Our reviews
93 fiction books we've reviewed, each with who it's for, who should skip it and every source we used.
93 reviews match
Melissa Roehrich
Best for: Romantasy readers who love dark, enemies-to-lovers series fiction — particularly fans of A Court of Thorns and Roses or Throne of Glass who want a fierce assassin-trained heroine, a possessive Fae love interest, and the promise of a sprawling six-book world to sink into.
James Swallow
Best for: Horus Heresy series readers who want a tighter, more personal story after the sweeping Legion-scale events of the opening trilogy, and who are invested in the long-term continuity of Warhammer 40,000 lore.
Lyla Jadeborn
Best for: Readers who love emotionally warm, atmosphere-rich women's contemporary fiction — think Josie Silver or Cathy Kelly — and want a cozy, grief-informed story about community, renewal, and the quiet courage of starting over.
George R. R. Martin
Best for: Existing fans of A Song of Ice and Fire who have already collected the earlier illustrated editions in the Random House Worlds series and want a visually enriched, permanent hardcover of the fourth book on their shelves.
Rebecca Perry
Best for: Readers who relish literary, dual-timeline historical fiction — in the vein of A. S. Byatt or Hilary Mantel — and who are drawn to novels that interrogate how history is constructed, preserved, and quietly distorted, sentence by careful sentence.
Ellen Marie Wiseman
Best for: Historical fiction readers — especially fans of Wiseman's earlier novels and book clubs — who want slow-burn immersion in an under-examined chapter of American history (Virginia's eugenics-era forced sterilizations) rather than a propulsive plot.
Steven Habbi
Best for: Readers of female-led Irish diaspora historical fiction who want to inhabit one woman's full life — Galway to Prohibition-era New York, 1880–1925 — in a fictional-biography structure that blends drama, romance, and crime.
Susan Henderson
Best for: Readers of literary family dramas — especially those drawn to mother-daughter stories, compassionate fiction about mental illness, and 1970s-set coming-of-age narratives in the vein of The Glass Castle.
John Steinbeck
Best for: Readers who want a landmark of American literature in a single evening — students encountering it for class, and adults returning to (or finally picking up) Steinbeck's devastating Depression-era novella about friendship, loneliness, and a fragile shared dream.
Jaymin Eve
Best for: Paranormal romance readers who want a fresh angle on the rejected-mate trope — specifically those drawn to slow-burn tension between a resilient, witty heroine and a morally grey shifter deity, and who are ready to commit to a six-book series arc.
Min Jin Lee
Best for: Readers who love character-rich, multigenerational literary sagas — particularly those drawn to underrepresented histories — and who want a novel that uses one family's arc across seven decades to illuminate the largely unknown experience of Zainichi Koreans in Japan.
Tahereh Mafi
Best for: Devoted Shatter Me series readers — particularly those who have followed Ella Sommers's psychological journey across all four prior books and are deeply invested in her relationship with Warner — who are ready for a revelatory, emotionally interior chapter of the saga.
Patrick Rothfuss
Best for: Readers already invested in The Kingkiller Chronicle who want hundreds of pages of immersive expansion on Kvothe's world, voice, and mythology — from university politics to Vintish court intrigue to wilderness mercenary work.
Amber V. Nicole
Best for: Devoted romantasy readers who are already invested in the Gods & Monsters saga and want a psychologically weighty, mythology-rich enemies-to-lovers continuation with genuine emotional stakes.
Kristin Hannah
Best for: Readers drawn to female-centered wartime historical fiction — particularly fans of Hannah's The Nightingale or The Four Winds — who want to encounter the long-overlooked story of U.S. Army nurses in the Vietnam War told with emotional seriousness and intimate character detail.
Kashawn Taylor
Best for: Readers already engaged with contemporary poetry who are drawn to socially urgent, intersectional work — particularly those interested in queer Black voices, prison literature, and writing that documents systemic injustice from the inside.
Florence Knapp
Best for: Readers drawn to structurally ambitious literary fiction who want a morally serious, emotionally demanding exploration of how a single early decision — a child's name — can reshape identity, family, and generations, particularly those who appreciate braided timelines and unflinching treatment of domestic violence.
Tim Holden
Best for: Readers of family-centred historical fiction who want to explore the British imperial world that shaped the Washington dynasty before the Revolutionary War era, and who are happy to commit to a trilogy from its opening volume.
Donna Everhart
Best for: Readers who find the Civil War most compelling when seen through the domestic sphere — women managing farms, families, and impossible moral choices — and who enjoy character-driven Southern historical fiction with rich book-club discussion potential.
Jane Smiley
Best for: Readers drawn to American literary fiction who want a feminist reframing of a canonical text — specifically those interested in how family trauma, gender, and landscape intersect beneath the surface of a familiar Shakespearean tragedy.
June Hur
Best for: Readers who love Austen-style slow-burn romance and are drawn to stories where the act of reading itself becomes an act of rebellion — especially those curious about Joseon Korea or who enjoy the emotional texture of K-drama storytelling.
Elizabeth Strout
Best for: Readers who loved Olive Kitteridge and want to follow its prickly, deeply human protagonist into late life through Strout's precise, plainspoken prose and mosaic storytelling.
Heather Morris
Best for: Readers drawn to emotionally direct Holocaust fiction centred on human endurance and love who want a narrative grounded in real personal testimony — specifically the account of Auschwitz survivor Lale Sokolov — rather than a scholarly or documentary reconstruction of the camps.
Francine Rivers
Best for: Readers already invested in Francine Rivers's Mark of the Lion trilogy who want Christian historical fiction that explores faith, forgiveness, and early Roman persecution with genuine moral complexity rather than easy resolution.
