My first time reading Jane Austen far exceeded expectations! What a funny, delightful story filled with believable quirky characters.

The Great Believers is staggering in its level of detail, in the number of characters you fall in love with, in the beauty of the prose, and in the scope of the tragedy it covers. Rebecca Makkai paints a picture of the 1980s AIDS epidemic in Chicago that is devastating and poignant, but also hopeful.

Books about passing make up an important and unique genre in American literature and film, and Bennett’s novel undoubtedly is a new essential read in this genre. The story follows Desiree and Stella, identical twins who grow up in a small town in Louisiana. At age 16, they run away from home, and Stella makes a choice that alters her life forever.

If there ever was a book for our times, Oryx and Crake is it. This novel is a story about a pandemic that is even more shocking than the one we are living through. Yet, in spite of the dystopian plot, Oryx and Crake gave me hope.

Disappearing Earth is the perfect novel for a person stuck at home during a global pandemic. Rarely has a book so thoroughly transported me away from my own life.

At its core, this is a book about a breakup, but it doesn’t end the way Hollywood has trained my brain to expect it would — Carty-Williams defied my expectations with a refreshingly modern ending.