A Rival Most Vial (Side Quest Row 1), by R.K. Ashwick (2023)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: Sparks of all kinds fly when a new arrival in town opens up a potion shop across the street from the shop of a renowned and reclusive potionmaster

Review: I sometimes find cozy fantasy a bit too light on plot, but this struck the perfect balance between cozy vibes and storytelling. All of the characters pop and the found family element is perfect.

Heart the Lover, by Lily King (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A college student finds herself caught in the orbit of two charismatic male friends, with lasting impacts on all of their lives.

Review: In the past, Lily King novels have fallen into the ‘liked but didn‘t love‘ category for me. But wow is this something special! This is writerly, insightful, and deeply moving, and it could easily find itself at the top of my books of the year. ⬇️

The Sideways Life of Denny Voss, by Holly Kennedy (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A developmentally disabled young man tries to clear his name when he‘s falsely accused of murder.

Review: The most impressive thing about this book, which was longlisted for the Giller this year, is how Kennedy manages to make this sweet and charming despite its rather awful and discomforting subject matter. ⬇️

The Unselected Journal of Emma M. Lion, Vols 1-2, by Beth Brower (2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: The journals of a bright young women who returns to London to claim the strange house in a strange neighborhood that is her inheritance.

Review: This is just so lovely and charming, with the perfect amount of wit and magic. There are currently seven very short volumes of this; this post covers the first two and I‘ll eagerly read on.

⬇️

Pick a Colour, by Souvankham Thammavongsa (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫💫

Premise: Issues of race, class, gender, and power collide in this day in the life of a woman who runs a nail salon.

Review: This does exactly what it sets out to do. As such it‘s extremely successful. But I will say that I wanted a bit more from it.

Sugaring Off, by Fanny Britt (2020, transl. 2024 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A chance accident leaves a lasting mark on the lives and relationship of a Quebec couple.

Review: There are a lot of books about the unexpected deterioration of a marriage, But this took a unique take on that trope, that felt very realistic and earned. ⬇️

The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother), by Rabih Alameddine (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A queer resident of Beirut navigates the many crises of the past sixty years of his country‘s history.

Review: What makes this book so good is that somehow Alameddine makes it delightful and fun despite the very often serious subject matter. An unexpected but deserved choice for the National Book Award list!

Palaver, by Bryan Washington (ARC - Nov 2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: An African American man living in Tokyo receives a visit from his estranged mother.

Review: I had mixed feelings about this book. It does a lot very well, particularly in bringing its Tokyo setting to life, and in the tense, stilted conversations between the two main characters that give it its name. It's a feeling I won't soon forget. ⬇️

We Love You, Bunny (Bunny 2), by Mona Awad (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: The members of a campus cult kidnap the author of a novel exposing their disturbing activities, in order to set the record straight.

Review: Awad‘s 2019 title Bunny was an absolute phenomenon, so I was intrigued to pick up this sequel/prequel, which goes even deeper in its send-up of higher education, the arts, and toxic female friendship. ⬇️

Native Nations, by Kathleen DuVal (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A history of Indigenous peoples within the borders of the United States, with a focus on specific exemplar nations and a summary of recent legal developments.

Review: There‘s a reason why this won the Pulitzer. It is absolutely fantastic. ⬇️

We Survived the End of the World, by Steven Charleston (2023)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: An elder looks at Indigenous prophetic movements from the colonizing era for guidance about how to survive and thrive in our own apocalyptic times.

Review: This book has a tremendous premise. And I was grateful to the author for introducing me to some of the figures and movements about which I had not been aware. That said, I was a bit let down by this. ⬇️

The Road Between Us, by Bindu Suresh (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A series of interconnected stories about contemporary life and the lasting impacts of the traumas we carry.

Review: This Giller-longlisted title was not at all what I was expecting, in good ways. It expertly weaves its disparate threads and diverse characters together. ⬇️

The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A man is called back to his hometown on BC‘s Sunshine Coast after his father disappears in a turn of events that eerily mirrors the disappearance of his brother.

Review: The Giller longlist is really hitting it out of the park this year! It‘s rare to see a mystery on one of these major awards lists, but this is more than deserving. ⬇️

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny, by Kiran Desai (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: In and around the turn of the century, two young Indians navigate migrant life, family expectations, and the long pull of the past.

Review: This is an incredibly special book. In this rather intimate story about two families, Desai was somehow able to explain all of the hopes, dreams, and divisions of our present troubled century. ⬇️

Concerning the Future of Souls: 99 Stories of Azrael, by Joy Williams (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: 99 vignettes about the legendary psychopomp angel Azrael.

Review: This does exactly what it sets out to do, but what it does didn‘t quite work for me. Being a collection of 99 very short stories, it necessarily flits over the surface of some interesting content. So it felt more like butterfly kisses than a story. But tit‘s still good.

Wild Life, by Amanda Leduc (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: In the generations after a strange animal intervention in a young man‘s life, a new religion grows up as the barriers between animals and humanity break down, bringing human society down with them.

Review: This is a strange book, told as a series of interconnected stories set decades apart, and going to some very unexpected places. ⬇️

Pastoral (Quincunx Cycle 1), by André Alexis (2014 ??)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: A priest arrives in his first parish in a small Ontario town and is immediately put to the test by its residents and his own doubts.

Review: This is an old-fashioned kind of story, but effectively so. I was charmed by the townspeople and appreciated the light, yet serious, touch with which the more spiritual themes were handled.⬇️

An Astonishment of Stars, by Kirti Bhadresa (2024 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A collection of short stories largely about life for women of colour in contemporary Canada.

Review: I‘ve had a lot of big wins for story collections the past couple of years, but this really disappointed me, and I‘m a bit surprised it made it onto the Giller Prize longlist. ⬇️

The Wanderer, by Peter van den Ende, illustrator (2020)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A wordless graphic novel that follows a paper boat on its adventures at sea.

Review: The illustrations in this are absolutely stunning, which is a good thing considering they carry the whole weight of the story. I was hoping it would be a bit more than it was, but it‘s beautiful nonetheless

Panenka, by Rónán Hession (2021)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A man carrying the weight of failure for both himself and his whole (unspecified, vaguely European) city struggles to bring meaning to his remaining years.

Review: With two HUGE wins in three weeks, Hession is quickly becoming a favourite author for me. While less ‘charming‘ than his debut, this is still a beautiful and wise book, a needed balm for the soul in a harsh world. ⬇️

Other Worlds, by André Alexis (2025 ??)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A collection of stories about medicine, family, life in Canada‘s Caribbean diaspora, and a small town in which, oddly enough, I spent three years as a kid.

Review: This is quite possibly the best story collection I‘ve read this year. Without exception, they were interesting,insightful, and just the right length. A worthy entry on this year‘s Giller Prize longlist! ⬇️

The Remembered Soldier, by Anjet Daanje (2019, transl. 2025)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A former soldier experiencing severe amnesia and PTSD struggles to recover his memories and life after he is brought home from an asylum by a woman who identifies him as her husband.

Review: This is a stunning, deeply moving literary love story that will reward patient readers. ⬇️

This Is How We Love, by Lisa Moore (2022 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: As a mother races a blizzard back home to be with her son in the aftermath of a vicious assault, generations of stories unspool to explain the complex web of relationships that led them to this moment.

Review: I had a hard time sorting out how I felt about this one. It starts off so strongly, with such intensity that I couldn‘t help but feel let down by the historical pieces. ⬇️

You‘ve Changed, by Ian Williams (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: A visit from old friends reveals the fault lines in a couple‘s relationship, causing them both to reassess their lives and identities.

Review: This is a strange satire that is particularly effective in its send up of 21st-century marriage and self-improvement culture. It also plays with form in some interesting ways. ⬇️

The Paris Express, by Emma Donoghue (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: As the train implicated in the infamous 1895 Montparnasse train wreck rushes towards in doom, we meet a wide assortment of passengers and crew with their own motivations and problems.

Review: There‘s no doubt that this is a successful novel written by one of Canada‘s most reliable authors. But I found this disappointing, ⬇️

A Steady Brightness of Being, edited by Stephanie and Sara Sinclair (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: In memory of the late, great, Senator Murray Sinclair, a collection of open letters written by Indigenous writers from across the continent, to ancestors, descendants, nature, and settler society.

Review: This is a hard book to summarize and one that‘s not really appropriate to critique as such.⬇️

Scorpionfish, by Natalie Bakopoulos (2020)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A Greek-American woman returns to her family‘s Athens apartment, to find the city, country, and her friends changed.

Review: This is a quiet and subtle, yet profound reflection on big themes such as loss, identity, community, belonging, and place. While a small story of this one woman and her friends, the reverberations of global issues are loud. ⬇️

Pan, by Michael Clune (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A suburban teenager begins to associate his panic attacks with incursions from the god Pan after coming into the orbit of a charismatic, drugged-out college student.

Review: This book does a lot well—with disturbing effect. It describes the sensations of panic with chilling accuracy, but also in a way that makes one wonder if being a teenager isn‘t itself one prolonged panic attack.⬇️

Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico (2022, transl. 2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️?

Premise: Millennial creatives in Berlin‘s expat community transition from youth to middle age as the world and opportunities shrink around them.

Review: Sometimes the most discomforting exposé is simply to lay the facts out without comment. And this is what makes this work so effective. ⬇️

Shutter (Rita Todacheene 1), by Ramona Emerson (2022)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: As if life weren‘t complicated enough for heroine Rita, being both a Dine woman who can see ghosts and a forensic photographer, lone spirit insists on tormenting her until she gets her justice.

Review: Though definitely gory in places, this was the palate cleanser I needed in the midst of literary award reading season. ⬇️

The Phoenix Keeper, by S.A. Maclean (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A young zoologist specializing in the conservation of magical creatures and living with severe anxiety must learn to cope with human and not just animal interaction when her zoo has the opportunity to revive its dormant phoenix breeding program. ⬇️

F, by Daniel Kehlmann (2013, transl. 2014)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A trip to see a hypnotist sends three brothers on different yet shared trajectories, when the experience inspires their father to abandon them.

Review: The odd title in theory refers to the main character in a book-within-the-book, but it could equally stand for “Fate,” “Freedom,” “Faith,” or “Fraud,” since each of the brothers‘ stories deal with all of these themes. ⬇️

Leonard and Hungry Paul, by Rónán Hession (2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: Two friends who live the kind of quiet lives often looked down on manage a series of changes prompted by one‘s sister‘s marriage and the other‘s dipping tentative toes into the dating world.

Review: This is an absolutely delightful, big hug of a novel. ⬇️

Looking for Group, by Alexis Hall (2025, originally published 2016)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: Two university students make a surprising connection in an online gaming community.

Review: This is a charming new-adult queer romance. Not only does it describe first love in adorably realistic detail, but it also deals with some interesting social and parasocial issues that I haven‘t seen addressed in other romances. ⬇️

One Boat, by Jonathan Buckley (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️(shock!)

Premise: A woman returns to the same small Greek village nine years after her first visit to grieve, reflect, and connect with herself.

Review: This seems to be among the more polarizing books on this year‘s Booker longlist and I understand why. There are things about it I found infuriating and things that I found utterly captivating. ⬇️

Lengendary Frybread Drive-In, edited by Cynthia Leitech Smith (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A collection of short stories oriented towards a young adult audience about a magical, intertribal Indigenous safe space.

Review: These are sweet stories with great messages, but some felt a little light to me.

Between Two Rivers, by Moudhy Al-Rashid (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A study of the history of Mesopotamia through a series of artifacts found in what has been called the world‘s oldest museum.
⬇️

Once Upon a Tome, by Oliver Darkshire (2022)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A memoir about a young man‘s apprenticeship at an esteemed London antiquarian book dealer.

Review: I discovered the author through his recent novel and was intrigued to learn that he first became known for his unique and humorous takes on a notoriously staid trade. ⬇️

Flesh, by David Szalay (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: The story of a Hungarian bloke from adolescence to middle age.

Review: This Booker longlist title was rough for me, and were I not committed to reading the whole list, it would have been a DNF. Szalay does a great job of introducing his main character; from the first chapter we know exactly who he is. Unfortunately who he is is incredibly passive, with nothing going on in his head or his heart⬇️

A Truce That Is Not Peace, by Miriam Toews (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A colloquium prompt ‘Why do you write?‘ opens a Pandora‘s Box of memory and trauma for this famed Canadian author.

Review: This is probably the strangest memoir I‘ve ever read. ⬇️

Seascraper, by Benjamin Wood (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: In a changing post-War England, a young shrimper sleepwalking through a life weighed down by family legacy and the scandal of his birth is woken up when a glamorous Hollywood director hires him to show him safely around the local beaches.
⬇️

A History of the Bible, by John Barton (2019)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A one-volume history of the creation, reception, and interpretation of the Bible

Review: This book sets a lofty goal and for the most part I think it reached it. ⬇️

Wilderness Tips, by Margaret Atwood (1991 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A collection of short stories by the Canadian literary icon.

Review: This is an interesting collection of stories. While she‘s best known for her novels, to me Atwood excels most in short fiction. Even the things I don‘t like about her writing, particularly her general misanthropy, feel less jarring in short bursts. ⬇️

The Last Guy on Earth (Hockey Guys 3), by Sarina Bowen (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: If coaching a Cup-contender with the league‘s first out player on it isn‘t enough for Colorado‘s closeted head coach to handle, he‘s blindsided when the GM trades for an aging goaltender, whom he‘d never gotten over in the fifteen years since a tryst when they were teammates.
⬇️

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil, by Oliver Darkshire (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: The fates of a dysfunctional married couple take a turn when they come into possession of a wizard‘s grimoire.

Review: It took me three tries to get into this witty fantasy novel, but once I finally settled in, I was blown away by the incredible attention to detail the author put into it. ⬇️

Valentine in Montreal, by Heather O‘Neil (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A sheltered young woman who knows the world primarily through riding the Montreal Metro is pulled into a web of mystery when she sees her doppelganger.

Review: I run hot and cold on O‘Neil‘s books, but one thing she knows how to do is to write her home city. ⬇️This book, originally published as serials in a local newspaper, is r

The Last Gifts of the Universe, by Riley August (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: Two young humans and their intrepid cat Pumpkin search the universe for messages from long-extinct alien species, but are up against an evil corporation who wants to keep any discoveries behind their paywalls.

Review: This was a bit rough around the edges; even at ~200 pages it felt repetitive and plodding in places, and there are plot points that didn‘t feel ‘right‘. ⬇️

Clueless Puckboy (Puckboys 5), by Saxon James and Eden Finley (2023)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A young player struggles with a crush on the team‘s physiotherapist.

Review: The diminishing returns with this series continue here. This is a perfectly serviceable romance, but doesn‘t do anything other than tick off the boxes.

All Systems Red & Artificial Condition (Murderbot Diaries 1 & 2), by Martha Wells (2017-18)—RE-READS
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A cyborg designed to be a weapon of mass destruction but who really just wants to ignore the world and watch their shows struggles to adjust to a new life situation.

Review: Murderbot Diaries is one of my favourite series, so when I recently wanted some easy listens on a vacation, I was excited to revisit these novellas. ⬇️

Coexistence, by Billy-Ray Belcourt (2024 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A collection of stories about Cree men and their search for love and belonging in colonized lands.

Review: I felt that Belcourt‘s earlier book was sociology awkwardly stuffed into a fictional narrative. Here he struck the perfect balance between his critical inferesfs and accessible storytelling. ⬇️