I believe every book blogger has done this tag, or at least most have already, since this tag was meant for the middle of the year. In fact, I looked at a few booktubers’ videos, and no one tagged the creator, so, like last year, but I went over some blog posts I have already looked at, and some tagged the co-creators, so that I will do so too. Ely @ Earl Grey Books and Chami @ Read Like Wildfire. Before I start talking about the books, am I the only one who wants to join reading sprints, but the hour-long chatty bits lose my focus? Now on to this tradition tag.
Best book you’ve read so far in 2026?
Goodreads Blurb:
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.
And
Goodreads Blurb:
Eleven-year-old Evie is heartbroken when her strict Catholic parents send her pregnant sister away to stay with a distant great-aunt. All Evie wants is for her older sister to come back. But when her parents forbid her to even speak to Cilla, she starts sending letters. Evie writes letters about her family, torn apart and hurting. She writes about her life, empty without Cilla. And she writes about the new girl in school, June, who becomes her friend, and then maybe more than a friend.
As she becomes better friends with June, Evie begins to question her sexual orientation. She can only imagine what might happen if her parents found out who she really is. She could really use some advice from Cilla. But Cilla isn’t writing back.
Ok, I had a few, but not as many as I would like, but then again, I’m more cautious of giving five stars. The books that were five stars last month that I didn’t mention a ton are P.S. I Miss You by Jen Petro-Roy and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong. This one, I’m confused about, since it reads as fiction but at the same time non-fiction. By now, I think it’s a bit of both.
Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2026
Goodreads Blurb:
Paris, 1940. Lucie is the last child left at St Agnes’ Orphanage when the building is taken over by German soldiers. Forced to cook and clean for the men using her beloved home as their headquarters, she has stifled her instinct to rebel, instead scrubbing floors in the silent halls that were once filled with warmth and laughter. But when she finds a tiny baby bundled up in blankets on the front step, everything changes…
Desperate to protect the child, Lucie finds an unlikely ally in one of the officers living at the orphanage. From the moment he steps in to shield her from a group of soldiers threatening her on the street, she can tell that Klaus is different. There’s an unexpected warmth in his smile, and the quiet kindness he shows her and the baby is a world away from the cold indifference she is used to.
But Klaus has a secret. And when Lucie discovers that he has been helping the Parisian resistance efforts against the Nazis, her heart leaps at his bravery, but aches at the terrible danger he is in. Holding the baby close, they run for their lives in the dead of night, desperate to start a new life together. But before they reach safety, they hear shouts behind them… Will they make it to freedom? Or will their love story be stamped out before it’s even begun?
I won’t lie, I liked The Home for War Orphans, the first one way more, but this is the only sequel I read this year.
New release you haven’t read yet, but want to.
Goodreads Blurb:
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal’s father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain – America – where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined.
Outside of the list I shared last week, I have this one on my radar. It is 500 pages, and the author keeps you in the story, but drains you emotionally, so it’s not an author you can just pick and read.
Most anticipated release for the second half of the year.
Goodreads Blurb:
Since moving to Yellowstone National Park for his mom’s job, Gustavo Santos Costa has had a lot on his mind.
For bison stampedes. Did you know that bison can run three times faster than the average person? Why do people always stand so close to boiling hot springs?! the bad dreams. Why have they only gotten worse since the move?
And that’s all before Gus somehow meets his classmate Kordell inside his dreams. While Gus avoids sleeping (and nightmares) at all costs, Kordell finds that dreams seem to be a welcome escape from his real life . . . until one day, they’re no longer enough. With the connection between the boys, Gus may be the only person who can help Kordell. But when most things already feel too big to take on, how can Gus find the courage to be there for his friends?
Okay, more often than not, Andrea Beatriz Arango’s novels aren’t available to me for some reason, but I will still look for it to read it when it’s out.
Biggest disappointment.
Goodreads Blurb:
“Jordy Rosenberg might be one of our most fearless living novelists. There are no half-measures in his work, just big ideas and living characters and gorgeous sentences and metafictional panache and surprise after heart-stopping surprise. Night Night Fawn is extraordinary.”—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
In a cluttered rent-controlled apartment in the middle of Manhattan, Barbara Rosenberg is terminally ill, high on opioids, and writing the story of her life. She has opinions about her smutty late husband, her career as the receptionist for a disreputable plastic surgeon, her glory days as an accomplished jazzerciser, and her failed aspirations to be a film noir actress. But what she really wants to talk about are unhinged thoughts on gender, Karl Marx, Zionism, and her two great disappointing loves: an estranged trans son and a long-lost best friend whose betrayal haunts Barbara still. As she descends further into delirium and illness, Barbara finds herself in a nightmare from which she cannot escape, and her circumstances put her on a crash course with these intimates—or are they avenging nemeses?—once again.
If you saw my other post, you know I was excited for it, but to me, it was every detail added together, but it might be because of my mood-reading issue.
Biggest surprise.
Goodreads Blurb:
Twelve stories. Twelve months. Once chance to heal her heart…
When Tilly Nightingale receives a call telling her there’s a birthday gift from her husband waiting for her at her local bookshop, it couldn’t come as more of a shock. Partly because she can’t remember the last time she read a book for pleasure. Mainly because Joe died five months ago…
The gift is simple – twelve carefully-chosen books from Joe, one for each month, to help her turn the page on her first year without him.
Tilly sets out on a series of reading-inspired adventures that take her around the world. But as she begins to vlog her journey, her story becomes more than her own. With help from Alfie, the bookshop owner, her budding new following and her friends and family, can Tilly’s year of books show her how to love again?
I didn’t think I would think about this novel 2 months after reading it, but I do.
Favourite new author. (Debut or new to you)
Goodreads Blurb:
BCCB Mississippi, 1930s. Magic simmering beneath the surface, kept in check by unjust laws and societal expectations. But for six extraordinary women, the roar of enchanted engines and the thrill of the forbidden broom race offer a chance to rewrite their destinies.
Meet Billie Mae, captain of the Night Storms racing team, and Loretta, her best friend and second-in-command. They’re determined to make enough money to move out west to a state that allows Black folks to legally use magic and take part in national races.
Cheng-Kwan – doing her best to handle the delicate and dangerous double act of being the perfect “son” to her parents, and being true to herself while racing.
Mattie and Emma — Choctaw and Black — the youngest of the group and trying to dodge government officials who want to send them and their newly-surfaced powers away to boarding school.
And Luella, in love with Billie Mae. Her powers were sealed away years ago after she fought back against the government. She’ll do anything to prevent the same fate for her cousins.
The latest one would be Jasmine Walls; her graphic novel, Brooms, has multiple representations, including race, disability and LGBTI+
Newest fictional crush
Like last year, I don’t have one, but I know why this time around, to have any kind of crush, I need one-to-one interaction, and you can have that in fiction. I’m weird, I know.
Newest favourite character
I’m going to be honest, most of my favourite characters are from Eva Lovelle, but as we discovered, there is an issue with AI in her novels.
Book that made you cry
Testosterone makes it hard for me to cry, which is good and bad at the same time. Since I feel the emotion, but no release.
Book that made you happy
Goodreads Blurb:
Raised at Father’s House, a Christian orphanage in Ukraine, Shayla grew up with children who also knew what it meant to be abandoned and rescued. She found love and friendship, despite her tough beginning.
Then her world changed.
Carried across the ocean to America to her forever family. Shayla must begin again — new country, new home, new friends. But even in the unknown, a quiet truth follows the same God who led her before is still lighting the way with real-life miracles.
Based on a true story, Shayla & Friends is an adventurous journey of rescue, courage, and discovering that love can find you anywhere. Sometimes it’s through rescuing dogs—and sometimes it’s through the people who help us find home again.
Most beautiful book you’ve bought so far this year (or received)
Goodreads:
Harlowe could use a break. With his academic future over, just like his relationship with his long-term boyfriend Jackson, a suspiciously cheap summer rental on the Cape feels like just the escape he needs.
But when he arrives at the picturesque seaside cottage, he’s alarmed to find his discouraging old professor in the living room. His father making coffee in the kitchen. And a handsome young repairman fixing things in the bedroom. Worst of all, Jackson is in the bathroom. None of them will leave. No one else can see them. And they won’t leave him alone.
The house isn’t magic only for Harlowe, and as the summer grows hot and thick with tourists, old wounds and fresh secrets—both in and outside its walls—begin to transform him. It’s clear the house is trying to tell him something, and he’s sure it has to do with the mysterious repairman who suddenly seems to be everywhere he looks… But can Harlowe let go of the past long enough to listen?
Love the cover, but the story was in the middle for me.
What books do you need to read by the end of the year?
Goodreads Blurb:
Lula Viramontes dreams of one day becoming someone whom no one can ignore: a daring ringleader in a Mexican traveling carpa, despite her father’s traditional views of what girls should be. When her family arrives for the grape harvest in Delano, California, Lula meets activist Dolores Huerta and el Teatro Campesino (the official theater company of the United Farm Workers). She discovers an even more pressing reason to raise her voice: the upcoming farm workers’ strike, an event that will determine her family’s future–for better or worse.
The cover is beautiful, and I believe the story will be too.
Favourite Book Community Member
I’m picking my friend Barbora, I believe she deserves more followers, she does sprints, vlogs, weekend climate readalongs and bookclubs, her channel link is here
I think that’s a wrap. I hope I wasn’t too cheesy.
Alex