Nights When Nothing Happened is a slow burn novel pulled taught, great for fans of short stories and striking prose.

White Ivy is a sharp, almost dark, and surprising book about a woman who will go to any lengths to get what she wants. Dramatic yet honest, it also has an ending that will drop your jaw.

The Bone Shard Daughter is the start of what promises to be a fantastic adventure. The characters are lovable and the magic system is fascinating. I can’t wait for book 2!

The Shadow King is a difficult read that has gorgeous sentences. It refuses to look away from the violent truths of a period of history that’s little known by the rest of the world.

Home Fire is a quick but hard-hitting read about xenophobia. It’s a raw, emotional, expertly crafted novel that asks readers to examine their own morality.

I found Actress to be beautiful on a sentence level, but it felt just okay to me overall. I didn’t dislike it, but I didn’t feel as connected to it as I’d hoped.

Brutal, raw, and incredibly told, The Glorious Heresies will grab your heart when you’re not looking and then crack it wide open. I can see why it won so many prizes.

Kept Animals is an incredibly paced, gutting novel about growing up, fitting in, navigating class, and the reverberations of choices and trauma.

How to Be Both is a fascinating novel broken into two parts, which can be read in any order. I enjoyed it and I’m eager to read more Ali Smith.

Reading this book felt like sinking into a pile of fall leaves wrapped in a plaid blanket with candles lit and a mug of hot apple cider. I haven’t read Practical Magic, but it seems like a fantastic prequel.

Approachable but with significant depth, Transcendent Kingdom is contemporary literary fiction at its finest. I really, really enjoyed it, even though it was a tough read at times.

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is devastatingly incredible, but also technically challenging and possibly the most emotionally difficult book I’ve read. But incredible.

The New Wilderness is an immersive, quietly excellent book about survival, motherhood, growing up, and the beauty of the world around us. I really liked it.

May We Be Forgiven is about a man who finds a sense of family after his brother suffers a violent mental break. It was well-written, but not quite my favorite.

Hamnet — a historical imagining about the death of William Shakespeare’s son — is so incredibly good. So beautiful, so sad, so impressive.

The Tiger’s Wife is so, so beautiful and compelling. This is storytelling at its best, and I’ll be recommending it for probably the rest of my life.

I totally loved A Song of Wraiths and Ruin. It has a fantastic tangly plot, intensely lovable characters, and a top-notch ending.

The stories in Daddy is certainly well crafted. But I think I’m in the minority in that these stories just didn’t really compel me through them.