Since many of us are preparing to potentially spend a lot of time at home over the coming weeks, let's take a look at some recently published novels you'll want to add to your TBR pile ASAP. From super cute young adult rom-coms to creepy thrillers, there's something here for everyone. While the genres and age ranges vary, there's one thing all these books have in common—they'll keep you up and reading way past bedtime. You may need to make yourself an extra cup of coffee in the morning, but the dark under eye circles are totally worth it. Besides, who doesn't love discovering a book so good you simply can't put it down? Without further ado, here are 15 books you'll want to check out while we're all stuck at home:
1) Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
First time author Emma Lord's cooks up delicious cheesiness in more ways than one in Tweet Cute. This compulsively readable YA rom-com follows high school seniors Pepper and Jack as they navigate a viral Twitter war between their families’ competing food joints. Pepper secretly runs her family’s thriving fast food chain Big League Burger’s Twitter account while Jack occasionally checks into the dwindling account for his family’s local New York City deli Girl Cheesing. As their Twitter feud picks up steam, Pepper and Jack are also falling for each other on an anonymous chat app. What could possible go wrong?
2) My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
This is the book everybody will be picking for their book clubs this year. Named a "most anticipated book" of 2020 by The New York Times, USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Marie Claire, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Bustle, Newsweek, New York Post , Esquire, Real Simple, The Sunday Times and The Guardian, My Dark Vanessa follows 32-year-old Vanessa Wye as she's forced to re-examine the affair she had with her high school English teacher when was just 15 after another student accuses him of sexual assault. Convinced for 17 years that the affair was love and not abuse, Vanessa must decide whether she will remain silent or share her story, too.
3) When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk
This heartfelt young adult novel follows high school students and former best friends Cleo and Layla. Alternating between two timelines, When You Were Everything dives into the painful reality of friendship breakups. Cleo wants to forget every last memory she shares with Layla after their falling out. That proves to be impossible when she's assigned to be Layla's tutor. As the story alternates between Then and Now, readers find out waht went wrong between these former besties, as well as showing that endings can sometimes be new beginnings.
4) The Return by Rachel Harrison
Two years after Elise's best friend Julie mysteriously vanishes without a trace, she returns home without any memory of where she's been. In an effort to heal and reconnect, Elise and Julie plan a girls trip with their college friends Molly and Mae at the remote Red Honey Inn. As soon as the four women reunite, however, it's obvious that something is wrong with Julie. She's emaciated, with sallow skin and odd appetites—like craving raw meat after years of vegetarianism. As the weekend unfolds, Elise, Molly and Mae must come to terms with the fact that the Julie they know and love is not the same Julie who came back. But then who—or what—is she now?
5) The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley
Lonely thirty-something Monica finds herself in an interesting predicament when an eccentric, lonely septuagenarian artist named Julian Jessop leaves a little green notebook filled with his most intimate thoughts in her cafe. The first few pages detail the honest truth about Julian’s life: he’s been incredibly lonely and isolated since his wife passed away. At the end of his entry, Julian asks Monica to share her own hidden truths in the notebook, as well, and then leave the notebook for somebody else to find. When Monica leaves the notebook in a local wine bar, she sets something in motion she never could have predicted. The notebook gets passed between The Authenticity Project’s lovable cast of characters—including Hazard, an addict who vows to get sober, and Alice, a mommy-blogger with a seemingly perfect life—and tells a story about putting your realest self forward...warts and all.
6) Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman
Described as "wickedly funny and surprisingly tender," Separation Anxiety tells the story of a woman named Judy caught in a middle-aged limbo she can't quite break out of. Judy's best friend is dying of cancer, her marriage is losing it's spark and her teenage son Teddy is, well, a teenager. While cleaning out her basement, Judy finds Teddy's old baby sling and decides to start carrying her dog around in it all day, every day. What happens next? Well, you'll just have to read Separation Anxiety to find out.
7) These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card
This sweeping family saga opens with Stanford Solomon—a man with a thirty year secret that's on the brink of exposure. Nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his oldest daughter—a home health aide named Irene Paisely—for the first time. Only, Irene doesn't know she's about to meet her father when she shows up for work that day because, as far as he knows, her father is long dead. Stanford Solomon, it turns out, is actually Abel Paisely. After faking his own death, he stole the identity of his best friend. These Ghosts Are Family follows all those affected by Stanford's long held secret and what happens after the truth finally sees the light of day.
8) In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Type-A Manhattan lawyer Dannie Cohan has it all—the perfect job and the perfect fiance. Shortly after accepting the offer for that perfect job, as well as the marriage proposal from her perfect fiance, Dannie has a vision of her life in five years time. She wakes up in different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man. She can just make out the date on the television news is on in the background it’s the same night—December 15—but in the year 2025. When she wakes up back in her old life, Dannie is determined to put the eerie experience behind her. Four-and-a-half years later, though, Dannie meets the very same man from her long-ago vision, which forces her to reevaluate, well, everything.
9) The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star lodging on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island. On the night she meets her future husband, Jonathan Alkaitis, a mysterious, hooded figure scrawls a message on the lobby's glass wall: "Why don't you swallow broken glass." A year later, Vincent is living in New York City and posing as Alkaitis' wife, Alkaitis is running an international Ponzi scheme that moves imaginary sums of money through his clients' accounts. When the financial empire, unsurprisingly, collapses, the lives of Alkaitis' clients. are ruined. After the fallout, Vincent vanishes into the night. Years later, a victim of the fraud is hired to investigate a strange occurrence: Vincent has seemingly disappeared from the deck of a container ship between ports of call.
10) Wow, No Thank You by Samantha Irby
Samantha Irby is back with another unforgettable essay collections. In Wow, No Thank You, Irby draws on the raw, hilarious particulars of her new life living in Chicago with her wife. Irby is now somebody who lives in "a house with a garden that requires repairs and know-how in a Blue town in the middle of a Red state where she now hosts book clubs and makes mason jar salads." Something she refers to as "the bourgeois life of a Hallmark Channel dream." As always, Irby will have you howling with laughter and speaking such relatable truths you won't be able to put her book down.
11) Look Both Ways by Jason Reynolds
Jason Reynold's latest is a collection of interconnected middle grade short stories. Reynolds weaves together ten tales—one per block—about what happens after the dismissal bell rings. From moving tales about grief to detailing the complicated, yet highly important handshake between two best friends, Look Both Ways knows that anything can (and does) happen while kids are walking home from school. Friendships are forged, fights breakout and sometimes the walk home is where kids find their voice. Who knows? Maybe a school bus will even fall from the sky.
12) Long Bright River by Liz Moore
Kacey and Mickey used to be inseparable. Now the sisters are living two completely different lives. In a Philadelphia neighborhood devastated by the opioid crisis, Kacey lives on the streets as she battles addiction. Mickey, meanwhile, works in that same neighborhood as a police officer. Though the two don't speak anymore, Mickey has never stopped worrying about Kacey. When Kacey goes missing at the same time a mysterious string of murders occur in Mickey's distri ct, Mickey becomes obsessed with finding the culprit, as well as bringing her sister home safely.
13) Followers by Megan Angelo
When aspiring novelist Orla Cadden finds herself stuck in a dead end job blogging about C-list celebrities, she hatches a plan with her wannabe reality star roommate Floss to make them both famous. Thirty-five years later, a woman named Marlow lives in a closed California village where government-appointed celebrities spend every moment of the day on camera. When Marlow learns that her whole family history is based on a lie, she flees constellation search of the truth, no matter the risks. Orla, Floss and Marlow's stories wind through time toward each other, and toward a cataclysmic event that sends America into lasting upheaval.
14) Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Such a Fun Age is a propulsive read that follows a young black babysitter named Emira and her well-intentioned white employer Alix Chamberlain in the aftermath of racial profiling incident at a Philadelphia grocery store. When a woman accuses Emira of kidnapping Alix's 2-year-old daughter Briar, Alix makes it her personal mission to somehow make it up to Emira. When a video of the incident unearths someone from Alix's past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.
15) The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver
Lydia and Freddie have been together for more than a decade with no plans of ever breaking up. On Lydia's twenty-eighth birthday, however, Lydia's life is turned upside down when Freddie is killed in a car accident. Now all Lydia wants to do is stay home and grieve for her lost love, but she knows Freddie would want her to be happy and keep living so she enlists the help of his best friend Jonah and her sister Elle to do just that. Just as Lydia begins to get her life back on track, something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened. Lydia is pulled again and again through the doorway to her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once.
Photo: Penguin Random House/St. Martin's Press