Coming of Age

Crux by Gabriel Tallent (released January 20, 2026) is the highly anticipated second novel from the author of the bestseller My Absolute Darling. It is a visceral, high-stakes coming-of-age story that explores the intense bond between two teenagers through the lens of extreme rock climbing.

The Plot

Set in the rugged landscape of the southern Mojave Desert, the story follows high school seniors Dan Redburn and Tamma Callahan. Dan is a “gifted golden child” under immense pressure to attend college, while Tamma is a “mouthy burnout” and social outcast who dreams of escaping her bleak reality by becoming a professional climber.

Bonded by their shared obsession with climbing, they spend their nights summiting boulders and cliffs, finding a sense of freedom and purpose that their home lives lack. As they face the looming reality of adulthood, their dreams are tested by class differences, family obligations, and the inherent risks of their sport. The “crux”—the most difficult part of a climb—becomes a metaphor for the pivotal moments in their lives where they must decide how much they are willing to risk for their future and each other.

Key Appeal Notes

• Immersive Climbing Culture: The book is noted for its “lingo-heavy” and technical descriptions of rock climbing, making the sport feel both thrilling and terrifyingly real.


• Profound Themes: Tallent explores the complexities of platonic friendship, the impact of class on ambition, and the struggle to maintain one’s identity against the weight of family trauma.


• “Monster-Audacious” Writing: Reviews highlight Tallent’s vivid nature writing and his ability to create deeply felt, authentic characters who navigate a “merciless” world.


• Emotional Intensity: Like his previous work, this novel is described as “heart-stopping” and “stomach-lurching,” taking characters to dark places to find moments of genuine hope and aliveness.

Critical Reception

The book has received widespread acclaim, with Stephen King calling it “one of the best novels I’ve ever read about friendship.” It has been praised by authors like Gabrielle Zevin and Elizabeth Gilbert for its “electric” prose and its ability to turn a niche subculture into a universal story of grit and resilience.

Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy (released January 20, 2026) is the highly anticipated fiction debut from the author of the record-breaking memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. It is a dark, provocative, and “mordantly funny” character study that explores the messy intersections of desire, neglect, and power.

The Plot

The story is set in Anchorage, Alaska, and follows Waldo, a sharp-edged, impulsive 17-year-old high school senior. Waldo lives with her single mother in a relationship defined by a “parentification” role reversal; Waldo pays the bills and manages the household while her mother impulsively chases dead-end relationships. To cope with her loneliness and a feeling of invisibility, Waldo numbs herself with extreme online shopping sprees and junk food.

The central conflict arises when Waldo becomes fixated on her 40-year-old creative writing teacher, Mr. Korgy. He isn’t the typical “dashing” older man; he’s described as having a “growing paunch,” thinning hair, and a mundane life involving a mortgage and a young child. Waldo, desperate to be seen and “special,” becomes the aggressor in the relationship, pursuing an affair that eventually begins at a school winter formal. The novel tracks the psychological fallout of this “taboo” connection as Waldo attempts to use her sexuality as a currency for love, only to find herself trapped in a cycle of self-delusion and desperation.

Key Appeal Notes

• The “Ick” Factor: McCurdy has stated that the discomfort readers feel is intentional. The book isn’t a “romance”; it’s a visceral examination of an inappropriate relationship through the eyes of a girl who thinks she is in control but is actually drowning in neglect.


• Signature Dark Humor: Fans of McCurdy’s memoir will recognize her wry, “unsparing” voice. She has a talent for finding the “mortifying detail” in human behavior, making the book both hard to read and impossible to put down.


• Themes of Consumerism: A unique aspect of the book is Waldo’s relationship with the internet and shopping. Her “Shein sprees” are presented as a literal addiction, reflecting a modern generation’s attempt to fill emotional voids with material goods.


• Mother-Daughter Dynamics: Like her memoir, the book explores how a dysfunctional maternal bond can leave a young woman vulnerable to predatory dynamics outside the home.

Why it’s Trending

• The “Sophomore” Test: After the massive success of her memoir, critics and fans were eager to see if McCurdy could translate her voice to fiction. Early reviews have been polarizing but largely positive, cementing her as a “fearless” new voice in literary fiction.
  
• Comparison to My Dark Vanessa: It is frequently compared to Kate Elizabeth Russell’s My Dark Vanessa and Nabokov’s Lolita, but with a specifically Gen Z/Alpha focus on the internet and class struggle.
  
• BookTok “Red Flags”: The book is a major topic for debate regarding the “imperfect victim” trope. Readers are fascinated by Waldo’s aggression and how it complicates our traditional understanding of power dynamics.

You knew I’d write a book about you someday.

Our narrator (nicknamed Jordan, real name never given) is a professional novelist in her late 40s who understands good love stories—their secrets and subtext, their highs and free falls. But her greatest love story, the one she lived, never followed the simple rules. The novel is both prequel and sequel to King’s 2020 novel Writers & Lovers (features same protagonist years apart). Heart the Lover is divided into parts mirroring the course of love story: college years, then decades later. Fall of her senior year of college, she meets two star students from her 17th-Century Lit class: Sam and Yash. Best friends living off campus in elegant house of professor on sabbatical, the boys invite her into their intoxicating world of academic fervor, rapid-fire banter and raucous card games. They nickname her Jordan (referencing The Great Gatsby—she’s their Daisy, their Jordan, caught between them). She quickly discovers the pleasures of friendship, love and her own intellectual ambition. But youthful passion is unpredictable, and soon she finds herself at the center of a charged and intricate triangle. She must choose. She chooses Sam.

They marry young. Years pass. Then present day: Jordan is established novelist, Sam is her husband, and Yash has been out of their lives for decades. But crisis brings all three together again—someone is dying, or dead, or in trouble (King keeps this ambiguous initially). The reunion forces Jordan to reckon with the road not taken, the love she didn’t choose, the life she might have had. Through alternating timelines, we see: the heady campus romance, the choice made, the consequences lived with, and finally the reckoning decades later. Did she choose right? What did she lose? What did she gain? Can you love two people? Is there one “right” choice?

The Plot/Key Appeal: Lily King at her very best. Intimate, overwhelming novel about desire, friendship, loss, and the lasting impact of first love. The triangular structure echoes Euphoria (King’s breakout novel) but this is more intimate, less epic. King’s prose is witty, insightful, emotionally acute—Jordan’s first-person narration is observant and distinctive. The college sections capture intellectual intensity, sexual awakening, being young and brilliant and not knowing anything yet. The present-day sections are suffused with longing, what-ifs, the weight of decades of choices. Connections to Writers & Lovers enhance both books (Casey the protagonist in that book makes appearance; Jordan is her).References to other literary love triangles abound (Gatsby, Jules et Jim). Some readers will cry—emotional gut-punch. Character work is extraordinary. All three leads are flawed, real, complicated. Chicago Tribune: “sincere.” Boston Globe: similar sentiment. NYT: “nostalgia distilled in black ink.” Final chapter gives shivers.

Why It’s Trending:

• Released October 7, 2025.


• Instant NYT Bestseller.


• Longlisted for National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.


• Longlisted for 2026 Joyce Carol Oates Prize.


• BEST BOOK OF 2025: TIME Magazine, NYT, Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar (10 Best), NPR, Vogue, Oprah Daily, People, USA TODAY, Literary Hub, Kirkus, BookPage, Apple, Spotify, Amazon, B&N, PEN America, Chicago Public Library.


• 2026 PEN/Faulkner Award Longlist.


• Emma Straub: “Lily King has written another masterpiece. This book overflows with her brilliance and her heart.”


• Zadie Smith picked it for Elle.com Shelf Life as “book that made me weep uncontrollably.”

For fans of: campus novels, love triangles, literary fiction, Sally Rooney (Normal People), books about books/writers, coming-of-age, emotional gut-punches, beautiful prose.

Book clubs will have rich discussions: who should she have chosen? Is there “one true love”? How do choices shape us? Regret and acceptance. First love’s lasting impact. Book references and literary analysis. Warning: emotional—tissues necessary. Slow-paced literary fiction, not plot-driven thriller.

How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McConigley (released January 2026) is a formally daring debut that has taken BookTok by storm. Though the title sounds like a “how-to” guide or a dry academic text, it is actually a razor-sharp, dark, and often funny coming-of-age story set in the 1980s.

The Plot

The story is set in Marley, Wyoming, in 1986. It is narrated by Georgie, a 12-year-old girl who, along with her older sister Agatha Krishna, is “brown in a very white place.” Their father works in the Wyoming oil fields, and their mother is an immigrant from India.

The sisters’ lives are upended when their Uncle Vinny moves in from India. He is a predator who begins to abuse the girls, but because he is their mother’s last remaining link to her home country, the girls feel they cannot tell her. Agatha Krishna decides there is only one solution: they must kill him. She convinces Georgie that the “British” are ultimately to blame for Vinny’s behavior, linking their personal trauma to the larger history of colonial violence and the Partition of India.

Key Appeal Notes

• Experimental Structure: The book is interspersed with magazine-style personality quizzes (e.g., “Do You Have What It Takes to Kill?”) that reflect the “teen girl” culture of the 80s while highlighting the loss of innocence.


• The “Blame the British” Logic: The sisters use postcolonial theory as a survival mechanism. If they can trace their uncle’s rot back to the British Empire, they can justify his murder as an act of “decolonization.”


• 80s Nostalgia with a Twist: It features 1980s touchstones like the Challenger disaster, Princess Diana, and Halley’s Comet, but viewed through the lens of outsiders who don’t quite fit the “All-American” mold.


• The “Ventriloquist” Voice: Georgie addresses the reader directly, often challenging our expectations of what a “brown immigrant story” should look like. She refuses to be the “pitied victim.”

Why it’s Trending in 2026

• Genre-Blending: It’s being marketed as “Literary Thriller meets Dark Comedy.” It satisfies the craving for a murder mystery while providing the intellectual depth of a postcolonial critique.


• The “Surprise Ending”: Like many of the books we’ve discussed, this one is famous for a twist that recontextualizes the entire narrative of the “murder.”


• Indie Darling: As a debut novel with a “nervy” voice, it has become the “it-book” for readers who want something more challenging than a standard domestic thriller.