The Weather Detective, by Peter Wohlleben (2012, transl. 2018)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: An exploration of how to get more out of one‘s garden by understanding it as part of the natural environment.

Review: This is a very good book that suffers because of its English translated title, which bears no connection at all to the book‘s content! Cont.

Run for the Hills, by Kevin Wilson (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: Very different people become an unlikely family discover they share the same father and embark on a cross-country road trip to find him and ask why he abandoned them all to forge very different lives for himself.

Review: Wilson is the king of profound but off-kilter fiction, and this is no exception. Cont.

The Wind That Lays Waste, by Selva Almada (2012, transl. 2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: Four lives are changed when an itinerant charismatic pastor and his daughter stop for car repairs at a mechanic shop in drought-ridden rural Argentina.

Review: There‘s a lot to like about this. In barely over a hundred pages, Almada creates and rips open a whole world, with vivid characters and stunning dramatic tension. Cont.

A Night to Surrender (Spindle Cove 1), by Tessa Dare (2011)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: Susanna will do whatever it takes to preserve her seaside village that‘s become a haven for independent women, but she meets her match when their quiet life is disrupted by the arrival of a young lord tasked with setting up a local militia.

Cont

A Month in Siena, by Hisham Matar (2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: The Libyan-British author‘s reflections on a month spent in Siena, adrift after coming to terms with the reality that he will never find out what happened to his father.

Review: Hisham Matar is a brilliant writer (I still can‘t believe his 2024 novel My Friends didn‘t make the Booker short list!) and this short memoir shows why. Cont.

Hey Nostradamus!, By Douglas Coupland (2003 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A 1988 school shooting in Greater Vancouver reverberates across fifteen years.

Review: I graduated high school a year before the 1999 Columbine shooting and was 21 on 9/11, two events which haunt this novel. Cont.

The Shots You Take, by Rachel Reid (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: After not speaking for twelve years, a retired hockey player returns to his former roommate (and occasion lover)‘s home town to try to make amends for the disastrous end of their relationship.

Review: This is a hockey romance, but it‘s not really a hockey romance. Cont

The Last Smile in Sunder City (Fletch Phillips Archives 1), by Luke Arnold (2020)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A hard-boiled private investigator, haunted by his actions in a war that destroyed his world‘s magic, takes the case of a missing vampire.

Review: This was actor Luke Arnold‘s debut, and he set himself a big challenge, having to introduce us to a complex world in addition to his main character and the story itself. Cont.

My Friends, by Fredrik Backman (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A dying artist‘s friends find a kindred spirit in an awkward but talented young woman who has just aged out of foster care.

Review: I had a hard time figuring out how I felt about this at first; I generally find Backman‘s writing to be a little clunky, and here I was also confused because the teenage characters felt far too articulate and self-aware for the story. Cont.

Grimoire Girl, by Hilarie Burton Morgan (2023)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: During a season of loss, an actress reflects on the simple things that provide meaning in life.

Review: I find this hard to rate and review. As a celebrity memoir about the author‘s search for meaning during a trying season this works really well. Cont.

Wolf Hollow, by Lauren Wolk (2016)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A girl in mid-1940s Pennsylvania has to grow up quickly after the arrival of a new girl in town sets off a series of events with lasting consequences for everyone.

Review: This is one of the best middle-grade novels I‘ve read. Cont.

Irresponsible Puckboy (Puckboys 2), by Saxon James and Eden Finley (2022)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: In this friends-to-lovers romance, a clueless but lovable player realizes he may have more-than-friendly feelings for his best friend, who‘s been crushing on him since they met.

Review: This really shouldn‘t have worked; the inciting incident is ridiculous, and all my usual concerns about hockey romances apply. But, it was so much fun. Cont.

The Martian, by Andy Weir (2011)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: An astronaut recounts his desperate attempts at survival after an accident strands him on Mars.

Review: There‘s not much I can say about this that hasn‘t already been said. Cont.

Tales From Beyond the Rainbow, by Pete Jordi Wood (2023)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A collection of queer fairy tales, myths, and legends from around the world.

Review: One of the most damaging lies we‘re told is that queer identities are a new and shocking rupture in human society; that‘s why projects like this one, which collect folklore from around the world that address queer themes and identities are so important. Cont

The Beast and the Bookseller, by Eva Devon (2023)

Premise: In this loose retelling of the Beauty and the Beast, a young bookseller, left to run her father‘s store on her own as he sinks into alcoholism, is thrust into the life of an infamously gruff duke.

Review: This is a pretty solid historical romance, but I felt let down by the ‘third act conflict‘, which seemed to undo the duke‘s whole narrative for no reason.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven, by Nathaniel Ian Miller (2021)

Premise: A Swedish man recounts his hard life as a miner and trapper in the Arctic in the first half of the 20th C.

Review: Much of my early childhood was spent in the North and even in the 1980s it was a place that attracted oddballs and misfits. This novel captures this spirit of the North perfectly, in all its danger, isolation, peace, community, and queerness. Cont

Most Ardently, by Gabe Cole Novoa (2024)

Premise: A queer reimagining of Pride & Prejudice in which the protagonist, Oliver (named Elizabeth by his parents at birth), longs for a way to seen and be loved for his true self in a restrictive society.

Review: Retellings and reimaginings work best for me when the twist both presents something new through a familiar lens and says something interesting about the original. Cont.

I See You‘ve Called in Dead, by John Kenney (2025)

Premise: After a drunkenly posting his own mock death notice, a New York obituary writer looks for the meaning of life and death.

Review: This is a fun, moving, and insightful book. I particularly appreciated how it held certain truths out for us without laying it on too thick; death is after all a mystery that‘s really impossible to write about well. It‘s also a really great New York book. Cont

All the Little Bird-Hearts, by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

Premise: An autistic mother and her daughter become swept up in the life of their glamourous new neighbours.

Review: This was long-listed for the 2023 Booker Prize and it certainly has the literary heft you‘d expect with that. It‘s well-written and has a strong point-of-view that provides good representation for autistic persons. Cont.

Waiting for the Long Night Moon, by Amanda Peters (2024 🇨🇦 🧡)

Premise: A collection of short stories about Indigenous experiences from contact through the present.

Review: Amanda Peters is a wonderful author, so I was excited to pick up this collection of stories. I appreciated the diversity of the collection, in terms of the experiences described, the time periods represented, and even the length of the stories. Cont.

The Art of Doing, by Jesse Lipscombe (2025 🇨🇦)

Premise: A self-help book about the power of getting over yourself and just doing it.

Review: For being a pretty typical self-help book, this is a wild read. Jesie Lipscombe is like the Forrest Gump of opportunity, unwaveringly game to try anything and everything. Cont

Death in the Spires, by KJ Charles (2024)

Premise: Let go from his job after his employer receives a note calling him a murderer, a man tracks down his old college friends to try to find out who killed one of their own.

Review: Every time I read a KJ Charles book I expect a fun, queer, historical romp, but get something far more interesting. This is a compelling mystery that handles privilege and marginalization really successful. Cont

Fifty-Four Pigs (Dr. Bannerman Vet Mysteries 1), by Philipp Schott (2022 🇨🇦)

Premise: An inquisitive and logical rural veterinarian pokes his nose into the mystery of an explosion at a friend‘s farm.

Review: This has a lot going for it: A unique and memorable setting, an engaging main character (whose strengths are also his weaknesses, which pays of in the story), fun details about veterinary life, and a mystery that worked quite well Cont.

The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy 1), by Pat Barker (2018)

Premise: The last days of the Trojan War told through the eyes of Briseis, the enslaved former princess of a Trojan ally whose theft by Agamemnon set off the events of the *Iliad*.

Review: The Greek myth retelling fad got old very quickly for me, but this is one of the best. Cont.

Once Upon You and Me, by Timothy Janovsky (2025)

Premise: A Summer camp manager is caught off guard when he finds himself falling for his boss‘s — and ex-wife‘s — personal assistant.

Review: This is a very sweet, queer, age-gap romance, with great representation for bisexuality and ADHD presentation in adults. It doesn‘t do anything unexpected or spectacular, but it does what it needs to do.
Cont

The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans (2025)

Premise: The story of a life and all its joys and tragedies told through the correspondence of an aging retired lawyer.

Review: This is a truly special book — It‘s a moving and intimate portrait of a strong, good, but deeply flawed woman as she looks back on her life, her successes, and failures, while also grappling with what her old age is going to look like. Cont

The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder (1942)

Premise: In this classic play, humanity is portrayed in microcosm as a conventional, suburban American family.

Review: I‘m often surprised by just how early the pastiche, sense of play, and erasure of the fourth wall that I associate with postmodern literature appears in the canon. Cont.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, by Kim Fu (2022 🇨🇦)

Premise: A collection of speculative short stories that put a creepy spin on contemporary life.

Review: This is a great collection of stories that approach life from a twisted angle that was disturbing but incredibly engaging. Highly recommended.

Bookish Pair: For a similarly fascinating collection of speculative stories, Theodore McCombs‘s Uranians (2023)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis (1954)

Premise: A mediocre college instructor sabotages his career in this searing satire of 1950s British academia and cultured society.

Review: This book regularly features on lists of the best novels of the 20th C, or funniest English-language novels, and I can understand why. But the danger with satire is that it is very specific, and because of this, a lot of this has not aged well. Cont.

Hollow Bamboo, by William Ping (2023 🇨🇦)

Premise: A Newfoundland man is given a unique opportunity to connect with the memories of his Chinese grandfather.

Review: This starts off really strong, with a great smart and funny opening scene, but got a bit lost for me along the way. Cont.

Fishing for the Little Pike, by Juhani Karila (2019, transl. 2023)

Premise: A woman returns home to Lapland on an annual pilgrimage to catch a pike in order to stave off the effects of a curse, but is thwarted by an assortment of creatures from nature and folklore.

Review: Sitting on cusp between fantasy and magical realism, this dumps you off into the deep end in a strange and uncanny northern world. Cont.

Great Big Beautiful Life, by Emily Henry (2025)

Premise: Sparks fly when two writers compete for the opportunity to tell the story of the reclusive heiress of a once-great, scandal-ridden family.

Review: Emily Henry has created a wonderful niche of writing fun and well-written contemporary fiction that gets filed under Romance even though the romance is the secondary plot. Cont.

Treacle Walker, by Alan Garner (2021)

Premise: An isolated boy has his eyes opened to whole new worlds when a rag-and-bone man appears on his doorstep

Review: This was a surprise short-list pick for the 2022 Booker Prize and it definitely has that high literary flair to it. It‘s well-written, well-conceived, and well-executed. I just didn‘t find it all that interesting. It‘s a dull success.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Town with Half the Lights On, by Page Getz (2025)

Premise: A struggling Kansas town gets a new lease on life when a big-city family moves in.

Review: This is a book with wonderful values and a giant heart that is absolutely in the right place. Unfortunately, while I‘m sure this is the last thing the author would have wanted (she is from Kansas), it came across as a bit of a ‘coastal big city‘ version of the ‘white saviour‘ phenomenon. Cont.

The Murder of Mr. Ma, by John Shen Yen Nee & S.J. Rozan (2024)

Premise: When the police seem uninterested in solving a series of murders in 1920s London‘s Chinese community, a visiting Chinese judge and his lecturer sidekick take up the investigation.
Cont

Binge, by Douglas Coupland (2021 🇨🇦)

Premise: A collection of sixty loosely connected (very) short stories, all coming at contemporary life from a slightly odd angle

Review: The subtitle to this collection is ”60 stories to make your brain feel different,” and that‘s as good a way to describe this as any. Cont.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain (1934)

Premise: A drifter arrives at a California service station, setting off a dark chain of events.

Review: This classic is noir fiction at its absolute best: atmospheric, hard-boiled, and no-holds-barred
Cont.

That‘s What She Said, by Eleanor Pilcher (2025)

Premise: The friendship between two young London women is strained when one takes the other‘s strange request — to help her both to lose her virginity and understand her body better — a bit too far.

Review: At its best this debut is a fun exploration of contemporary urban life and female friendship, with lots of unique representation (particularly for demisexuality). Cont.

Rizzo, by Denise Mina (2021)

Premise: A novella reconstructing the events of an attempted palace coup in in the court of Mary Queen of Scots in 1566, revolving around the assassination of her private secretary, David Rizzio.

Review: I really enjoyed this, and, I think, all the more for its brevity. Cont.

The Thief Lord, by Cornelia Funke (2000, transl. 2002)

Premise: A lovable gang of orphans living in an abandoned theatre in Venice undertake the theft of a mysterious object connected to the city‘s magical lore.

Review: This was a wonderfully enjoyable middle grade novel, featuring easy-to-root-for characters and lots of mystery and adventure. Cont.

The Nothing Man, by Catherine Ryan Howard (2020)

Premise: A man reads a true crime book written by the lone survivor of one of his twenty-year-old crimes.

Review: I don‘t read a lot of thrillers (or in this case thriller-adjacent books) but I try to pick up at least a few each year. I‘d been hearing the praises of this one for years and I‘m very glad I finally picked it up. Cont.

Two Can Play, by Ali Hazelwood (2024)

Premise: Video-game designer Viola is conflicted when she gets the chance to create a game based on her favourite novel series, on the condition that her company collaborate with its archrival, whose proposal is being led by a man who wants nothing to do with her (and who also happens to be her longstanding crush).
Cont.

Enlighten Me, by Minh Lê (illustrated by Chan Chau) (2023)

Premise: A graphic novel for children introducing some basic tenets and stories of Buddhism.

Review: This was surprisingly fun, sort of a like a kids‘ introduction to Buddhism crossed with the 8-bit adventure of Scott Pilgrim. I do wish however there was more story. Cont.

Blood over Bright Haven, by M.L. Wang (2024)

Premise: An ambitious young woman has staked everyone on becoming her society‘s first female high mage, but soon discovers a horrific secret underlying everything she thought she knew.

Review: This is a chilling book, all the more for the way it is all too reminiscent of our own world and the comfortable lies we tell ourselves to hide from inconvenient truths.
Cont

The Late Monsieur Gallet (aka Maigret Stonewalled) (Inspector Maigret), by Georges Simenon (1931)

Premise: Inspector Maigret is called to Sancerre to investigate a murder, but the more he investigates the less everything makes sense.

Review: I find the Maigret novels really hit or miss, and sadly this was a miss for me. Cont

Essential Writings, by Mother Maria Skobtsova (collected 2002)

Premise: Collected texts by the 20th C theologian and justice advocate Mother Maria of Paris.

Review: This is a fascinating collection that includes texts not otherwise available in English translation. Mother Maria‘s incisive intellect, loving heart, and unique point of view come through in every essay. Cont.

Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment 2), by Rebecca Ross (2023)

Premise: As the war between the gods intensifies, newlyweds Roman and Iris find themselves on opposite sides of the battle.

Review: The second half of this duology does what it needs to do in bringing the story to a satisfying enough conclusion. Cont.

Everything Is Tuberculosis, by John Green (2025)

Premise: A popular-level take on the history, science, and increasingly sociology, of humanity‘s deadliest disease.

Review: The Green brothers just seem like genuinely delightful, whip-smart, gracious, and deeply curious people, and this book hits on all those strengths. Cont.

Strange Pictures, by Uketsu (2022, transl. 2025)

Premise: Apparently disconnected creepy stories fit together to create a disturbing story.

Review: WOW! I can‘t say too much about this without spoiling anything. But, if you love a mystery and can stomach some violence and disturbing imagery, do yourself a favour and read this!

Bookish Pair: For another Japanese puzzle story, Kinae Minato‘s Confessions (2010, transl. 2014)

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Murder by Memory (Dorothy Gentleman 1), by Olivia Waite (2025)

Premise: On a space ship carrying a remnant of humanity to a new home, the ship‘s detective‘s mind wakes up in a stranger‘s body after years of dormancy — a stranger she quickly suspects may have committed a murder.
Cont.