What If It’s Us by Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli (HarperTeen, October 9)

This was a sweet, charming love story about two boys who meet by chance at a  post office in New York City, have an epic time trying to find each other again (after failing to exchange any info at the post office), and then share a lot of tender and awkward moments as they start...

The Bees by Laline Paull

The Bees is one of the most beautiful and creative books I've read in some time. The premise is straightforward: it's the story of Flora 717, one of thousands of sanitation worker bees tasked with cleaning up all the waste the hive generates. Flora isn't a typical bee, though--she's not quite content to "accept, obey,...

The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne

This book has been sitting on my shelf since last summer, when I got it in my Book of the Month box. People have been raving about it ever since then, and now that I've finally gotten around to reading it, I can add my voice to the chorus: The Heart's Invisible Furies is definitely...

Tin Man by Sarah Winman

This was such a gorgeous, quiet book. Told in two distinct sections, it tells the story of Michael and Ellis, two childhood friends who remain close into adulthood, until Michael eventually drifts out of Ellis's life. I loved everything about this book. I inhaled it one sitting. It was perfectly structured, and the whole thing unfolded...

There There by Tommy Orange

Wow. What a gutting and beautiful novel. It's a book about twelve Native Americans whose lives converge (or don't) at the Big Oakland Powwow. It's a book about urban Indians (as the characters in the book often label themselves). It is a sprawling, moving, and vitally urgent book about the urban Native American experience, which,...

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Luis Zafon

Reading this book reminded me that at least some of what makes a book wildly popular is totally random. Happenstance, luck, a bizarre confluence of events--whatever it is, it is definitely a mystery. The Shadow of the Wind has been popping up everywhere for a few years now, one of those books that people keep...

Anger Is A Gift by Mark Oshiro

Anger Is a Gift is devastating and spectacular. This one literally took my breath away. It made me cry, but it also filled my heart right up. The fact that it did both of these things--that it was often painful to read, but that just as often, it was filled with warmth and love and...

My Ex-Life by Stephen McCauley

My Ex-Life is a quiet novel about ordinary people dealing with the ordinary upsets of life in late middle age. David and Julie were married briefly when they were young. Now in their fifties, David's younger boyfriend has just left him and Julie is in the process of divorcing her second husband. David decides to...

Less by Andrew Sean Greer

This novel was an absolute delight--a warmhearted, unexpectedly up-put-down-able, beautifully surprising, funny, and refreshingly optimistic novel. It wasn't even on my radar until it won the Pulitzer, and though I don't put much stock in literary awards (they seem to be mostly hit or miss), I'd also heard good things about it, so I picked it...

The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan

I'd heard a lot of rave reviews of this debut novel, so I was super excited to pick it up. In the beginning of the novel, Leigh's mother commits suicide, and in the wake of her death, Leigh becomes convinced that her mother has turned into a bird. At the bird's urging, Leigh travels to...