Netherlands
In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, and the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she’d been reckoning with in school. Even as her experiences with the family in Paris begin to echo the troubles left in the Netherlands, Marie pushes on.
Years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, and the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in the aftermath of the attacks in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she believed she’s untethered from turns out to be be a knot still capable of constricting tightly around her. Can she face Paris—and what she ran away from to get to Paris—and finally disentangle herself from her past?
23. What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Setting: England
2014: At a dinner for close friends and colleagues, renowned poet Francis Blundy honors his wife’s birthday by reading aloud a new poem dedicated to her, ‘A Corona for Vivien’. Much wine is drunk as the guests listen, and a delicious meal consumed. Little does anyone gathered around the candlelit table know that for generations to come people will speculate about the message of this poem, a copy of which has never been found, and which remains an enduring mystery.
2119: Just over one hundred years in the future, much of the western world has been submerged by rising seas following a catastrophic nuclear accident. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. In the water-logged south of what used to be England, Thomas Metcalfe, a lonely scholar and researcher, longs for the early twenty-first century as he chases the ghost of one poem, ‘A Corona for Vivian’. How wild and full of risk their lives were, thinks Thomas, as he pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem’s discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
24. Venetian Vespers by John Banville
Setting: Venice, Italy
1899 – Struggling English writer Evelyn Dolman had married American heiress Laura Rensselaer anticipating that they would one day inherit a substantial fortune, however, when his father-in-law dies in an accident shortly after the wedding, it is revealed that a disagreement with her father had resulted in Laura’s disinheritance.
At her insistance, Evelyn and his new bride arrive in Venice to celebrate the New Year and enjoy an extended honeymoon at the Palazzo Dioscuri where they are renting rooms from Count Barbarigo. Relations between the couple are strained and, shortly after their arrival, Evelyn heads out alone for a drink where he runs into a former schoolmate who is travelling around Europe accompanied by his beautiful sister.
Narrated from Evelyn’s retrospective point-of-view (seemingly long after the events took place), he shares his version of what happened in Venice and how those events resulted in the death of a woman. From the moment that they arrive in Venice, mysterious events occur and Evelyn feels ill at ease both in the palazzo and in an unfamiliar city which he finds damp and gloomy. With each passing day, Venice takes on more of a sinister air as Evelyn becomes less sure of who he can trust or whether he can even be sure that he is not losing his mind.
Venetian Vespers is very well-written and atmospheric and there are some interesting twists in the mystery. Unfortunately, Evelyn is such a thoroughly vile narcissist that I can’t say that I truly enjoyed reading the story.
I don’t like to share spoilers, however, I would also note that some readers might wish to check content warnings as there is an incident of sexual violence that occurs early in the book and is referred to repeatedly throughout.
25. It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard
Setting: New York City
Reeling from the cancellation of her hit TV show, June Wood has nothing left to lose when a mysterious email lures her back to the New York City brownstone she once called home before she moved to Los Angeles. Thanks to a clause in the former owner’s will, she and her old roommate, Adam Harper, now own the multi-million dollar property—or at least they will in a month, once all the paperwork is signed.
Four weeks, then June can return to her life in LA and forget about New York City and everything she left behind. Sure, the fact that June and Adam are estranged and haven’t even spoken in five years, and that their friendship didn’t exactly end on good terms might complicate matters, but this is an opportunity of a lifetime.
As the autumn leaves fall around them, through shared meals and late-night conversations, old wounds and long-buried sparks resurface, and it becomes strikingly clear: June and Adam have unfinished business. Confronted with the consequences of their choices years before, they must now navigate the minefield of their past the best way they know how: together. Second chances are always a risk, but maybe, if they get it right and are finally honest with each other and with themselves, it could be different this time.
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