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Fifteen Books, One Overwhelmed Reader: My January 2026 Reading Recap
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Imagine if Robert Langdon went on a brainy European vacation and you were invited along, only to realize halfway through that you kind of wish you’d stayed home and reread The Da Vinci Code instead. That, for me, is The Secret of Secrets. It’s classi...
The Secret of Secrets: A Novel
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune was not my typical type of read—I’m usually knee-deep in moody literary fiction or historical drama—but this one completely caught me off guard. It’s whimsical and heartwarming in all the best ways, a found-f...
The House in the Cerulean Sea
Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church by Kevin Sack isn’t just a history lesson—it’s a heartbeat that’s lasted through slavery, civil rights marches, and unspeakable tragedy. Sack traces the story...
Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church
John Grisham’s The Widow reminds you why he’s still the reigning champ of the legal thriller—a writer who just keeps cranking out winners like it’s effortless. The story hooks you immediately, swirling with courtroom tension, moral gray zones, and th...
The Widow: A Novel
I went into The Tell knowing almost nothing—just a few lines from Oprah calling it an extraordinary memoir—and honestly, that was the perfect way to meet this book. Within a few pages, I went from “let me just sample this” to “please don’t talk to me...
The Tell: A Memoir
So Far Gone by Jess Walter isn’t a perfect read, but wow, it knows how to grab you from the first page. The story kicks off with a desperate rescue — a grandfather risking everything to pull his daughter and grandkids out of a fundamentalist cult — a...
So Far Gone: A Novel
I’ll admit, Dear Mrs. Bird by AJ Pearce wasn’t love at first sight. The cover felt a little too jaunty, the premise too “WWII-light.” I thought I was picking up a charming slice of wartime fluff — something quaint and forgettable. But then, quite wit...
Dear Mrs. Bird: A Novel
Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky is a luminous meditation on water — not just as a natural force, but as a metaphor for memory, migration, and the human heart. Through her signature blend of magic, melancholy, and empathy, Shafak traces how ...
There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead is a sweeping, time-bending tribute to the women who dared to fly before the world believed they could. At its heart is Marian Graves, a fearless aviator tracing her own route through the clouds and across eras, refus...
Great Circle (Man Booker Prize Finalist)
I went into Mona’s Eyes by Thomas Schlesser expecting an emotional, art-soaked journey that would leave me breathless. What I got instead felt more like sitting through an undergraduate lecture on art history—informative, sure, but not exactly what I...
Mona's Eyes
Sue Miller’s novel Monogamy opens with a jolt: Annie, a woman in her sixties, wakes up beside her husband Graham and slowly realizes he has died in the night. From there, Miller unspools a life—two lives, really—dense with love, regret, laughter, bet...
Monogamy: A Novel
Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce lures you in with the promise of a tidy legal thriller—polished characters, serious cases, a bit of courtroom drama. But within a few chapters, that illusion burns away. What you get instead is a raw, booze-soaked, nerve-...
Blood Orange
Imagine signing up for a little armchair history and instead getting dropped onto a splintered ship in the howling Drake Passage, salt in your teeth and dread in your stomach. That’s what The Wager by David Grann feels like: you open the book on your...
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
After years of sitting patiently on my TBR, The Virgin Suicides finally found its moment—and I’m so glad it did. Jeffrey Eugenides captures that aching, nostalgic haze of adolescence so vividly that I felt like I’d stepped right back into the 1970s. ...
The Virgin Suicides: A Novel
I picked up Great Big Beautiful Life expecting another breezy Emily Henry rom-com: witty banter, slow-burn tension, a meet-cute kissed by sunshine. What I didn’t expect was a story that sucker-punched me right in the feelings — tender, wise, and unex...
Great Big Beautiful Life