9 Books to Bring Into 2026
Prep Your 2026 TBR
Now that we are about two weeks into 2026, I wanted to release the list of all lists and give you nine books that you should bring into 2026. This list will include a collection of books that reach different genres and vibes, so that you can create a vast and varied TBR for the new year.
Because I know I have a unique taste in books that is just too advanced for some of you, I brought in my best reading/writing friend ever, Gretchen, to give her expert taste in the matter.
Together, we have created a list of books that scratched all our different itches in 2025, and that we think you shouldn’t live without in 2026.
A Booktok Must-Read
Normal People by Sally Rooney 5/5
Now, this goes without saying, a booktok must-read, a book recommended from TikTok, is hard to come by. There’s no one I trust less than a book trending on BookTok, but I’ve been proven wrong before, and this is one book that truly proved me wrong.
Normal People by Sally Rooney was trending on BookTok and everywhere else. It was first recommended to me in 2021 by an Irish boy I was dating in Ireland. Since then, the TV show and book have become exceedingly popular.
I decided to give it a read earlier in the year after a friend started reading some of her books. I started with Beautiful World Where Are You, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Rooney’s narration style is so unique, and I wanted to read another book by her, so I chose Normal People.
Normal People thoroughly wooed me. I won’t write a full review since I already did that here, but I was sucked in from the first page.
Rooney’s narration style is a personal favorite because of how clinical and third-worldly it is. I love how separated her narrator is from the main characters, yet we are also almost in their head. She created such a separation that we almost know what they’re thinking, yet we’re still constantly surprised that the character did something.
The story is also perfectly tragic. The two main characters get so close to living perfect lives together, yet they just keep missing each other.
Overall, this was a 5/5 for me, and you should read it!
Gretchen has no recommendation because BookTok has done her too dirty
This category was meant to be a TikTok book that was actually good, and sure, many good books I’ve read have ended up on TikTok, but this year, I have only experienced flops.
The worst book I read because of TikTok this year was Silver Elite by Dani Francis. It got insane marketing on TikTok from a bunch of big creators who were raving about this debut. Publishers truly discovered in 2025 that TikTok is the best place for marketing, and I hate it.
What I got when I picked up Silver Elite was the biggest rip-off of Divergent that I have ever read, and the main character thinks she’s the greatest thing since the 2010s dystopia hits.
She is wrong. Katniss and Tris would literally butcher her without the help of psychic powers.
Of course, this was marketed as an enemies-to-lovers romantasy, but it’s actually just insta-lust from page one. The worldbuilding of the dystopia was poor, and the plot was somehow too fast and too slow. This woman somehow grew up in a forest made of complete darkness. Even if I was willing to suspend my disbelief to some degree, I simply cannot process how she could navigate that without dying instantly.
The author actually used the word “divergent” in a random sentence, and I laughed out loud because it was just a worse version of it. Complete with training to enter an elite force and a superior who’s supposed to be like Four, but is actually complicit in war crimes.
There are a few other books I’ve been disappointed by on TikTok, and many more that I’m scared to try because I’ve been traumatized by my experience with this book.
Take with that what you will.
An Author Who Deserves More Love
Emily St. John Mandel 5/5
I read Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel over the summer, and was left speechless. I found it absurd that I hadn’t heard more about this dystopian, post-pandemic novel since we almost lived exactly this story in 2020.
Station Eleven follows a world after a pandemic kills more than half the population and shuts down society. There is no more electricity, and the world has basically shut down.
While the plot was very good and written well, what attracted me so much to this author was her structure. I love an author who can pull off a weird narration style or an oddly structured book.
The book follows multiple characters throughout their own journeys post-world-ending, and the only thing holding them all together is a narcissistic actor who died on the first day of the outbreak.
I found it so cool because Mandel created a character who had nothing to do with the main plot of the story, and weaved him throughout the entire novel to be this small, invisible string. She relied on this man, who died within the first five pages of the book, to not just connect her characters, but to carry a large portion of the plot.
This could ruin a story for so many different reasons. The character could seem irrelevant to the story and plotline, or he could fall flat and not tell the story correctly. Instead, Mandel wrote such a complex story structure that left me amazed.
I loved how one perspective would end, and sometimes, we wouldn’t go back to that perspective until the end of the book. Mandel did a great job not losing plotlines and following those storylines all the way until the end, so nothing felt lost or out of place.
This was another 5/5 book that truly deserves more love!
You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian 4/5
This is my second Cat Sebastian book, the first one being The Queer Principals of Kit Webb, and both books were great! Sebastian writes queer romances without them being 100% sex scenes or 100% cringey writing.
I struggle to find queer romance stories that aren’t trashy and filled with boring plotlines besides the sex.
I found this book because I was deep in my Heated Rivalry TV show addiction, read my review here, and I couldn’t read anything that wasn’t queer romance.
This historical sports romance follows a baseball player and a journalist tasked with writing a series of articles that make the baseball player seem likeable. The storyline was very sweet, with some deeper and darker plotlines that worked well to add layers to the story.
I love romance with a plot, and I think Sebastian excels at doing that. Her characters are realistic, her plots are swoon-worthy, and her sex scenes are tasteful and steamy.
I never see anyone talk about her books when queer romance is brought up, so I wanted to spread the word!
Cat Sebastian books are good!!!
A Guilty Pleasure Romance
Julia’s guilty pleasure reads were her fanfiction
I will do a quick highlight of my favorite fanfiction from this year.
Stay a Little Longer, Siren’s Song, and No Rules to Love by Bluecrush on AO3 were some of my favorites this year.
I also love the Sweater Weather series by Lumosinlove on AO3. I’ll never get enough of Sirius and Remus playing sports!
A very serious guilty pleasure ship of mine was Draco Malfoy and Neville Longbottom.
DON’T JUDE ME. They’re actually perfect for each other!
I would say my favorite guilty pleasure book of all time is the All for the Game series by Nora Sakavic. I didn’t read this in 2025, but I’ve read lots and lots of fanfic from this series in 2025. It’s so good!
Bride and Mate by Ali Hazelwood 5/5
Is a guilty pleasure read really a guilty pleasure read if it’s actually good?
Well, considering how popular Ali Hazelwood is, I feel like a lot of people would probably support me on this. If you’re on the slightly freaky side of TikTok, you have to have heard about her werewolf/vampire romance Bride by now. I reread it in 2025 to prepare for the second book Mate, which came out in October.
I’m having trouble typing this from the sheer giddiness these books instill in me. In a world full of dual POV romances with no angst or mystery, Ali Hazelwood knows yearning, and she knows how to do it right.
Bride is about an arranged marriage between a Vampyre, Misery (yes, that’s her name, get over it), and a Were, who end up working together to find Misery’s missing best friend. Mysteries unravel, political tensions rise, and naturally, yearning ensues. I can’t get enough of it.
Without giving too much away, Mate is about two werewolves that have discovered they are…you guessed it, mates. They don’t immediately accept each other, and that’s all well and good until they have to live under the same roof.
I was just going to recommend Mate for this list, but I don’t think it makes sense as a standalone. You can’t lose by reading another great romance, anyway.
If you don’t think you’re ready for the renaissance that is werewolf romance, I recommend literally any other book by Ali Hazelwood.
A Classic (That Was Actually Good)
Another Country James Baldwin 4/5
This was my first venture into James Baldwin, and I really enjoyed it.
Unlike other classic authors like Hemingway, Baldwin writes with a very modern sound. His writing is very blunt and to the point. There aren’t fluffy metaphors that you need to decipher to understand. Instead, he tells harsh stories with sentences that have teeth.
This book was very tense and vicious. His characters were hateful and sort of vicious with each other.
As I’m sensing a common thread, similarly to Station Eleven, Another Country relies on one character to connect the other characters and the plotline.
I liked how Baldwin did this because sometimes I was asking myself, who fucking cares about this character, he kind of sucks, and that was exactly the point. This book is purposely filled with hard-to-swallow characters who keep making off-putting decisions.
Baldwin uses these characters to tell hard stories about race, poverty, and sexuality. He very much wasn’t trying to sugarcoat those topics and wanted to create authentic stories, which he did.
This book was a slow and difficult read, but I think it was a nice introduction to James Baldwin.
I highly recommend it!!!
Inferno by Dante Alighieri 4/5
I initially set out on this epic poem journey because I heard it was practically required reading for Katabasis by R.F Kuang (which I still haven’t read, oops), and a lot of my peers mentioned reading it for a class in high school or college.
Dante’s Inferno is a famous phrase by itself, so it seemed like a solid classic to try.
What I wasn’t expecting was that this is possibly the first-ever self-insert fanfiction. Dante himself is the character taking a journey through Hell to get to Heaven because he is the chosen one, and if that’s not like every other fanfic written where y/n is sold to One Direction, I don’t know what is.
In all seriousness, the ideas originating in the epic have been used throughout so much media that it has maintained its relevancy for over 700 years. If you aren’t reading it for a love of poetry, reading it for the understanding of where so much other popular media has fed from feels worth it to me. I
f you know nothing about Italy circa 1300, worry not, a lot of translations explain the historical and cultural events Dante mentions to keep the reader following along. I read the translation by John Ciardi, and it explained everything well.
As far as the classics go, the structure of Inferno makes it a relatively quick read that’s highly imaginative and sometimes quite disturbing. But what’s not to love about a man getting to experience Hell unscathed while seeing all the people he hates suffering? Kind of cathartic, honestly.
Born in 2025
Flight of the Godwit by Bruce Beehler 5/5
As some of you might not know, I’m a bird girly. I had the opportunity to read and write a review of this new bird book for the American Birding Association, and I think it was one of my favorite reads of the year.
Beehler embarks on 19 roadtrips over about three years to study the Hudsonian Godwit. While the book is about this specific bird, Beehler documents all of his findings on the road trips from birds to dinosaurs.
I really loved how it read less like a scientific finding and more like a personal journal. I felt like Beehler took me along with him on his road trips. I enjoyed being in the head of a birder and seeing what it’s like to go on a bird-based road trip.
I like nonfiction and science books, but I struggle with heavy infodumps. This book spaces the infodumps out and makes the information digestible to any reader.
I recommend this book if you like memoirs, roadtrip stories, and soft science-based research books!
I loved it so much that I emailed the author, and he invited me to lunch in Cape May, which I sadly had to decline.
The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig 4.5/5
If you’re looking for a book with a gothic atmosphere, amazing banter, and a genuinely funny comedic character, I would recommend this in a heartbeat.
The Knight and the Moth is a fantasy romance (I, at least, am pretending it’s not a total romantasy) about women who drown themselves to receive visions from the Omens: six figures each represented by everyday objects like a coin or an inkpot. The women, known as religious figures called Diviners, can read the visions to determine people’s futures.
When other Diviners start to go missing, Sybil, the sixth Diviner, leaves the cathedral–and the increasingly suspicious Abbess–to search for her sisters.
Naturally, she must enlist the help of a broody knight who holds no such belief in the Omens Sybil has dedicated her life to.
I love some gothic vibes, and the world was immersive and spooky. The origin of the Diviners and the cathedral added some additional mystery that kept me hooked for the entirety of the novel.
I think the romance can actually qualify as a slow-burn as well, which is rare and coveted these days. I’m really looking forward to the second book in this planned duology in September 2026. While you’re waiting, you might as well check out Rachel Gillig’s other completed duology, starting with One Dark Window.
