"Cat Love" has genuinely interesting ideas about empathy and desensitization buried under so many digressions it never comes together. I still can't fully explain or understand half of what happened in this novel.
The Road to Tender Hearts – Annie Hartnett
A morbid road trip comedy with a death-predicting therapy cat, two traumatized kids and a lottery winner with three heart attacks trying to win back his high school sweetheart. For two-thirds of the novel, it's genuinely funny and surprisingly moving. Then it jumps the shark and doesn’t know when to stop.
Whistler – Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett's latest is less about plot than about how memory, grief and perspective shape the stories we tell ourselves. My husband was "bored, but interested." I was taking hit after hit of literary catnip. A warm, occasionally too-precious novel that reminds you ordinary lives are worthy of extraordinary attention.
American Han – Lisa Lee
Lisa Lee writes about the Korean immigrant experience with genuine precision — the model minority myth, mobility as poison, cultural inheritance — but the present-day narrative is relentlessly toxic and the single POV leaves little room for connection.
A Parade of Horribles – Matt Dinniman
Eight books in, "A Parade of Horribles" is the course correction "Dungeon Crawler Carl" needed after the bloat of book seven. Chapter 57 — Carl and Donut dueting to A-ha's "Take on Me" — is the most purely joyful sequence in the series.
This Inevitable Ruin – Matt Dinniman
Six books of buildup, and the Faction Wars arrive with a whimper. "This Inevitable Ruin" is overstuffed, repetitive and 300-pages too long — a GoT "Long Night" moment for the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The emotional beats that define the series are still here, just buried under dungeon mechanics and escalating conflict from gods.
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride – Matt Dinniman
Book six of “Dungeon Crawler Carl” doesn't match the highs of its immediate predecessor, but the emotional core — Carl's devastating backstory, character sacrifices and Donut's vulnerability — keeps the series humming. An off-kilter audiobook narration and a slow first third test patience, but the back half delivers.
The Butcher’s Masquerade – Matt Dinniman
Five books in, "The Butcher's Masquerade" is the entry that finally earns the series' promise. As a literary fiction reader who came in skeptical and stayed cautious through four uneven installments finally found the payoff — cohesive, thrilling, genuinely funny and more emotionally sophisticated than the ridiculousness would suggest.
Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew from It – Greg Marshall
Greg Marshall wasn't diagnosed with cerebral palsy until he was 30 — despite a lifetime of surgeries, a limp and parents who knew all along. "Leg" is funnier than it has any right to be given its raw material, occasionally recalling early Sedaris, and sneaks up on you with genuine emotional weight by the end.
A True History of the United States – Daniel A. Sjursen
A West Point history professor and combat veteran makes the case that indigenous dispossession, racialized slavery, hyper-capitalism and militarism built modern America — and that questioning our national mythology is the most American thing we can do. Dense, deliberately uncomfortable and relentlessly bleak.
There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood – Rasheed Newson
I came into Rasheed Newson's sophomore novel with high expectations after his electric debut. The Golden Age Hollywood premise delivers, with real-life cameos, studio system intrigue and a fixer with the era's most interesting vantage point. But the urgency that propelled his previous novel only arrives in the final third.
The Fantasies of Future Things – Doug Jones
I judged "The Fantasies of Future Things" by its cover and went in expecting a queer love story. What Doug Jones is actually writing is far more political and ambitious — a gentrification novel using the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as a litmus test for Black progress. Uneven but worth it. A debut that bit off almost more than it could chew.
Night Sky With Exit Wounds – Ocean Vuong
I saved Ocean Vuong's debut for last — after both novels and his second poetry collection. Reading "Night Sky With Exit Wounds" in reverse revealed just how fully formed he was from the start. Ambitious, occasionally imperfect and unmistakably Vuong throughout.
The House of Hidden Meanings – RuPaul
RuPaul's memoir is part origin story, part philosophy manifesto — and at its best when he finally drops the motivational-speaker polish. The hustle is real, the narration is excellent and the final chapters are genuinely moving. But the warmth that makes him so compelling on TV occasionally softens the harder truths this story deserved.
A Sharp Endless Need – Mac Crane
A queer basketball novel set in the early 2000s should've been a slam dunk. Instead, "A Sharp Endless Need" squanders a brilliant first chapter and a timely premise on repetitive teen self-destruction tropes that clash with everything we're told about these characters.
Disorderly Men – Edward Cahill
Edward Cahill's debut novel follows three very different men caught in the same pre-Stonewall police raid — a Wall Street banker, a Columbia professor and an Irish kid from the Bronx with nothing left to lose. A character study disguised as a mystery, with strong writing but some issues with pacing and repetition.
John of John – Douglas Stuart
Douglas Stuart's third novel returns to familiar Scottish working-class terrain — religion, repression, queer identity and small-town suffocation — but with a maturity and balance that makes it his most nuanced work yet. A slow-burning character study built around sacrifice, self-destruction and a confrontation between two people who know exactly where to cut.
The Price of Salt (or Carol) – Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith's landmark 1952 lesbian novel is radical in its courage but punishing in its pacing. Carol's opacity is the central problem and a single letter shows what the novel could've been.
My 2026 Pride Month Reading List and Recommendations
Here's my annual reading list — eight books I'm attempting this June, plus recommendations from years past.
So Old, So Young – Grant Ginder
Grant Ginder's multi-decade friendship novel is funny, honest and quietly devastating — a sharper, more literary take on the terrain Steven Rowley covers.