New in 2025

12 Novels Released This Year

For most of the year, I have been rather Grinch-like when it comes to rating the books I’ve read—overly critical, stingy with stars, and gleefully downgrading them when in doubt. Perhaps not gleefully. I don’t actually delight in disliking the books I’ve invested time in reading. My 2025 reading list started out promising with the brilliant historical nonfiction books The Boys in the Boat, Unbroken, and Say Nothing. After those masterful works of art reduced me to a puddle of tears, I found not much else could measure up. I only granted five stars to those three books, in addition to Bear in Mind These Dead, reviewed in my Troubles in Northern Ireland post. I'm feeling magnanimous today and may grant the book I am currently reading, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida, five stars as well. All this being said, I will not include reviews of my five-star books of the year. Instead, I will focus solely on the 2025 new fiction releases I read, some of which were in fact excellent and nearly five stars for me. The following list is arranged in ascending order, from least to most favorite.

1 | A Bookseller in Madrid

Mario Escobar

Following the rise of the Nazi party in the 1933 election, Barbara Spiel, a young German woman, flees Berlin for Madrid, Spain, where she establishes a bookstore. She hopes her books will provide an infusion of new knowledge and culture in the fledgling Second Spanish Republic. It soon becomes apparent, however, that Spain is being treated as a practice ground for the larger world war brewing in Europe. The Second Republic is being threatened by General Franco’s Nationalists. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany support the Nationalists while Soviet Russia supports the Republicans. Barbara, her literary friends, her Spanish husband, and their son are swept up in the chaos and destruction that ensue as the two sides wage civil war in Spain.

I have mixed feelings about this short work of historical fiction. The history is well researched and informative, but the narrative is lacking in emotion and character depth. The author depicts the conflict in a relatively unbiased manner, accurately presenting both extremist sides of the Spanish Civil War—fascist and communist—as merely two sides of the same authoritarian coin. Practically every supporting character is a real-life historical figure, from booksellers Françoise Frenkel and Sylvia Beach to Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonfoeffer, to Spanish politicians Francisco Largo Caballero, Juan Negrín, and Indalecio Prieto. Most of these characters make a brief appearance and then exit from the story, leaving minimal lasting impression unless previously known to the reader. The first half of the novel features relentless encounters with or name-dropping of historical figures, paired with in-depth political discussions between characters, which is helpful to understand the historical context, but does nothing to move the plot along.

A Bookseller in Madrid would have benefited from a higher page count to help flesh out the characters. Years of war (plus additional time before and after) are accounted for in fewer than 300 pages. Atrocity after atrocity is committed in abruptly resolved scenes, portrayed in a cold, clinical manner. At best, I felt nothing for the characters. More often than not, I disliked them. Barbara learns her husband (of whom I was suspicious from the beginning) has cheated on her and doesn’t even bat an eyelash. He is treated as though he is still as perfect a specimen of a man in a country full of machismo as before the revelation. When new to Madrid, Barbara travels from neighborhood to neighborhood unaccompanied despite locals warning her it is unsafe, naively convinced her self-righteousness will protect her. Within the space of a few pages, she is implausibly asked to spy for both the Germans and the British. I felt everything having to do with Barbara bordered absurdity, from her hurried marriage to a practical stranger to her traipsing around dangerous areas of Madrid, to her acts of espionage, mainly because the pace of the novel was set to warp speed. I would have preferred more breathing space between events. The history of the Spanish Civil War is not widely covered in literature and is important to be shared. All the information contained in Mario Escobar’s novel is heavy and noteworthy. I wish it had been presented in a way I could better emotionally connect with.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars

2 | The Stolen Queen

Fiona Davis

In 1936, anthropology student Charlotte Cross joins an archaeological dig in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings. She unexpectedly finds love, marries, and gives birth to a daughter in swift succession. After a tragic accident, she flees Egypt. Fast forward to 1978 New York City. Charlotte is working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as an associate curator of the Department of Egyptian Art, absorbed in her research of the academically disregarded female pharaoh Hathokare. Annie Jenkins, a young girl with a single, irresponsible mother, has just landed a position working for former Vogue fashion editor Diana Vreeland, who is in the midst of organizing this year’s Met Gala. When a precious artifact is stolen on the night of the gala, Charlotte and Annie unwittingly team up to track down the lost object. They trace it back to Egypt, to the source of Charlotte’s haunting trauma, where she swore to herself she’d never return.

As a fan of the iconic 1999 film The Mummy and Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, I was hoping for more of this story to be set in 1930s Egypt in the wake of King Tutankhamun’s tomb being discovered. Sadly, Charlotte’s expedition is quickly derailed by romance and pregnancy. Her time in Egypt is used as exposition to set up the main story in the 1970s. I never warmed to the character of Annie. She is poised to be a daughter-like figure to Charlotte, but the bond never fully materializes in my opinion. The story picks up once the narrative returns to Egypt, and the truth behind the incident from the past is revealed. However, I was rather disappointed with how the relationships between some of the characters are resolved. This novel made the final round of the Goodreads Choice Awards for Historical Fiction, so I am apparently in the minority not raving about this book.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars

3 | We Do Not Part

Han Kang

Translated by E. Yaewon & Paige Aniyah Morris

After receiving a cryptic, urgent message from her friend Inseon, Kyungha rushes to visit her in the hospital in Seoul, South Korea. Inseon begs Kyungha to fly to her home on Jeju Island before nightfall to feed her pet bird, Ama. Kyungha agrees to make the journey but a strong winter storm is blowing in and could prevent her from travelling. Determined to save her friend’s bird, Kyungha sojourns on through the snowstorm and arrives in Inseon’s hometown, a rural village where years ago a horrific mass slaughter of civilians occurred. Once haunted by dreams of dead bodies in the form of tree trunks in water, Kyungha comes to learn during her trip more of the intimate history of the killings and their relationship to her nightmares.

We Do Not Part is a poetic, abstract novel inspired by the real events of the Jeju April 3rd Uprising and Massacre. Kyungha is a fictional character who shares elements of author Han Kang’s real life, including the nightmare which opens the narrative and the previously written book about the Gwangju Uprising, Human Acts. Kang refrains from naming the locations of the two massacres in Korean history, as though they are too sacred to spell out. G- refers to Gwangju, where a student-led protest against martial law and the coup which installed military dictator Chun Doo-hwan was violently put down by the South Korean military. The uprising lasted ten days in May 1980 and resulted in the deaths of between 1,000–2,000 civilians. P- refers to the Jeju village of Pyoseon-myeon, where homes were set on fire and burned to the ground. In the heightened years of threat from Soviet-backed North Korea (officially established as such on September 9, 1948) preceding the Korean War, everyone suspected of being a communist was brought down the beach, where they were shot, their bodies tossed into the ocean. Around 30,000 people were murdered during the Jeju Uprising of 1948, including women and children. Events of the massacre are presented in anecdotes of survivors. The novel has no actual plot when it comes to its subject matter. Rather, it is a lyrical exploration of how the remnants of tragedy echo through the generations.

While this novel is an intriguing, artistic portrayal of the Jeju massacre and how it continues to haunt the present, We Do Not Part simply does not suit my reading style. I prefer a more concrete story structure. Past and present, dream and reality, thoughts and dialogue bleed together in ambiguity. Kang spends an inordinate amount of time contemplating the nature of snow. Coming into the novel with prior knowledge of both massacres, I didn’t find the ethereal references confusing, but they easily could be to new readers to these chapters in Korean history.

For a more comprehensive examination on the Jeju massacre in fiction, I highly recommend Lisa See’s The Island of Sea Women. I also recommend Han Kang’s previous novel Human Acts (I gave it four stars). Though engaging a similar fluid, poetic style, Human Acts is written in a slightly more concrete manner than We Do Not Part. The narrative, told from the various perspectives of multiple witnesses, is concentrated on the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and provides more historical context.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars

4 | The Queens of Crime

Marie Benedict

Acclaimed mystery novelists Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie are invited to join the male-dominated Detection Club in 1930 London. Intent on initiating more female authors, they form the Queens of Crime and set out to prove their mettle by solving a real-life murder. Dorothy’s husband has been reporting on the death of a young nurse, May Daniels. Dorothy and Agatha round up fellow authoresses Ngaio Marsh, Baroness Emma Orczy, and Margery Allingham to help investigate. As they delve deeper into the unsolved crime, they discover the woeful tale of a “surplus woman”—a female who has taken the job of a male during the war years and continues to work and remain unmarried. The victim has been taken advantage of and unfairly labeled a loose woman and a drug addict. The Queens vow to clear May’s name, restore her reputation, and bring her killer to justice.

As a fan of Benedict’s previous novel about Agatha Christie’s infamous disappearance, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, I had high hopes for this follow-up fictional story about her contemporary, Dorothy Sayers. Almost immediately, I was inundated with the female protagonists facing sexism at every turn. While I appreciate and usually enjoy reading about strong women empowered to overcome prejudice and misogyny, I felt like I was being beaten over the head with this theme. Author Marie Benedict even admits in her Author’s Note that she inserted discrimination into her novel where there was none. There is no evidence the real-life Detection Club ever sought to exclude or limit the number of female authors within their ranks. Dorothy Sayers and her husband were involved in the actual investigation into May Daniels’ death, but her murder was never solved, leaving Benedict the freedom to resolve the case in the pages of her fictional story.

***SLIGHT SPOILER AHEAD***

I was disappointed by the conclusion of the novel. The Queens of Crime gang up to falsely accuse a man on threadbare evidence. When the accused man identifies the real culprit (whom none of the Queens ever suspected), Dorothy and the other women jump on board and somehow end up taking credit for solving the mystery. Unfortunately, what began as an interesting premise fell flat for me. I struggled to finish this book and found myself let down by the author’s depictions of these formidable real-life women who were supposed to be “whip smart” but came across as stereotyped and foolish on page.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars

5 | The Woman in Suite 11

Ruth Ware

Ten years after the catastrophic events aboard the Norwegian cruise ship Aurora, Lo Blacklock has settled into a life of domesticity. She’s now married, has two sons, and is a fulltime mother. Eager to revive her journalism career, she accepts an invitation to the opening of a luxury hotel in Switzerland on the chance she’ll be able to snag an interview with the owner’s business tycoon father for a Financial Times profile. As soon as she arrives, she unnervingly encounters several familiar faces from the Aurora. One of them begs for her help to escape an abusive situation. Against her better judgment, Lo agrees to help smuggle her former acquaintance out of the country. Just when she believes they are in the clear, an unexpected guest turns up at their hotel in the UK. When he is found dead in his bathtub, Lo falls under suspicion for his murder.

Though I did not think a sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10 was necessary, I was quite content to join Lo Blacklock on another ill-advised elitist European romp. Despite lengthening the exposition, I appreciated the details of Lo’s time away from her career, finding satisfaction in motherhood as well as her increasing desire to feel like her own person again after years devoted solely to her family. I had to suspend disbelief as she made a series of disastrous choices which landed her in hot water, but I felt compelled to keep turning the page. Unable to recall many details of the first book, I had a bit of a refresher watching the recent Netflix adaptation of the The Woman in Cabin 10. I felt this was all I really needed to follow the story of The Woman in Suite 11, though the film wasn’t entirely faithful to the book from what I do remember. I almost gave this novel four stars. It was more engaging than Ware’s recent novels One Perfect Couple and Zero Days. However, I bumped it down to a three for the excessive F-bombs and poor decision-making by the protagonist.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars (rounded down from 3.5)

6 | With a Vengeance

Riley Sager

Murder on the Orient Express meets And Then There Were None in this homage to Agatha Christie's acclaimed murder mysteries. In 1942, a train explosion kills dozens of soldiers on board, including Anna Matheson’s brother. Her father is framed for sabotage and murdered in prison. In her grief and shame, her mother commits suicide. Twelve years later, Anna gathers the six people responsible for her family’s destruction under false pretenses onto a luxury train ride with no stops to exact her revenge. Almost immediately, her plan starts to unravel. An unexpected passenger is on board. Someone is murdered. More deaths and chaos follow as the locomotive journey spirals out of control.

I certainly was kept entertained by this noir thriller. A new twist was introduced in practically every chapter, which was ultimately the story’s downfall. Though I was keen to continue reading to its conclusion, the narrative was highly implausible with a few too many coincidences. As an Agatha Christie fan, I appreciated the references to her most famous mysteries. With a Vengeance is by no means a masterpiece, but it is an enjoyable, fast-paced, cozy read for a stormy day.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars (rounded down from 3.5)

7 | Flashlight

Susan Choi

One night in 1978, Serk and his 10-year-old daughter Louisa are walking along the beach in a Japanese coastal town when he unexpectedly vanishes. Louisa is found nearly drowned, unconscious, on the beach. Serk’s body is never found, but he is presumed dead, pulled beneath the waves. After all, he cannot swim. Louisa is too traumatized to remember the details of what happened.

Flashback to Serk’s origins as an ethnic Korean living in Japan during the 1940s and 50s. His parents had left their home in Jeju Island during Japanese colonial rule to find work in Japan. Serk’s family become stateless after the wars when Japan denies all Koreans citizenship, whether immigrants or born in the country. Now devoid of opportunities to thrive in Japan, Serk’s parents are lured to North Korea by the promises of prosperity, including good jobs and free housing.  Feeling no ties to his ethnic homeland, having never set foot in Korea, and suspicious of the North Korean propaganda, Serk decides not to join his family, choosing to study abroad in the United States instead. He eventually loses touch with his family and starts his own American one with his Caucasian wife, Anne, and their daughter, Louisa. Serk becomes a professor and is offered a teaching position in Japan, where the narrative comes full circle with the incident on the beach. Decades pass as Anne and Louisa destructively cope with their broken family. Will the truth about Serk’s disappearance finally come to light and give them peace?

I have conflicting feelings about this historical fiction novel. The subject matter of Koreans who moved to Japan during colonial rule and were tricked into relocating to the totalitarian Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has been a source of interest of me for several years. I wrote an entire blog post reviewing books about North Korean defectors. A few of the reference books listed in the Acknowledgements of Flashlight were ones I’ve read (and reviewed), including A River in Darkness, Nothing to Envy, and The Aquariums of Pyongyang. The intrigue of North Korea kept me in the story. Some reviews I’ve read of this novel indicate the readers were shocked by the “big reveal” of what really happened to Serk. Armed with a significant knowledge of North Korean history and what the DPRK was up to in the 1970s, I immediately knew what happened to him. I was eagerly anticipating the return to his narrative after wading through hundreds of pages about his wife and daughter (and his wife’s illegitimate son from a previous misguided fling) I could have done without.

Flashlight is a character study of a mixed-race family struggling to find their place in the world during the second half of the twentieth century. I don’t mind well-written character studies, but these were some of the most remarkably selfish, nasty people I have encountered in fiction who are not intended to be villains. Ironically, Serk reflects that Americans are more selfish than people from older cultures such as Japan and Korea, while his wife feels Serk is more American than her in some respects. He latches onto the supposedly American quality of self-interest even before emigrating from Japan as a young man. I sympathized with each character’s individual hardships, but there comes a point when a person must choose to either rise above their circumstances or be consumed by bitterness. Despite glimmers of hope the three main characters would show some growth and maturity by considering someone’s feelings other than their own, they unfortunately chose the latter in most cases.

There were a few poignant moments between the characters that felt deeply insightful, reminding me of situations within my own family. I just wish I could have been more invested in the characters. I was slightly more forgiving of Anne and Serk, but their daughter Louisa was an intolerable monster. I have no doubt growing up in the 1970s as a biracial girl, not quite fitting in with White kids or Asian kids in the US or in Japan was no easy feat and does garner my sympathy, but what a horrible excuse for a human being who treated her mother abominably. Her chapters were a waste of paper, in my opinion, for having learned nothing. All the pieces for an epic, moving story were established but squandered. I felt there were many loose ends even after 450+ pages. I wanted so much to love this book. I think Flashlight could have been a fantastic novel if it had been pared down to focus on Serk, his personal history, and his relationship with a more palatable version of Louisa. This novel has its merits and may be right up someone else’s alley, but ultimately, I need more likeable characters.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars (rounded down from a 3.5)

8 | The Crash

Freida McFadden

Tegan is young, penniless, eight months pregnant, and alone. After a non-disclosure agreement negotiation with the father of her child results in a distressing recollection and emotional fallout, Tegan decides to stay with her brother until the baby is born. She hits the road but finds herself caught in a snowstorm. Her car crashes. She believes she’s trapped and in mortal peril until a stranger passing by picks her up and drives her to his home for the night until she can be brought to the hospital. Tegan’s savior, Hank, lives in a remote cabin with his wife, Polly. They have a spare room in their basement where she can stay for the night. But night turns to morning and into night again. Tegan is continually given excuses as to why she cannot leave. She senses something is horribly wrong with this couple and begins to doubt she will be allowed to leave the cabin alive.

The Crash is a slow-burn psychological thriller reminiscent of Stephen King’s Misery. Despite reading hundreds of mystery and suspense novels, I haven’t yet boarded The Housemaid train – this is my first Freida McFadden novel. I would happily read another. I found the story compelling. I felt sympathy for a certain unhinged character and was oddly rooting for a happy ending. I predicted the ending twist, but only just before it was revealed. I thought McFadden wrapped everything up in a satisfying way, making this a fun, quick, wintry read.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

9 | Midnight on the Scottish Shore

Sarah Sundin

A member of the Dutch Resistance, Cilla van der Zee has infiltrated the Nazi party. When a friend of hers is beaten to death by a group of Dutch Nazis because he is a Jew, Cilla is bereft. She decides to flee the Netherlands in search of freedom. She trains with the Abwehr to be sent on an espionage mission abroad, where she plans to desert the mission, disappear, and live peacefully away from the clutches of the Nazis. Her plan goes awry when she lands on the shores of Scotland and is immediately caught by Scottish naval officer, Lachlan Mackenzie. He turns her in as spy. Rather than execute her as protocol dictates, the British Intelligence agency MI5 decides she would be more useful as a double agent. Cilla gladly seizes the opportunity to work for the Allies and prove herself loyal to their war effort. However, she risks the safety of her family if she is caught. If the German Abwehr discover she has turned, her family will be sent to a concentration camp. She finds herself working with her initial captor, Lachlan, who resents being roped into collaborating with a spy. Because of family secrets and a stain on his reputation, he is unable to refuse the assignment. As Cilla and Lachlan spend time together working on information to feed the Nazis, they become drawn to one another in an impossible situation.

Sarah Sundin is a master of World War II historical romance novels. I’ve also read her novels When Twilight Breaks, Until Leaves Fall in Paris, The Sound of Light, and Embers in the London Sky – all set during the second world war – and enjoyed them immensely. Midnight on the Scottish Shore is a story of forgiveness, exploring the limits of one’s conscience when faced with life and death situations, and finding freedom in confinement. I found the setting of this story interesting because the Homefront in Scotland is one of the lesser-told tales of World War II. I read Sundin’s novels for the history, not so much for the romance. I thought the ending of this novel was a tad unrealistic, but since this is a romance, I accepted the inevitable happy ending, even if it stretched believability.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

10 | Don’t Let Him In

Lisa Jewell

One year after the death of Ash’s father, her mother Nina is dating again. Nina’s boyfriend Nick surreptitiously entered their lives under the pretense of being an old colleague of Ash’s father. But something is off about Nick. Ash starts digging into his background and finds information that does not add up, but convincing her mother her new boyfriend has ill intentions won’t be easy. Ash has recently recovered from a mental breakdown and lacks credulity. She decides to keep her suspicions to herself until she has gathered rock solid evidence against Nick. Meanwhile, Martha’s husband Al has been disappearing for long stretches of time, leaving her alone to raise their young daughter and run her flower shop. He always comes up with reasonable excuses for his absences and why he wasn’t reachable by phone during those times. But Martha is starting to get fed up and decides to track his movements to determine whether he is telling her the truth. Four years ago, Tara kicked out her husband Jonathan after police confronted him about complaints of stalking young women. He retreated to a former wife’s home – who believed him to be dead – while planning his next move. All these women are linked by the same man using multiple aliases, who makes his living conning them out of their money.

Don’t Let Him In is a psychological suspense novel inspired by true crime documentaries such as The Tinder Swindler. This work of fiction explores how one man has spent years of his life building trust with various women, to the point of marrying them, to scam them out of thousands of dollars. Money from one con is used to fund the next relationship, to convince the woman he is financially able to take care of her. Then some emergency strikes, and he needs a large amount of money, taking advantage of the woman’s caring nature and trust that she will get her money back. This novel is a methodical character study of how Nick/Al/Jonathan cons his way into multiple relationships and how each of the women come to realize they are being scammed. This is not an edge-of-your-seat thriller packed with action and danger around every corner, so some readers may find the story sluggish. I, however, was hooked, and eager to find out how everything came together in the end. I predicted all the plot twists before they were revealed, but that didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. Rather, it confirmed my assessment of how the male protagonist’s mind worked and satisfied me that I saw through all his shenanigans. This novel was a nominee (and my pick) for the Favorite Mystery & Thriller category of the Goodreads Choice Awards.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

11 | The Lost Passenger

Frances Quinn

Caught up in a whirlwind romance straight out of the pages of her beloved Jane Austen novels, Elinor Hayward believes she has found love with Frederick Coombes, son of an earl and heir to Winterton Hall. The daughter of a self-made man who made his fortune in the textile industry, Elinor is part of the merchant class. When Frederick asks her to marry him, she doesn’t consider the consequences of marrying above her station to a near stranger but relies on true love to grant her her happily ever after. Shortly after the wedding, Elinor learns she’s been deceived. Frederick Coombes is no Mr. Darcy. He has married her for her father’s money to prop up a failing estate. He isn’t in love with her at all and in fact has a mistress. But Elinor is trapped. She fulfills her duty in producing a male heir, who is promptly removed from her care and provided a fulltime nanny. Elinor is disliked by her husband’s family; she was simply a means to an end. They coerce her into adapting to aristocratic society so as not to embarrass them by threatening to take away her brief daily visits with her son Teddy. They even go so far as to draw up a will granting legal custody of her son to Frederick’s parents in the event of his untimely death. Knowing nothing of Elinor’s domestic hardships, her father gifts her, Frederick, and Teddy tickets aboard the maiden voyage of Titanic. After losing everything in the tragic sinking of the infamous ocean liner, Elinor seizes an opportunity to disappear with her toddler son in New York City. Penniless, she must use her wits and business sense gained from working with her father to start afresh and build a new life for them in America.

I admit I picked up this historical fiction novel for its Titanic connection. However, I came to appreciate the story for much more than that. The Lost Passenger is not a Titanic story (less than a quarter of the novel is spent aboard the ship). Rather, it is a tale of one woman’s journey of personal growth, from being raised sheltered, pampered, and enamored with fictional romantic happy endings to being confined to the rigid, emotionless life of an aristocrat’s wife prevented from interacting with her own son, to a poor immigrant forging her own future, raising her son lovingly in a new-found family. After a period of despising her favorite romance novels for leading her astray, Elinor recognizes the fault in her own lack of judgement, not in the books themselves, and is able to take pleasure in reading them once again.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars (rounded down from 4.5)

12 | Homeseeking

Karissa Chen

Wang Haiwen is shopping at an Asian market in Los Angeles in 2008 when he runs into his childhood sweetheart, Zhang Suchi, whom he hasn’t seen in decades. He’s spent his entire adult life living in memories of his past with her. He regrets the way he left her in Shanghai in 1947 to join the Nationalist Army to save his brother from the draft. He views this unexpected reunion as a second chance. However, Suchi has spent most of her adult life trying to forget her past, focused only on moving forward. Both their lives were torn apart by the Communist takeover of China in 1949. During the diaspora that preceded the fall of Nationalist China, Haiwen landed in Taiwan, Suchi in Hong Kong. They each lost contact with family members still living on the mainland and worried what became of them during the famine years of the Great Leap Forward and the purges of the Cultural Revolution. Separately, they’ve rebuilt their lives in foreign countries, the dreams of their youth shattered forever, only to meet again in a distant land far from home.

This historical fiction novel spans seven decades (1938–2008) and four countries, rife with tumultuous history. Author Karissa Chen utilizes an intriguing storytelling mechanism reminiscent of the musical The Last Five Years. Haiwen’s narrative opens with his fateful encounter with Suchi in 2008 and steadily moves backward in time toward their separation in 1947. Suchi’s narrative begins with their first meeting as children in 1938 and chronologically moves forward to their eventual reunion in 2008. Homeseeking is a heartbreaking story of two young people whose memories of their love have carried them through long years of separation and hardship but are unable to overcome the insurmountable bulwark of history.

Homeseeking is one of the best novels I’ve read this year (it was my vote for Favorite in both Historical Fiction and Debut Novel in the Goodreads Choice Awards) but it wasn’t quite perfect in my opinion. The opening “Overture” and ending “Coda” were a bit jarring, told through the lens of very minor characters. I enjoyed the reverse chronological narratives, but by cutting from vignette to vignette, often years apart, I felt some pieces of the story were missing. Suchi’s character felt fleshed out, but Haiwen’s seemed incomplete. In terms of the historical backdrop of the novel, I thought it was well-researched and presented in a highly digestible manner – informative yet not too bogged down with details. The author makes note of the various spellings of character names throughout the book depending on how the Chinese characters are pronounced in the language of the corresponding settings: Shanghainese in Shanghai, Mandarin in Taiwan and other areas of mainland China, Cantonese in Hong Kong, and English in the United States. Having some knowledge of Chinese names through previous books I’ve read and watching many Chinese dramas, the name transitions and nicknames (i.e. Junjun is a nickname for Haijun; Mingming for Haiming; Susu for Suchi) made sense to me. They may seem confusing to readers with no prior knowledge of Asian names. I also thought the author was successful in objectively identifying the flaws on all sides of the series of conflicts in China, from the Japanese military occupiers to the Chinese Nationalists supporting Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists backing Mao Zedong, noting the overwhelming result of it all was the destruction of human of lives.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars (rounded down from 4.5)

2025 NEW ADDITIONS TO A SERIES

The Maid’s Secret

(Molly the Maid 3)

Nita Prose

A heartwarming, clever conclusion to the Molly the Maid trilogy. Gran’s diary documenting events from her past supersedes any real mystery or investigation readers of the series have come to expect from the first two novels.

My Goodreads Rating: 3 Stars

Sunrise on the Reaping

(Hunger Games 0.5)

Suzanne Collins

A gripping and devasting prequel centered on Haymitch’s games which deftly bridges the narrative between A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and The Hunger Games.

My Goodreads Rating: 4 Stars

No part of this blog post is generated by AI.