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. ⬇️

When the Cranes Fly South, by Lisa Ridzén (2024, transl. 2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A Swedish man struggles to adapt to the increasing humiliations and losses of old age and the well-intentioned meddling of his son.

Review: This is a beautiful book, in its empathetic treatment of elder care and aging with dignity and in its portrayal of masculinity. ⬇️

Flashlight, by Susan Choi (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Premise: A man‘s disappearance while out for a walk on the beach with his daughter in 1970s Japan reverberates across the decades.

Review: Books told from multiple perspectives rise and fall with the sharpness of those perspectives, and this was my experience with this Booker longlist title. The sections dealing with the mother and daughter‘s lack of understanding of each other shine. ⬇️

Pale Rider, by Laura Spinney (2017)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: An exploration of the origins, epidemiology, and lasting impacts of the 1918 influenza pandemic.

Review: This is an exceptional—and disturbingly prescient—book. So much of this felt like it was written in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and yet it was published years before. ⬇️

The Black Death in London, by Barney Sloane (2011)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: A look at the impact of the Black Death on the city of London and environs.

Review: This book‘s greatest success is in its incredible detail. Sadly that‘s also it‘s greatest weakness. Even as someone very nerdy about history, archaeology, and public health, the level of detail here was overwhelming and felt unnecessary. ⬇️

Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, by Robert Farrar Capon (2002)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: An omnibus edition of the author‘s engaging reflections on the parables of Jesus.

Review: In hindsight I wish I‘d reviewed the three volumes that went into this omnibus edition separately, as each book has its own personality. ⬇️

Love Forms, by Claire Adam (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A London woman looks back on her childhood in Trinidad, motherhood, and especially the traumatic events that brought her to the UK.

Review: I have a hard time reviewing this one. The reflections on motherhood and adoption are absolutely stunning — eleventy stars — and are undoubtedly why the book has received so much attention. ⬇️

When in England, you buy the Booker-listed titles not yer released in North America. #bookerlist

Audition, by Katie Kitamura (2025)

Premise: A sliding doors exploration of relationships and the roles we play.

Review: This is a very smart novel: the first half explores an actress struggling with a new role who finds herself confronted by a young man who thinks he may be her son; the second explores that same woman thriving in her role and as the mother of that same young man. Both halves also explore her marriage from different directions.⬇️

Misinterpretation, by Ledia Xhoga (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: An interpreter in New York‘s Albanian diaspora has her life complicated by her poor boundaries with her clients and friends.

Review: This Booker longlist title strikes a balance between being accessible and enigmatic that perfectly fits its themes. ⬇️

Until August, by Gabriel García Márquez (2024 posthumous)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A woman‘s annual trip to an island to visit her mother‘s grave becomes an opportunity to explore her sexuality outside her marriage.

Review: This release of an unfinished work by Márquez is very good. The only thing that made it feel unfinished is its ending, which felt rushed, with some magical realism that hadn‘t been earned.

The Land in Winter, by Andrew Miller (2024)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: Two marriages unravel in the midst of an unusually brutal English winter.

Review: This is a solid and subtle historical novel filled with all foreboding atmosphere and complex relationships you could want. It‘s a very literary and writerly novel, in the sense that everything the author does is intentional and well executed. ⬇️

Foolish Puckboy (Puckboys 4), by Saxon James and Eden Finley (2023)
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: When a Queer Collective party gets out of control, a sexy fireman gets an eyeful of a newly out pansexual hockey player.

Review: I‘m definitely reaching some diminishing returns with this series. This was a cute romance, but lacked in the story front. ⬇️

Endling, by Maria Reva (2025 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: The plans of 3 Ukrainian women—one trying to preserve critically endangered snails and two trying to bring down the dating tourism industry—and a disaffected Ukrainian-Canadian man are upended when Russian forces invade.

Review: This is one of the strangest books I‘ve read, from its unique content/themes to the incursion of real-world events into the book‘s autofictional elements. ⬇️

Blood on Her Tongue, by Johanna van Veen (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: The discovery of a bog body showing signs of ritualized killing unleashes terror upon a nineteenth-century Dutch estate.

Review: This is contemporary gothic fiction at its best. ⬇️

The South, by Tash Aw (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: Two young men from very different backgrounds form a connection during one dry Malaysian summer.

Review: This is a fascinating window book, exploring not only queerness in a SE Asian context, but also how urban-rural, racial, and class divides play out in Malaysia. Overall this worked very well, but I was left wanting a bit more from it.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James, by Emma Hooper (2015 🇨🇦)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

Premise: An 82-year-old Saskatchewan woman living with dementia embarks on a long-desired trip to see the ocean, leaving her ailing husband alone with his memories.

Review: This novel felt to me like it wasn‘t sure whether it wanted to be a modern fairy tale or something more down to earth. Its themes of dreams deferred and duty, and depiction of prairie are great.⬇️

Universality, by Natasha Brown (2025)
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A disturbing satire of the current state of journalism and public discourse

Review: While this has a lot going for it, it felt like a cynical take down of the easiest targets in our media landscape, and offered nothing in the way of an alternative or way forward. ⬇️

Franny and Zooey, by J.D. Salinger (1961) - Re-Read
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Premise: A classic two-story collection about the existential struggles of the two youngest grown children in a famous family.

Review: Salinger excels as always in his incisive satire of social norms; here his portrayal of disaffected and cynical undergrad Franny is perfect. ⬇️