My Most Anticipated Reads For the First Half of 2026 + ARCs I'm Looking Forward To

ARCs I Don't Have But Desperately Need/Books I'm Looking Forward To

I Want You to Be Happy by Jem Calder - I've seen this all over bookstagram, plus there's the Rooney blurb of it all. I mean, navigating modern love between a copywriter and a barista full of "anxiety, listlessness, and precarity"... sign me up. 

Please, please, please, please Faber. This is me begging for you to send me an ARC of this novel. 

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash- This one is out already, so the only thing standing between me and this book is all the other books I'm supposed to be reading and am already behind on. But I have competing holds on Libby and Dublin Libraries to see if I'll get there. 

Vigil by George Saunders - I've never read a Saunders besides the craft book he wrote (that I bought recently to read again). But I fear it is time.

I Could Be Famous by Sydney Rende - This is out now, and I have it downloaded on my Kindle from Libby. It's just a question of if I get out of my reading slump before the loan runs out. They're short stories that sound intensely modern and that follow influencers, reality TV stars, and college girls.

ARCs I Can't Wait to Read and Talk About! 

Since I haven't read any of these, I hope you'll enjoy the quick summary from Goodreads!

January

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Duspain (January 13)

Agathe leaves New York and returns to her home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away.

She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all those years, and they carry the weight of their own complicated lives. But now their father has died, and they must confront their childhood home on the outskirts of a country estate ravaged by a nearby fire before it is knocked down. They have nine days to empty it. As the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories, and resentments surface.

Tender and tense, haunting and evocative, The Old Fire is Elisa Shua Dusapin’s most personal and moving novel yet. An exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, it is also a graceful and profound look at the unsaid and the unanswered, the secrets that remain, and whether you can ever really go home again.

Blurbed by the author of The Anthropologists, sign me up! 

Discipline by Larissa Pham (January 20)

Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, Christine is seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers and friends.

But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her he's read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his cabin, deep in the woods of Maine, what she encounters threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she's imagined it. 

A delicately explosive high-wire act about the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive, Discipline is a terse triumph about art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release.

I've been thinking a lot about the real people that sneak into fiction, so this one piqued my interest. 

Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers (my current read!)

When Cora meets Sam at a baby group in their small town, the chemistry between them is undeniable. Both are happily married young parents with two kids, and neither sees themselves as the type to engage in an affair. Yet their connection grows stronger, and as their lives continue to intertwine, the romantic tension between them becomes all-consuming—until their worlds unravel into two parallel timelines. In one, they pursue their feelings. In the other, they resist.

As reality splits, the everyday details of Cora’s life—her depressing marketing job, her daughter’s new fascination with the afterlife, her husband’s obsession with podcasts about the history of rope—gain fresh perspective. The intersecting and diverging timelines blur the boundaries of reality and fantasy, questioning what might have been and what truly matters.

The Ten Year Affair is a witty, emotionally-charged exploration of marriage, family life, and the roads not taken, that ultimately do we really want our fantasies to come true?

This one, you can read now, and it made me read an extra thirty minutes for class today and run late. I'm itching to finish the last 80% of it today. 

February

Cleaner by Jess Shannon (February 17)

A young artist returns to her childhood home, with a host of degrees and diplomas in her back pocket. But when forced to confront the reality that the world sees no use for her scholarly exploits, she must find a job—and quickly.

Overqualified, underemployed, and idle, she starts a job as a cleaner for a gallery, where she meets another aspiring artist—Isabella—and they begin a passionate affair. Isabella could not be more different from the she’s elegant, successful…and living with her filthy rich boyfriend Paul.

Isabella sneaks the cleaner into her life by hiring her to scrub the apartment she shares with Paul. Little by little, the cleaner relaxes into the comfort of her new surroundings. But when Isabella leaves the apartment one day and doesn’t come back, the cleaner is left to decide whether to back to her old life—or stay and step into Isabella’s.

I love artists and art galleries and everything happening here, so I can't wait to dive in. 

So Old, So Young by Grant Ginder (February 17) 

From Grant Ginder, the bestselling author of The People We Hate at the Wedding, comes a novel of impending millennial middle age that is part love story, part tragic comedy. Five parties over the course of two decades bring six college friends together, exploring the ways we can run from and cling to our friends in love, life, and death.

For Marco and Mia, Sasha and Theo, Richie and Adam, the one constant in life after college together has been change. New jobs. New cities. New spouses. New children. Through it all, one thing they thought would always stay the same is their friendship. But time has a way of breaking even the strongest bonds and testing what we thought we knew. From East Village apartment parties and disastrous destination weddings to fortieth birthdays and suburban backyard barbecues, Grant Ginder’s resonant, funny, and deeply moving novel is a story about the growing pains of the millennial generation, and a celebration of how love can shift, stumble, and grow into something bigger than we ever could have imagined.

I picked this one up last year but haven't gotten around to reading it. I love the concept of five parties being the method of storytelling to unfold the long tail journey of all these different people scattered through time. 

Bad Asians by Lillian Li (February 17)

Diana, Justin, Errol, and Vivian have been told their entire lives that success is guaranteed by following a simple checklist. They worked hard, got good grades, and attended a great university―only to graduate into the Great Recession of 2008. Despite their newly minted degrees, they're unemployed, stuck again under their parents’ roofs in a hypercompetitive Chinese American community. So when Grace―once the neighborhood golden child, now a Harvard Law School dropout―asks to make a documentary about the crew, they say yes. It’s not like her little movie will ever see the light of day.

But then the video, “Bad Asians,” goes viral on an up-and-coming media platform (YouTube, anyone?). Suddenly, two million people know the members of the group as cruel caricatures, each full of pent-up frustrations with the others. And after a desperate attempt at spin control goes off the rails, they are flung even further off course from the lives they’d always imagined. As they grow up and grow apart, the friends desperately try to figure out who they are and what it means to live a successful life in the new millennium.

Li’s novel is both an exploration of Asian American identity and a portrait of a generation shaped by the rise of the internet and the end of the American dream. An epic tale of friendship and coming of age, Bad Asians asks: What if the same people who made you who you are end up keeping you from who you’re meant to be?

I love stories about internet virality, life not going how it's meant to, things falling apart and coming back together. I love the idea of exploring this strange generation we're all stuck in, "the rise of the internet and the end of the American dream."

March

Strange Girls by Sarvt Hasin (March 10)

A decade has passed since Ava spoke to Aliya. During the years of silence, Ava's life has remained at a standstill, while Aliya got the one thing they both wanted more than anything: a book deal. Forced back together at a mutual friend’s bachelorette in London, Ava returns to Aliya’s doorstep, desperate to unpack the truth of their shared history—and what they meant to each other.

When the two first met in the halls of their historic campus, their connection was electric. Aliya and Ava created a world of their own through the stories they wrote, influencing and borrowing from each other’s work. But when the end of college loomed, the real world began to pull them in opposite directions. Was their bond ever truly as strong as Aliya thought? And what would become of the stories they told themselves about each other?

Weaving together the friends’ past and present, Strange Girls is an ingenious portrait of a fraught friendship, and an exploration of the ties forged in the intensity of the college experience, and the scars left when they break.

I have seen this eye catching cover all over bookstagram, and I can't wait to become a part of this whole experience. 

A Good Person by Kirsten King (March 31)

Lillian and Henry have been enjoying each other’s company, especially in bed. Even though Lillian’s best friend calls it “situationship,” Lillian is determined to lock Henry down—and she has a plan. She’ll be the best, most accommodating version of herself until he falls in love with her. But when Henry blindsides Lillian with a breakup, Lillian exacts revenge by performing a drunken hex on him.

Lillian expects Henry to come crawling back to her. What she doesn’t quite anticipate is becoming a prime suspect in his murder case when he’s found dead. As Lillian grapples with the loss of her sort-of-boyfriend, she’s hit with another That Henry had a long-term girlfriend he also left behind. 

Desperate to control the narrative, clear her name, and assume her rightful place as Henry’s mourning girlfriend, Lillian’s pursuit of the truth will throw her into a dangerous tailspin. A deliciously addictive novel that explores our darkest, most human impulses, A Good Person heralds Kirsten King as a striking new voice in the canon of celebrated fiction.

This feels like it's going to be one of the big books of the year already. 

April

Like This But Funnier by Hallie Cantor (April 7)

TV writer Caroline Neumann is thirty-four and mired in professional envy and self-hatred. Even Harry, her usually supportive therapist husband, thinks it’s time for her to press pause on her career ambitions and focus on getting pregnant, despite Caroline’s serious ambivalence about having children.

When Caroline accidentally stumbles on Harry’s patient session notes and offhandedly mentions what she finds in a meeting with a producer, the momentum of Hollywood takes over. Before she knows it—and unbeknownst to Harry—Caroline finds herself pitching a TV show about the deepest, darkest secrets of her husband’s favorite patient, a woman known to Caroline only as the Teacher.

Amid the indignities of the Hollywood development process, Caroline must balance her burning desire for professional validation against her own morality and the health of her marriage. And when Caroline forms a real-life relationship with Teacher herself, the lines between art and life begin to blur further, shaking up Caroline’s understanding of what it means to be the “likeable female protagonist” of her own life.

While I don't think this is going to go in a Big Swiss direction, so many great stories come with the impropriety of someone reading other's therapy notes.

American Spirits by Anna Dorn (April 14)

Thirty-eight-year-old Blue Velour has finally achieved the critical acclaim she’s long been chasing. Over the last decade, she’s released six studio albums to mixed reviews, landing her somewhere between performance artist and niche legend. But her latest album, Blue’s Beard—a cheeky reference to the subreddit fanatically dedicated to her suspected secret relationship with longtime producer Sasha Harlow—has rocket-launched her reputation. Blue hires nerdy superfan Rose Lutz as her assistant to handle the pressures of the upcoming tour.

When the pandemic shuts down the tour, however, Blue decides to hole up in the redwoods with Sasha to make another album. An aspiring singer herself, Rose is frothing at the mouth to be isolated in a cabin with these two legends, but what begins as a creative retreat spirals into a flurry of chaos and betrayal—culminating in a tragic act that changes their lives forever.

Smart, entertaining, and edgy, American Spirits is a compelling exploration of the dark side of fame.

Read Perfume and Pain a while ago and enjoyed it, so I'm curious to dive in here. Also, I mean fandom, pop girls. 

My Dear You by Rachel Khong (April 7)

The characters in My Dear You find themselves facing extraordinary choices in scenarios that range from the everyday to the The U.S. government injects all citizens with a drug that makes them see everyone else as members of their own race and gender. God does away with humans in favor of something much better. A woman adopts a cat who conjures the ghosts of her ex-loves. A factory worker decides to liberate a sex doll she is tasked with selling.

These stories go deep beneath the surface, touching on the particular awkwardness of dating in your thirties and What does it mean to be an Asian woman in America? Or an American? Or a human? Along the way, the characters stop to consider interventions from the supernatural, the earthly, the robotic, and the immortal.

Playful, profane, and yet enveloped with profound compassion for life, however you define it, My Dear You takes on dating, marriage, and the pressures of having or not having children; intimacy, memory, race, and capitalism; living, dying, and being dead. At their very core, they are tales of love in its many being in love when you’re not supposed to be, or not being in love but wishing you were; failing at dating apps or finding yourself in weird but wonderful lifelong friendships; struggling in heaven to remember your loved ones.

Ranging from the sinister to the tender, these witty and expertly paced stories will have you laughing out loud one minute and reaching for your best friend the next.

I think this might be a big book of the year, even though short story collections are a hard sell. 

June

Close Relationships with Strangers by Krista Diamond (June 23)

Every paparazzo has their white whale, for Ben, that person is movie star Jack Whitlock.

Reviled by celebrities and the public, Ben is one of the last remaining paparazzi scouring the streets of Los Angeles. Amateurs with camera phones, social media, and a lack of bonafide stars have slowly killed a once essential role in the Hollywood apparatus. Jack Whitlock is one of the last remaining A-listers, and Ben has followed his career since the years he spent bussing tables at a diner in Las Vegas where his most popular movie once filmed a scene.

When Jack Whitlock is suddenly embroiled in a sex scandal, Ben begins his pursuit, eager for both a big paycheck and a chance to be close to the elusive star. Along the way, he is haunted by mistakes from his the photos he took of a pop star that have led to death threats, the ghost of his failed relationship with a burlesque dancer named Ellory, and his abandoned dream of being a wildlife photographer.

Searing and propulsive, Close Relationships with Strangers is a behind the lens tour-de-force through the streets of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the desert in between, as readers follow Ben, unrelenting, obsessive, and wry, on a quest that will lead either to his redemption or demise.

This was previously on the other list, but then I got a lovely NetGalley email and now it is mine wahahaha.

July

The Simp by Roshan Sethi (July 7)

Raj Ladlani is one of thousands in an unemployable actor. He has reasons to believe he is spectacularly talented (his beloved acting coach Anthony says so), a legend in every way but for the success.

His anonymous life working at Yogurtland, obsessively reading Vanity Fair, and fantasizing about stardom, comes to an end when he answers a job ad detailing a relentless, laughable parade of menial responsibilities for a 'Hollywood Family'. So begins the astonishing decline and fall of Raj Ladlani.

The Simp tells the story of Raj's momentous employment and the destruction that follows in the wake of his time with the with the H Jim, a macho director determined to prove himself as an artist; and Anna, his much younger wife who has ambitions of her own. 

And when the job reveals itself to be an absurdist walk through affluent domestic chaos and misguided engagements with identity politics, Raj might be about to lose it - on a very public stage.

I love books about stardom and the weird world behind the Hollywood we see, so I'm curious to dive in here. 

Perverts by Mac Crane (July 7)

An employee at a hunting ground where people pay to act out hate crimes prepares to meet their girlfriend’s parents for the first time. A self-destructive client engages in an affair with their therapist, careening their relationship toward its inevitable breaking point. At a theme park where men pay to ogle women dressed as sirens, a mild-mannered boat attendant gets engaged to the star performer. And in the title story, a pregnant internet sex worker blackmails her clients into attending a disastrous party.   

Nothing is off limits for Mac Crane as they rework classic stories of rejection, isolation, and connection to suggest that the so-called pervert, by existing in the margins of society, may be the one who sees the world most clearly. Crane brings their keen eye for the unsavory to seventeen transgressive stories that are as tantalizing and addictive as the characters’ experiences. A provocative and uproarious collection about pleasure, performance, and pain, Perverts is an exaltation of the awesome depravity of queer modernity.

The press release headline for this book when it came into my inbox made me think, "Wow, I hope this is a book pitch." This is another short story collection that reminds me in the jacket copy, at least, of Rejection and that strain of literary trend. 

The Obsessed by Lizzie Buhier (July 28)

Astrid is obsessed with the Russian American novelist Sofiya Sova, whose life trajectory serendipitously parallels Astrid’s own and whose writing seems to encompass every anxiety that Astrid has ever had. In hopes of gaining the purpose she so desperately craves, she begins her PhD with the resolve to live off the ethos of Sofiya Sova’s novel.

But when her boyfriend, Charlie, breaks up with her and she meets a fellow Sofiya Sova obsessive named Elijah, Astrid finds herself transcribing the love plot of her favorite novel onto her own life . . . until Elijah begins to pull away and Astrid is left flailing in a life scaffolded by obsession.

A bighearted portrait of the anxieties of desire, The Obsessed explores the trials of modern dating, the strange ennui of academia, and the question of how to create a world for yourself within and without the confines of your influences. What we’re left with is a striking portrayal of how a willing reader can bring a text to life, and similarly the animating power of a good novel.

I love the "strange ennui of academia" in the description. I find obsession fascinating, and I think the double play of the parasocial relationship and the romantic relationships that become entangled with it. 

Chosen Family by Madeline Gray (July 14)

Nell Argall and Eve Bowman are both brilliant, odd, and friendless. When they meet on the brutal battlefield that is their posh all girls’ high school during their first year there, both their lives are changed forever. From school, to university, to careers, Nell and Eve’s relationship is a life raft that is also a poison apple that is also a Medusan stare, frozen in time.

When the passion, guilt, shame, and joy that perpetually twists and turns between them finally implodes, Nell abruptly walks away, leaving Eve alone at the helm of the gloriously unorthodox family they’ve built with their seven-year-old daughter, Lake. Eve finds herself left wondering: Can the wounds of adolescent betrayal ever really heal? Can we ever really understand what’s going on in someone else’s head? And what’s love got to do, got to do with it?

Written with Gray’s characteristic big-heartedness and dark wit, Chosen Family is a queer modern classic that reminds us again and again that sometimes the most fulfilling and life-saving relationships are the ones that are the hardest to define.

Madeline Gray had a huge debut with Green Dot, and I'm curious to see what she does with her sophomore novel focused on decades of friendship that might have something more under the surface.