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 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...

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...

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...

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

First off, this audiobook was just fantastic, and I found myself sneaking away to listen to it every chance I got. It's one of those books I can't really imagine reading in print, because both narrators brought both Will Graysons vividly to life. I highly highly recommend it in that form. Even the songs scattered...

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee

I enjoyed the first book in C.B. Lee's Sidekick Squad series, Not Your Sidekick. Set a few hundred years in the future, after a solar flare ignited a gene mutation that created meta-humans. The US, Canada and Mexico have reformed into the North American Collective, and The Hero's League of Heroes wars with the United...

The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst

This is a tricky one to review. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and I was especially impressed by the flawless architecture of the story. But the ending, to me, felt abrupt, and left me feeling somewhat empty. The book spans about seventy years. It's told in five distinct sections, each one focusing on a...

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

We Are Okay is a slow, lush, sad, beautiful book. After her grandfather dies, Marin flees her home of San Francisco for college in upstate New York. She leaves everything behind: her home, her possessions, her best friend Mabel and her family. She is a young woman starting over in a new place, completely alone...

The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

The Ruin of A Rake is the third installment in Cat Sebastian’s Turner Series, a trilogy of queer Regency romances. This one is about Julian Medlock, a man who has spent years cultivating his reputation as a Very Proper Gentleman and Lord Courtenay, who has spent years cavorting around the Continent without a care for...