THE HITCH – Sara Levine

“Some part of me found it pleasurable to be, at last, out of control.”

 Sara Levine’s The Hitch (Roxane Gay Books 2026) is hilarious, outrageous, mad, quirky, and positively bizarre. And I enjoyed every bit of it. Rose Cutler, a self-described antiracist, secular Jewish feminist eco-warrior, is a bit of a lonely, know-it-all neurotic dog woman. (The best dog people tend to be neurotic.  Trust me. I would know.)  Her first-person narration in this novel is PERFECTION – with every moment perfectly in character (including word choice and internal monologue). I did get a bit concerned that Rose would change as we steamrolled toward the ending, but I shouldn’t have worried – there was no neatly packaged resolution here, just more welcomed chaos and more unapologetically Rose Rose.  It was a fun novel.

Rose convinces her nephew’s parents to let her babysit him for a week while they go on vacation to fix their marriage. Long convinced she can parent Nathan better than them, Rose is eager for the time. But the day after they dropped him off, Rose’s Newfie, Walter, kills a corgi named Hazel while Rose, Nathan, and Hazel’s owner can only watch. (Hazel was on a flexi.  This could have all been avoided had the dog been on a regular lead… perchance I saw a bit of myself in Rose. Ha) As horrific as that sounds, Hazel’s spirit jumps over into Nathan, delighting the young boy.  He is so happy with his “inside dog,” and Rose hasn’t a clue how to proceed. He starts barking, talking to himself, telling horrible knock-knock jokes, and seems to know a lot of things. Rose realizes it is Hazel coming through. She encourages him to “be the alpha” while madly researching how to banish the dog’s spirit from her beloved nephew’s body before his parents get home.

At its quirky little heart, this is a novel about loneliness and the family we make. It’s about letting go and enjoying the ride. Not everyone will enjoy this one, but I found it fantastic palate cleanser of a hoot and a half.

ERADICATION: A FABLE – Jonathan Miles

“The problem is that history leaves a slime trail, like a snail.”

Jonathan Miles’s Eradication: A Fable (Doubleday 2026) is next up on my Booker eligible reads. Even before realizing Maria Reva had written one of the blurbs, I was calling it Endling meets Seascraper meets Stone Yard Devotional. Despite some pretty graphic scenes of illegal shark hunting and killing of goats, I really enjoyed this novel and what Miles was doing with his “fable.”

Adi, a former jazz musician turned schoolteacher, answers an ad to “save the world” in an effort to deal the fact his world has crumbled, and he is barely holding on. He didn’t really know what the job would entail, but he didn’t turn it down once he learned. He applied for a five-week assignment on an isolated Pacific Island. His task was to eradicate the thousands of goats that have destroyed the flora and fauna of the island – goats humans placed there decades before that have taken over the island.

Adi has never shot a gun before.  He was asked to, but he refused, and now it’s his job. As he struggles with the task at hand, his past reveals itself with heartbreaking details and beautiful moments. (Turning the goat horn into a “clarinet” and playing the lullabies he’d played for his son for the goats? Oh, my heart._ But also, the life on the island reveals itself – life he’s been told isn’t there.  Maybe the goats aren’t the problem. The island is littered with trash that has washed up; even the foundation that hired him packs countless plastic bottles for his use and convenience.  And then he encounters the shark finners, and the job becomes a lot more dangerous.

Adi has a choice to make, and this time his finger is on the trigger.

I know my Booker “hopefuls” have a tendency to be very “American” heavy, and a part of that is easier access to those works. This is  not surprisingly another one that would make my list.  It’s weird. It’s funny. It’s quite the brilliant and urgent meditative novel.

Read this book.

VIGIL – George Saunders

Not long into George Saunders’s Vigil (Random House 2026), I remarked that it was a bit Charles Dickens meets Tom Stoppard – to be more exact, it’s A Christmas Carol meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with a strong nod to the Stoppard play. You would think that those echoes would be enough to have me LOVING this novel, but alas, I really didn’t enjoy it that much. But I know why  – the voice of Jill “Doll” Blaine annoyed the crap out of me.  Had she died younger, I could get on board with some of it.  Don’t get me wrong, 22 isn’t old by any means, and some of that naiveté born of lack of experience  works extremely well juxtaposed with her experiences as a “ghost” who has watched the world “grow up” around her.  But her childishness was off-putting, especially in word choice. I nearly expected a 6-7 joke to show up. (Also, I hope to never see “butthurt” in a book again.)  At times, Jill also spoke like someone who lived in the gangster era of the US, not the peace, love, harmony era of the early 1970s. Some of the inconsistencies in voice are intended and make sense based on the plot and her experiences, others just seem sloppy as if there was some back and forth about when Jill should have been alive.

As for the novel, a Texas oil tycoon is on his death bed and Jill comes to his side to bring him comfort as he crosses. Only he doesn’t want comfort. And he sure as shit isn’t remorseful for all the harm he’s done. Others of “her ilk” join Jill, including a Frenchman who created the engine and is hellbent on making Jill’s charge see the “light” and repent before he dies.  The nod to the Stoppard play comes in with two other ghosts who used to work for the tycoon referred to primarily as R and G.

My favorite scene involves other ghosts who have nothing to do with the tycoon and are all just hanging out where they died.  They died at different times and in different ways, but they’re all hanging out together. It reminds me a bit of the sitcom “Ghosts.”

This is my first Saunders, and I am underwhelmed enough to likely not seek out his backlog.  His Booker win came during my so-called “literary dark days” so it just passed me by, and I really don’t think I’ll loop back to it.  As for Vigil, I wish the entire novel had been like the last third, which was remarkably more enjoyable the first two thirds.

Should you read it?

Eh. It’s short. It is funny. It is well-written in many ways. I just found parts of it rather off-putting, making it not that enjoyable for me.  Maybe my expectations were too high.

THIS IS WHERE THE SERPENT LIVES – Daniyal Mueenuddin

Daniyal Mueenuddin’s This is Where the Serpent Lives  (Knopf 2026) reads like Chekhov wrote a Dickens’s plot. This highly anticipated debut novel by Mueenuddin, whose short story collection was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer (among others), is likely to be a strong contender come awards season. Will it make the Booker longlist? I think it’s likely.

Consisting of essentially four interconnected novellas, This is Where the Serpent Lives spans 1955-2013, showcasing the feudal attitude of the elite, and the entitlement and influence they wielded while also centering the servants who run their homes, know their secrets, and clean up their messes.  Yazid, found on the streets as a small boy and raised in a tea shop, is the anchor of the four novellas, though he is not the focus.

The opening novella “The Golden Boy” is Yazid’s story, and likely my favorite. Yazid reminded me a bit of Szalay’sIstvan, particularly in how Yazid holds the reader at arm’s length and handles his emotions.  The second novella “Muscle” is my least favorite. It follows the American-educated Rustom who has to enlist his own thugs to protect his stronghold from a neighbor who has the authorities in his pocket.  “The Clean Release” is the backstory of Rustom’s cousin, Hisham, and how he stole his wife from his brother. Yazid has been “passed down” to Hisham and is his servant, though Hisham does have issues with boundaries when its convenient for him. This was likely my second favorite of the four.  The titular novella follows Saqib, the son of Hisham’s family’s gardener who has become a trusted servant and a bit of Hisham’s wife’s “pet.” As he comes more trusted, he begins to “cook the books,” siphoning off money until he’s caught and reminded that he will never be “one of them.”

The novel opens with an orphaned boy holding his shoes, a life starting over, and ends with a broken young man putting on his shoes, a life starting over. The shoes stuck with me for both.

It’s a remarkable novel, but the arm’s length approach combined with interconnected novella form kept me from being fully invested.  I admire what Mueenuddin has done, but I didn’t love the novel.

BURN DOWN MASTER’S HOUSE – Clay Cane

“Remembering is an act of brilliant opposition.”

Clay Cane’s Burn Down Master’s House (Kensington Publishing Corp.) will make you extremely uncomfortable.  Spoiler alert – it’s supposed to. No matter the attempts to erase the horrors of slavery from this country’s past, to whitewash the repeated crimes against black and brown bodies, the truth remains – and the truth is ugly. Cane isn’t hiding the ball here – he tells us exactly what this novel is and why it’s important. He breathes life into stolen lives and stories, pushing back against a narrative that folks continue to advance because it makes them “feel better” about this tainted past. Get uncomfortable.

The novel is based on true stories of enslaved peoples, and it follows their resistance and hope. As dreadful as it is, it barely scratches the surface of how horrific a life of a slave truly was.  The novel opens with Henri, a young man who is sold to Magnolia Row, a plantation in Virginia, because he is unable to “perform” and impregnant another slave.  (This concept of “breeding” slaves was common.)  What follows is a rise to resistance and an uprising long remembered.

The next section of the novel follows Josephine, a young woman who ends up at another plantation after Magnolia Row is burned down.  I think we all know how female slaves were used. She has fire in her eyes, and she spearheads another resistance.

Through Josephine, we meet Larkin, a former slave who is now a blacksmith in Gettysburg. Through him, we are introduced to Charity, a slave from Maryland who becomes his wife and tries to use PA law to advance her freedom. After years of a legal battle, Charity is “returned” to the man who claims ownership of her life and her offspring.  It is through their children that another resistance is born.

The novel ends with Nathaniel, a Black slave owner. As he faces a swift justice for his own horrific crimes, a former slave from Magnolia Row, one involved in that initial uprising, shows up with the army. 

And a fire still burns.

Read this book.

WESTWARD WOMEN – Alice Martin

“That’s how it goes, I guess. Sometimes you need to hurt first so you can finally go numb.”

I went into Alice Martin’s Westward Women ( St. Martin’s Press 2026) entirely blind, and I can’t decide if that was a help or a hindrance to my reading experience.  It’s a buzzy new release and Martin is from NC – that is all I knew going in. I certainly wasn’t expecting a genre-blending thriller with horror elements. I would say it’s When Women Were Dragons meets Charles Manson. There are some really good things going in the novel such that I was surprised it’s a debut, but it ultimately fell flat for me due to pacing.

The novel is set in the 1970s with a pandemic effecting women ages 18-35. Infected women grow listless, scratching at their skin and seeking to make their way westward. Many die. The CDC doesn’t know how it’s spread or really anything about the disease. Different women have different symptoms, with some exhibiting worse signs than others, and some recovering without issue. There is also speculation that some are carriers. A man called only the Piper drives his van from the east coast to the west coast, offering safe passage for the inflicted women.

The novel follows three women – Aimee a recent college graduate trying to find her infected friend Ginny; Teenie, a young infected girl who has joined the Piper, and who is struggling to keep her memories intact, with the memory of the last day she saw her sister before she vanished all she seems able to hold on to; and Eve, a journalist with a history of running away. There is also a second person POV, with the identity apparent pretty early on but revealed toward the end.

I don’t want to tell you what happens because this is a thriller, and the story should unfold organically for you. I will say it wasn’t for me simply because of pacing – I like a slow burn, even with a thriller, but I found myself not caring what the resolution was.  Martin is a talented writer and I’d likely read more things from her, but this didn’t work for me.

TANGERINN – Emanuela Anechoum (translated by Lucy Rand)

“You died on a random day and, like on any other random day, I wasn’t there. Between us there were two thousand kilometers and all the things left unsaid.”

If you’re like me and a member of the Dead Dads Club, Emanuela Anechoum’s Tangerinn (translated from the Italian by Lucy Rand, translated copyright 2026 Europa Editions) will make your throat tight and your eyes burn. At the heart of this fantastic novel, is a young woman missing her dad.

The novel is told in second person, with Mina addressing “you,” her recently deceased father. She is living in London when her sister calls and tells her that their father has died. She returns to the Calabrian coast of Italy where her Moroccan-born father, Omar, and her free-spirited mom, Bertie, had raised them. Her sister presents a letter her father had written her requesting she stay and run his bar, the Tangerinn, with her sister. Mina isn’t able to finish the letter until much later.

The ghost of Mina’s father lives on every page as Mina struggles with loss, regrets, and her own identity. She was made in her dad’s likeness, and they were extremely close until she reached puberty. Her sister has the fairer skin and hair of their mother, and Mina always felt Bertie loved Alisha more whereas she felt her dad was her person. When a disconnect grew between her and Omar, Mina felt a bit unloved and abandoned, which prompted her “escape” to London. Once there, she kept her family, including Omar, at arm’s length.

The novel beautifully crafts Mina’s story with Omar’s, a history repeating itself in many ways – a father who paved a pathway to allow Mina to find her own way. It’s heavy with a sense of home and family, of being unmoored and lost, and finding one’s roots.

I loved every bit of it, and that translation is impeccable.

EVERY ONE STILL HERE – Liadan Ní Chuinn

Wrapped in a shroud of mystery and intrigue, Liadan Ní Chuinn’s short story collection Every One Still Here (FSG Originals 2026 – First American Edition) has created a bit of a literary buzz. The main question? Who exactly is Liadan Ní Chuinn? The author of the collection has elected to go anonymous, opting for a pseudonym that translates to “Grey Lady, Daughter of Wisdom.” We know they were born in 1998, and they are from the north of Ireland. They don’t give in-person interviews, wishing to stay anon and let the work speak for itself. It doesn’t speak – it SCREAMS.

The slim volume of six short stories opens with “We All Go,” a heartbreaking look at generational guilt, grief, and trauma. Jackie’s grief over the death of his father and his anger and grief over The Troubles take center stage. The bloody and violent decades long conflict is at the heart of the volume, with each story bruised with the past. And the author, born at the end of The Troubles, without a name or face, has become the voice of a generation, and it is that voice that screams.

My favorites of the collection are “We all Go” and “Russia,” the story of adopted siblings and a protest of bodies on display at a local museum. The collection concludes with “Daisy Hill,” where real life victims of The Troubles are named and remembered.

Read this book.

KIN – Tayari Jones

“Your first word was “mother,” and I think it will be the last one I say before they put me in the dirt.”

While I own An American Marriage, Kin (Knopf 2026)is my first Tayari Jones novel, and I must admit to being disappointed. I love Jones’s writing – it is familiar and welcoming, a rhythm to the storytelling that makes it positively captivating. And I love the characters and the settings. Arguably, I should have loved this book because I love the pieces. But I am disappointed.

Kin is the story of two “cradle friends,” Annie Kay and Vernice “Niecy” from Honeysuckle, Louisiana. (That cover is absolutely GORGEOUS.) Annie Kay’s mother abandoned her as a baby, and she is raised by her grandmother. Vernice’s mother is killed by her father when she is a baby, and she is raised by an aunt. The two motherless girls are best friends their whole lives, but they are very different individuals with very different paths.

Niecy heads to Spelman College in Atlanta in search of a better life and Annie heads to Memphis in search of her mama. The novel alternates their experiences, which are so vastly different. Despite these differences, or perhaps because they’ve known since the cradle they were born to walk different paths, their friendship remains intact and preserved in letters.

I liked Niecy. I think her storyline is interesting, but I loved Annie Kay and felt she carried the novel. I wish there had been more Annie Kay, and certainly more Annie and Niecy together. I felt positively cheated when Niecy went to Memphis, and we saw so little of it.

Despite being disappointed, I would still recommend it because there are a lot of phenomenal pieces here.

A GOOD ANIMAL – Sara Maurer

“A strange grave, the lion and the lamb together. In the end, I thought, the dirt gets everything.”

I read Sara Maurer’s debut novel, A Good Animal (St. Martin’s Press 2026) and I have “feelings” about it. If you don’t want it spoiled, stop now.  Seriously.  I’m going to spoil the stuffing out of this one.

There are a lot of pretty words that make up a pretty horrible novel. Maurer can craft a beautiful sentence, but her character development is sorely lacking. That aside, I found the plot left MUCH to be desired. I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more negative reviews. Did we read the same book? Let’s just say I’m really glad I didn’t buy this one. (We all know how I’ve been burned lately on these BOTM picks.)

It’s the mid-90s in a Midwest farm town when a good ole farm boy falls head over heels for the dark-haired beauty who is counting the days to graduation so she can escape. It’s a classic boy meets girl, two different worlds, coming of age story. The sheep and showing in 4-H is something I wish Maurer had highlighted a bit more because there are a lot of life lessons embedded in there that our dear Everett should have learned but they get lost in the sauce.

As far as our protagonist, Everett Lindt is not a good guy. He’d like for you to think so. Most readers would probably think so.  But he’s not. He’s a hot-headed, irresponsible, irrational, selfish, horny boy. He says he cares about the livestock.  He says he cares about Mary.  But does he? I mean really? He consistently makes decisions to the detriment of the things he loves. I could get around that if there had been more character building, more reflection from the adult Everett, but that just didn’t happen. Then there’s the SA, which is what that was. While he wasn’t “stealthing” and she knew he wasn’t wearing a condom, he’d agreed to pull out. And he didn’t. At least subconsciously, he wanted to get her pregnant to trap her; an idea put in his head by his best friend.

If that isn’t enough, he injects her with a livestock drug because he can’t afford the abortion she wants and finding a responsible adult just isn’t a possibility. (This was a real life issue in the 2000s, I think, with teens using readily available cattle drugs to perform “at home” abortions.) To make matters worse, the drug he used on her is intended for his family’s livelihood – the sheep have to be flushed and rebred in order for the lambs to be ready for showing, which is where the family gets their money. But again, Everett doesn’t think.

Mary deserved better. Fluff deserved better. Katie deserved better. Everett’s mom (who had some of the best parts of the novel – her hands? Come on!) deserved better.

And I am in the minority here, but I don’t recommend this one.