30 to Watch

“This will be the most beautiful love story you read this year. This story curves and twirls and spirals along a golden, sparkly path of whirlwind romance and great expectations and finding one’s true self, and making mistakes and accepting imperfection and learning to change plans and go with the flow. Honey Girl is beautiful and lovely and you will laugh and you will cry and you will read passages aloud because they are as delicious as the first sticky sweet bite of a ripe orange straight from the tree. This book will transport you into the stars where you will dance among the constellations and marvel at the raw beauty of it all. As Grace Porter fell in love with Yuki Yamamoto, I fell in love with Honey Girl. ”

“Libertie is a beautifully written, immersive historical novel inspired by the story of a Black doctor and her daughter who lived in a free Black community in Brooklyn during the Reconstruction era. It is also a profound meditation on what it means to be truly free — whether born free or formerly enslaved, whether in America, Haiti, or Liberia — while struggling against grief, sexism, racism, colorism, or classism. Libertie’s quest to forge her own path is a much-needed inspiration!”

“Ivy Lin’s unassuming looks and demeanor hide a dark side. She is obsessed with the wealth and privilege she sees around her and will cross boundaries to get what she needs — most of all, the object of her teenage affection. Susie Yang crafts a brilliant and mesmerizing tale that gives readers an intimate look into the experience of immigrants. Well-written prose, excellent characters, and a surprising turn of events will keep readers hooked until the end — and it is a doozy.”

“I loved this stunning debut collection of stories. Chen digs deep and uses her experience as a foreign correspondent to portray the voices and lives of people living in modern China. These stories will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading the book. Highly recommended.”

“This novel about our technological age is subversive from the very start. Its dense, wordy paragraphs seem the opposite of the endless bite-sized chunks of information we consume online. Yet within its density, it also mimics the internet experience through the stream-of-consciousness voice of its not-always-reliable narrator. It’s a fun story with lots to say about the incessant self-branding and impossible unreliability of our lives spent increasingly online.”

“Franny has always longed to be like a bird—free, wandering wherever she likes. In a future world where most animal species have become extinct, her last wish is to follow a flock of Arctic Terns along their last migration—from North Pole to South. She talks her way onto a commercial fishing boat named for the Raven and faces a treacherous journey alongside the crew. But while the sailors aim to take more than their share of the ocean’s remaining fish, all Franny wants is to give—to the nature that has sustained her, to the nature that has died at human hands. A heart-wrenching tale, Migrations roars like the reckless waves of the sea.”

“Gold as a drug. Gold as a metaphor for the glittering hopes and burdens new immigrants put on their children’s shoulders. Gold as the thread weaving history, memory, and imagination, a meditation on how the past blends into the present. Gold as the object of an improbable heist. There is so much in this book, but it is first and foremost an extraordinarily good yarn, the story of two generations of American-Indian immigrants trying to become Americanized while clinging to a fetishized, culturally commodified India. There is love, drugs, alchemy, and stories about the gold rush, both the forty-niners and the new gold diggers of the tech bubble. It’s fun and fast-paced, except when you stop short for a sentence so evocative you want to dwell on it. A seriously good book by a seriously talented writer.”

“Having grown up in a Mississippi Southern Baptist church, it wasn't until I was a teenager that I saw the secret double lives of some of us. Rebelling against the submit to authority messages on Saturday night, but sitting pious and submissive come Sunday morning services was de rigueur. Deesha Philyaw's book The Secret Lives of Church Ladies gives voice to secret lives that I know for sure are lived and true. The need for acceptance, for absolution, for grace is ever-present in familiar relationships as well as those in the church. These short stories are divine.”

“An amazing debut novel from Syed M. Masood. The narration brought the words to life, and I found myself playing parts of it to my coworkers because I was laughing so hard. Masood takes an engaging, insightful look into the Muslim-American community in the 90's by following two very different families in the move to the United States. It's a great look into the meaning of faith and family. ”

“This book led to my favorite book club conversation to date. The characters are messy and mostly unlikeable and Peters unflinchingly dives straight into topics in trans identity often considered taboo, without worrying about placating a cisgender audience. A quietly chaotic and fascinating character study.”

“Night Marchers, gods, goddesses, and the dead all walk Hawaii with the Flores family, if only they can stop struggling to survive long enough to see them. At seven years old, Nainoa falls into the Pacific only to be brought back to his mother in the mouth of a shark, unharmed and now burdened with the rumor of legend. Noa struggles to understand his gift and what he is supposed to do with it, and each of his family members grapples with their role as well. Every character is imbued with the truths of family and the magic of legend and you will not close this book unchanged. Beautiful and a must read! The readers on Libro.fm grant entrance in to this world with an authenticity difficult to obtain otherwise.”

“I was struck by just how much I loved this book for how it walks through grief not as a way to leave it behind, but as a way to remember its exact shape. I’m grateful for its funny, self-deprecating, and wise observations, and for its difficult beauty.”

“Shuggie Bain is sad, but there’s so much more to it than that. Hugh “Shuggie” Bain is different—he’s gentle and polite and lonely, a poor boy growing up in 1980’s Glasgow. His glamorous mother, Agnes, is an alcoholic, but she embodies her dignity when she needs it most. In one notably humorous scene, she drunkenly collects her son from his good-for-nothing father, upon checking herself out of the psych ward, and breaks the windows of his house while neighborhood boys whoop and holler at her boldness. Shuggie runs to his savior and clings to her with unconditional love. Eventually, he and his mother pledge to be “brand new” upon moving back into the city—she’ll stop drinking and Shuggie will be “normal.” But no matter how many football statistics he memorizes, Shuggie will never be like other boys, and his mother will never stop drinking. Their relationship is beautiful and overflowing with love, deeply humanizing those who struggle with substance abuse. I’ll never forget Shuggie Bain.”