Floating Hotel, by Grace Curtis (2024)

Premise: The stories of the passengers and crew of a spaceship hotel whose best days are behind it.

Review: This is branded as ‘cozy sci fi‘, and while it takes place in space and has low-stakes, character-driven stories, it felt too distant to be cozy. It also could have been set at a grand European hotel during WWII with very little change. Cont.

We Are All Made of Molecules, by Susin Nielsen (2015 🇨🇦)

Premise: Two Vancouver teenagers adjust to challenging new realities when their parents decide to move together and blend their families.

Review: This is a rare YA novel with characters who read as young as they are, which is a bit jarring since the book deals with some mature themes. I thought this was pretty successful and had some lovely messages about belonging and found family. Cont

Hunchback, by Saou Ichikawa (2023, transl. 2025)

Premise: A woman living with myotubular myopathy navigates complex social and parasocial relationships.

Review: This novella is without a doubt one of the most unique and shocking books I‘ve ever read. Cont.

The Secret History of Sharks, by John Long (2024)

Premise: A comprehensive introduction to the long history and evolution of sharks

Review: There is no question that John Long knows his stuff and is able to communicate complex material effectively. I learned more about sharks than I ever wanted to. Cont.

Street of Riches, by Gabrielle Roy (1955, trans. 1957 🇨🇦)

Premise: A series of stories about the author‘s childhood in Manitoba‘s francophone community.

Review: This was a marvelous surprise. These stories — seventy years old themselves, but recounting events of thirty years earlier — strike a perfect balance: You feel the foreignness of this version of Canada from a century ago, while also seeing the seeds for the country we‘ve become. Cont.

Lunar New Year Love Story, by Gene Luen Yang (illustrated byLeUyen Pham) (2024)

Premise: A Vietnamese-American teenager is pulled in many directions after she learns of a family curse that means they are all destined to fail at love.

Review: This was a bit of a mixed bag for me, largely because there were a few too many things stuffed in this particular bag for my liking. Cont.

Harriet Tubman, Live in Concert, by Bob the Drag Queen (2025)

Premise: In an alternative present where figures from the past have come back to life, a queer Black music producer is confronted with his own internalized oppression when Harriet Tubman asks him to make a record with her.

Review: I really wanted this to be something special, but while it has moments of genuine insight, it didn‘t quite get there for me. Cont.

The Unseen World, by Liz Moore (2016)

Premise: As her odd but doting father recedes into dementia, a young woman discovers that he wasn‘t who he said he was.

Review: This is unquestionably one of the best books I‘ll read this year and I‘m shocked I hadn‘t heard about it until this week!
Cont.

The Lost Library, by Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass (2023)

Premise: A boy becomes fascinated with the mystery of his town‘s library, which burned down in 1999 under mysterious circumstances.

Review: This is a fun middle grade romp with a memorable set of characters, and a lovely father-son relationship. The problems come if you think about the plot or need a satisfying conclusion to the mystery
Cont.

A Sweet Sting of Salt, by Rose Sutherland (2024 🇨🇦)

Premise: A queer take on the Selkie Wife legend set in 19th C Nova Scotia

Review: This is a legend ripe for a postmodern retelling, and this works really well. I loved the main character and her found family, and the selkie wife herself more than holds her own in a frightening situation. It‘s not perfect but a great read nonetheless.

Jennie‘s Boy, by Wayne Johnston (2023 🇨🇦)

Premise: A memoir of the author‘s childhood living with chronic illness in an impoverished Newfoundland community.

Review: This is close to being a perfect memoir: full of humour, insight, and vulnerability. It does a fantastic job of showing the reader the insecurity of growing up in illness, poverty, and as the child of an alcoholic, but also the power of familial love.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ghosts, by Dolly Alderton (2020)

Premise: An English woman struggles to manage the ever-shifting dynamics of fading friendships, aging parents, and the horror that is twenty-first-century dating.

Review: I‘m pretty sure no author has been able to articulate the highs, lows, and humiliations of the millennial generation as well as Dolly Alderton. Cont.

The Abbey, by James Martin(2015)

Premise: Two suburbanites are drawn into the life of a local monastery.

Review: A good effort at fiction by a popular nonfiction writer, but this probably should have stayed a nonfiction ‘monasticism for dummies‘ book.
Cont.

Stop Me If You‘ve Heard This One, by Kristen Arnett (2025)

Premise: A Florida clown struggles with her career and relationships and the ghosts of the past.

Review: This is sharp, biting, and unflinching, especially when it makes the main character look bad. But I‘ve read many books by queer women that share this sensibility and I definitely felt the diminished returns here. Cont

Water Moon, by Samantha Sotto Yambao (2025)

Premise: The new proprietress of a magical pawn shop teams up with an unsuspecting physicist to track down her missing father.

Review: I was really excited about this one, but I have to say it completely let me down.
Cont.

Lunar Boy, by Jes and Cin Wibowo (2024)

Premise: Set in a futuristic world steeped in Austronesian culture, an adopted child comes to terms with his trans identity, new family, and the cultural impacts of colonialism.
Cont

Into the Woods, by Jenny Holiday (2025)

Premise: In order to reinforce a ‘no more men‘ resolution after being burned out on dating apps, a Minnesotan dance instructor takes a position as a mentor at a summer camp for artistic teens. But fate may have other things in mind, when she meets the grumpy rockstar facing life transitions of his own.
Cont.

Tartufo, by Kira Jane Buxton (2025)

Premise: The eccentric residents of a dying Tuscan village dare to hope their prayers have been answered when the world‘s largest truffle is found in their woods.

Cont.

Murder Most Royal (Her Majesty the Queen Investigates 3), by S.J. Bennett (2022)

Premise: Her Majesty‘s Christmas celebrations are interrupted by the discovery of a severed hand on the beach near her Sandringham Estate, a hand bearing a signet ring she instantly recognizes.

Review: This is another solid entry in this charming series. The Christmas vibes were fun, and the setting of the end of 2016 added an interesting element to the story.
Cont

Here, by Richard McGuire (2014)

Premise: The story of a room across the generations of its inhabitants.

Review: This is a brilliant premise brilliantly executed. You really just have to see it to appreciate it.

Bookish Pair: A literary version of this idea was well-executed in North Woods, by Daniel Mason (2023)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🖼️ Graphic Novel

🕰️ Historical

Medium: Graphic Novel

All That It Ever Meant, by Blessing Musariri (2023)

Premise: Reeling following a family tragedy, a Black British girl is taken back to her parents‘ native Zimbabwe to regroup.

Review: Despite doing a lot well, this didn‘t hit for me. But I‘m also very aware that I‘m not the target audience for it, and I have little doubt it would work better for those living in a diaspora or immigrant context. Cont.

The Resurrectionist, by A. Rae Dunlap (2024)

Premise: A naive member of the gentry arrives in 19th C Edinburgh, excited to jump head on into the vanguard of the new science of medicine, but is quickly drawn into the seedy realities required by his new passion.
Cont.

Premise: A young woman at loose ends is forced to solve the mystery of her paranoid great aunt‘s murder in order to receive a life-changing inheritance and keep a small town safe from developers.
Cont

Story of a Soul, by St. Thérèse of Lisieux (ms. 1890s, pub. 1922)

Premise: The spiritual autobiography of a young French nun, whose simple wisdom has inspired generations.

Review: I decided to pick this up again after I read Mariette in Ecstasy last week, since I knew there were a lot of similarities between the lead character in this novel and St. Thérèse. Cont.

A Love Song for Ricki Wilde, by Tia Williams (2024)

Premise: Determined to make her own way in the world, the youngest and ‘disappointing‘ daughter of a prosperous Black family moves to Harlem to set up a flower shop. But as she establishes herself there, she becomes haunted by both the neighbourhood‘s disappearing history and a strange and beautiful man she can‘t stop bumping into. Cont.

Kwame Crashes the Underworld (Kwame Powell 1), by Craig Kofi Farmer (2024)

Premise: As he prepares to travel to Ghana for his grandmother‘s funeral, a Carolina boy is pulled into a dangerous adventure in the underworld of West African lore.

Review: This does a lot well, but was ultimately a disappointment for me. Cont.

Life Hacks for a Little Alien, by Alice Franklin (2025)

Premise: Told in second person, the story of what it‘s like to grow up neurodivergent in a world in which one feels utterly alien.

Review: When we talk about ‘window‘ books, this is the kind of book we talk about. The descriptions of the main character‘s confusion at the world and its response to her are as visceral as they are heartbreaking. Cont.

The Widows of Malabar Hill (Parveen Mistry 1), by Sujata Massey (2018)

Premise: India‘s first female solicitor takes the case of three Muslim widows living in seclusion, but must think quickly when the estate‘s overseer is found dead.

Review: This was a fascinating novel. The mystery was compelling but I appreciated it most as a window into the complex relationships between ethnic and religious communities in India under British rule. Cont

Isaac‘s Song, by Daniel Black (2025)

Premise: A Black gay man tasked with writing the story of his relationship with his estranged father uncovers inconvenient truths that upend his assumptions.

Review: While I don‘t think that for me this hit quite as hard as his previous book, this is still an incredible and powerful work of art. Cont.

A Minor Chorus, by Billy-Ray Belcourt (2022 🇨🇦)

Premise: An Indigenous graduate student, jaded by the institutional game and the broader lack of effective action on Indigenous Reconciliation in Canada, returns to his home community to find the voice for the novel he knows he has within him.

Review: This is incredibly well-done and is thought-provoking in all the best, most challenging ways. Cont.

Oscar Wars, by Michael Schulman (2023)

Premise: A history of the Academy Awards told through the stories of several pivotal moments across the decades.

Review: This is a fascinating and generally successful piece of nonfiction. My only struggle with it is the decision to tell the story of the Oscars through long, in-depth vignettes, rather than through a traditional survey. (Cont.)