From a darkly comic tale of revenge to a beautiful contemplation on friendship, here are the year’s most acclaimed works of fiction so far.

Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

“Daring, deranged, cleverly written,” is how Vogue describes the buzzy debut by Caro Claire Burke. In this satirical thriller, tradwife influencer Natalie inexplicably wakes up in the year 1855 in a crumbling homestead. The harsh reality of rural existence in the 19th Century soon becomes clear. Yesteryear, says the LA Times, “offers a bitingly funny and occasionally heartbreaking twist on the classic Instagram-versus-reality story”. Natalie is “a deliciously unlikable protagonist” who is “objectively off-putting, which makes her bitingly human”. The novel is due to be adapted for film, with Anne Hathaway producing and starring. (LB)

Transcription by Ben Lerner

In Transcription, an unnamed middle-aged writer travels from New York to Providence, Rhode Island, to interview Thomas, a 90-year-old former mentor and revered writer and film-maker. The stakes are high – Thomas’s recent bout of Covid means this interview could be his last – and the writer breaks his phone just before the interview, rendering him unable to record the esteemed artist’s words. What follows is a reflection on technology, storytelling and memory that The Guardian says is “intricate, uncanny, sometimes breathtakingly realistic”, while The New Yorker writes: “Nothing in this exquisite, shape-shifting novel is what it seems – words least of all.” (RL)

Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester

“Gleefully nasty,” is how The Times describes John Lanchester’s widely acclaimed fifth novel, a black comedy of betrayal, revenge, resentment and entitlement. At its centre are affluent boomer Kate and younger screenwriter Phoebe. A rivalry between them begins when Kate recognises intimate secrets from her 30-year marriage in a hit TV series. The novel “seethes with female animosity and vengeance,” says the Literary Review. “Skewed scenarios and retaliatory stratagems are craftily deployed in a novel that’s a kaleidoscope of tilting perspectives.” Look What you Made Me Do, it concludes,  is “a gleamingly accomplished black comedy”. (LB)

The Keeper by Tana French

French is a bestselling author described by The New York Times as “one of the most consistently exciting mystery writers around”. The Keeper is the final instalment in a trilogy that stars retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, who becomes enmeshed in the intrigue of the fictional Irish village of Ardnakelty. As the body of a young woman is found in a river, Hooper is drawn into investigating the case. Amid the town’s bitter feuds and long-standing grudges, he grapples with the future of this rural community. “Dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric,” says The Guardian. (RL)

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes

Blending memoir and fiction to explore memory, ageing and love, Julian Barnes’s self-declared swansong Departure(s) is brief, and with only a sketchy plot. One of the book’s threads is a romance between the narrator’s friends Stephen and Jean, who were in love in their university days, then reconnected again in old age. The narrator, meanwhile, reflects on memory, ageing and love. Departure(s) is a “valedictory flourish” says The Atlantic. “The whole package is a culmination of sorts, shimmering with his silky, erudite prose; beneath the suave surface is an earnest investigation into the mysterious ways of the human heart.” (LB)

Questions 27 & 28 by Karen Tei Yamashita

Yamashita’s first novel in 16 years centres on a dark period of US history – the internment of Japanese immigrants during World War Two. Under the order of President Franklin D Roosevelt, hundreds of thousands of people were taken from their homes on the West Coast and put in camps throughout the US. Questions 27 and 28 were part of a questionnaire prisoners were given to assess their loyalty. Yamashita’s historical novel – which blends real and fictional events with composite characters – examines the period and the ensuing internal battles that arose around the loyalty test. “Yamashita is at her best when she zooms out… and meditates on the greater stakes of these scattered lives,” writes Hua Hsu in the New Yorker. “We feel the weight of the past, all these accumulated voices and perspectives, within and between Yamashita’s novels, as well as the process through which disparate stories, anecdotes, or experiences might coalesce as history.” (RL)

This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin

Having been a Pulitzer finalist back in 2010 for short story collection In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, Daniyal Mueenuddin now returns with a highly acclaimed novel. Exploring how power, class and the legacy of feudalism shape lives in modern Pakistan, the novel follows overlapping narratives of the landowners and staff of a family-run farm. This is Where the Serpent Lives is “sensitive and powerful” says the New York Times. “Mueenuddin makes the reader care about the romantic relationships, and the pages turn themselves.” It is “a serious book that you’ll be hearing about again, later in the year, when the shortlists for the big literary prizes are announced”. (LB)

Kin by Tayari Jones

Announcing Kin as one of her Book Club picks, Oprah Winfrey described Tayari Jones’s fifth novel as “a masterpiece… that contemplates the meaning [and] complications of friendship”. Motherless since they were infants, Vernice and Annie are “cradle friends”, who come of age in Honeysuckle, Louisiana in 1950s US. As they grow, the friends drift apart – one goes down the path of college and relationships; the other in pursuit of the mother who abandoned her. “A lush, beautiful novel”, writes Radhika Jones in The New York Times. “When reading Kin, I wanted nothing more than to keep reading it.” (RL)

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

Pulitzer-winning author Elizabeth Strout is known for her series of novels featuring iconic characters Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, and her deft portrayals of small-town life in all its fraught, familial complexity. The Things we Never Say is a stand-alone novel about Artie Dam – a high-school history teacher who is navigating loneliness and a changing world – as he confronts a life-altering secret. “There is so much here to explore, so many endless human mysteries,” says The Guardian. “Let’s hope that this fine author continues steadily along her path, delivering unto her loyal readers story upon story, gift upon gift.” (LB)

The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley

“Full of pathos and humour,” according to The Times, The Palm House centres on a pair of spiky middle-aged colleagues, Laura Miller, a writer and the novel’s narrator, and Edmund Putnam, an older editor who is leaving his job at a highbrow literary magazine. The friends’ conversations in London pubs over drinks and shared packets of crisps are interspersed with often heartbreaking recollections about their pasts. Critics have praised the novel’s dialogue, which Riley, writes the LRB, “wields… like a Swiss army knife, now corkscrewed, now serrated, but always coming to a short, sharp point.” (RL)

BBC

The “relentless” focus on measuring literacy progress in schools has “pushed reading for pleasure to the margins”, according to a new report.

“Parents and schools both recognise that reading for pleasure matters, but their understandable focus on literacy skills is actively undermining it,” found the study, which analysed survey data on reading trends among UK children, drawing on data from HarperCollins, NielsenIQ and The Reading Agency.

Daily reading for pleasure among five to 17-year-olds fell from 39% in 2012 to 25% in 2025, data shows, while the proportion of children who rarely or never read for pleasure tripled from 5% to 15%.

However, the study also found that both daily and weekly reading for pleasure increased between 2024 and 2025 among 11- to 17-year-old boys and girls. For 14- to 17-year-old boys, who researchers claim are the “among the hardest-to-reach” in terms of encouraging reading, those who never read fell from 36% to 30% year-on-year.

The data suggested that fewer teens think “books aren’t cool” (down from 45% to 38% between 2024 and 2025 for the 11-17 age group), and fewer say they’d “rather watch TV, play video games or go online than read” (down from 76% to 69% for 14- to 17-year-olds).

Social media is helping teenagers discover books they enjoy, with the proportion reporting finding books via BookTok rising from 23% in 2024 to 27% in 2025 among 14- to 17-year-olds. Among 11- to 17-year-olds, discovery via YouTube rose from 25% to 30%.

The results for younger children were less encouraging. Only 32% of five to 10-year-olds read daily for pleasure last year, a level unchanged for three years and down from 55% in 2012. The proportion of five to 7-year-olds who rarely or never read for pleasure rose from 8% to 11% in a single year.

Barriers to children reading for pleasure include struggling to discover books they enjoy and screens winning their attention.

Removing pressure and making reading a social activity could encourage children to pick up a book more often, researchers said. The report also claimed being read to throughout childhood has a significant impact on a child’s reading habits. Children “who are read to daily are three times more likely to choose to read independently, daily, than if they are read to weekly by their parents,” said HarperCollins consumer insight director Alison David.

Three-fifths of three to seven-year-olds are not read to daily, according to the data. Despite this, 71% of parents with children aged 13 and under said they wished their children would spend more time reading books, an increase from 65% in 2019. Nearly half (41%) of parents believe that reading for pleasure is more important than ever.

When parents with five to 10-year-old children were asked why they read to them, the top two reasons were literacy-focused, and 58% of parents did not select enjoyment as a reason. Parents need to understand “the difference between literacy and reading for pleasure”, stated the report.

Focus groups identified a “fatalistic” attitude among parents, who assume that some children will enjoy reading and others simply won’t. Some parents also believe that reading to their child will make them lazy and less likely to be independent readers.

The report emphasised the importance of reading to children beyond the age when they can “decode” the language themselves. “They still need to be read to for the enjoyment it brings, for habit forming and for encouragement to read independently.”

David suggests that beyond bedtime reading, parents should read to children “often and anywhere” by taking a book to the park, on the bus, or to a coffee shop. “Read to children when they are in the bath, or eating lunch. Make a den, put a blanket over a table and sit in there to read. Build excitement – talk about how excited you are to continue the story to find out what happens next.”

“When you are out, point out things that you see and relate back to books, and use it as a trigger to read again later”, she said, adding that if you see a cat, you might suggest reading a Mog book – the popular series by Judith Kerr – later on. She also suggests putting on “funny voices and accents, really ham it up”, as children “love it”.

The report suggests that by helping parents understand that encouraging reading for pleasure “requires a different approach from supporting literacy – that both are essential, both are achievable – and by giving them practical tools and compelling reasons to act, we can make change happen”.

 The Guardian

Musical inspiration from Corinne Bailey Rae; danger in a magical academy; the adventures of an otter pup; a YA queer gothic fantasy, and more

The Bear and the Seed by Poonam Mistry, Templar, £12.99
When Bear’s glorious forest disappears, he finds hope in a tiny seed – but he needs help from other animals to tend it in this inspiring picture book, filled with spellbinding geometric art.

Little Passenger by Deirdre Sullivan and Jessica Love, Walker, £12.99
This poetic, beautiful picture book features a mother talking to her growing baby throughout pregnancy (“You are a full stop, a pea, a single grape”). Love’s lustrous ink and watercolour illustrations marry the delicate tendrils of developing plants with the intricate stitches of a sampler.

Put Your Records On by Corinne Bailey Rae and Gillian Eilidh O’Mara, Fox&Ink, £8.99
From a Grammy-winning musician, this gorgeous picture book about intergenerational bonds, shared emotions and the power of music boasts light-filled, joyous illustrations.

Alan, King of the Universe by Tom McLaughlin, Hodder, £12.99
These five splendidly silly, surreal graphic novel adventures, starring Alan, an orange cat with opposable thumbs and dreams of world domination, and his canine sidekick Fido, should appeal to Dog Man fans of 6+.

Megalomaniacs by Jamie Smart, David Fickling, £9.99
From the creator of Bunny vs Monkey come the Megalomaniacs – alien invaders hampered in their attempts to conquer Bobbletown by their minute size and unceasing infighting. An irresistible 7+ comics romp, crammed with bum jokes, eyewatering colour and an array of tiny villains, from a Jekyll and Hyde carrot to a cyborg kitten bounty hunter.

Poetry Pizza by Simon Mole, illustrated by Tom McLaughlin, Otter-Barry, £8.99
From baths full of lemonade to invented acronyms, a spell for infinite football skills to Yuri Gagarin’s last wee before blasting off into space, this lively, funny, lyrical poetry collection features subjects to entice a variety of 7+ readers.

The Adventures of Portly the Otter by MG Leonard, illustrated by Polly Dunbar, Farshore, £14.99
Elegantly balancing delight and peril, these stories of a lovable otter pup feature cameos from Toad, Ratty, Badger and Mole – and some unsettling appearances from the Weasels. Dunbar’s adorable illustrations complement this perfect introduction to Wind in the Willows for 8+ (or for younger bedtime listeners).

Escape from the Child Snatchers by Sufiya Ahmed, Andersen, £7.99
When Humza and his best friend, Ranj, leave India on a dangerous journey to find Humza’s big brother Dani in England, they fall almost immediately into the clutches of the child-snatching Basil Brookes. Can they escape him, find Dani – and free Brookes’s other victims too? A fast-paced, atmospheric 9+ historical adventure.

Feather Vane by Beth O’Brien, HarperCollins, £7.99
Trainee sorcerers Morfran and Creirwy have been sent with their mother, Ceridwen, to banish nuisance magical creatures from the village of Greeth-Under-Edge. When Ceridwen is imprisoned for using a forbidden enchantment, though, it’s up to the twins to contend with sylphs, salamanders, gnomes and river hags – and to learn where the deepest magic really lies, in this absorbing 9+ fantasy with a flavour of Diana Wynne Jones.

The Overthinkers’ Club: Happy List by Nat Luurtsema, illustrated by Cécile Dormeau, Usborne, £7.99
Champion worrier Birdie begins summer term with a LOT to overthink – her BFF making other friends, an imminent house move, the fact that she owns (and needs) no bras … Will starting a Happy List help stop her stressing? This hilarious new illustrated diary series will be catnip for 9+ Lottie Brooks fans.

Anya and the Light above the Ocean by Amelia Giudici, Andersen, £7.99
When her scientist mother doesn’t come home one stormy night, Anya sets out in a small boat to find her, but blacks out after she encounters a mysterious square of light at sea. When she wakes, her mother is still missing, and Anya is suddenly sent away to strangers, where she must use all her courage and tenacity to figure out the unthinkable happenings around her … A gripping, original and thought-provoking 10+ sci-fi thriller.

The Danger of Small Things by Caryl Lewis, S&S, £16.99
After the bees die out, causing worldwide famine, a new order emerges – a society without art or creativity, in which girls are sent away to work as pollinators before being married off at 16. With the help of some forbidden paints and pollination brushes, can 14-year-old Jess incite a rebellion? A compelling YA dystopia, marrying an urgent environmental message with a stirring feminist call to arms.

Her Hidden Fire by Clíodhna O’Sullivan, Penguin, £9.99
In segregated Domhain, power is concentrated in the elite Channellers, a power drawn from the life-force of the lower-status people called “Fodder”. Éadha, a servant, loves Ionáin, the heir of a ruling family who will lose their status if Ionáin does not possess the Channeller gift. But when Éadha discovers that she does – and Ionáin does not – she makes an audacious decision to accompany him to the Channeller training academy, shielding him by a trick. Riveting, romantic and thought-provoking, this chunky YA fantasy interrogates patriarchy, power-hoarding and the myths by which injustice sustains itself.

Bad Queer by Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, illustrated by Chi Nwosu, Faber, £9.99
Supported and loved by their family, Surya knows they’re non-binary, but telling Blessing – the handsome, fascinating boy they’re crushing on at drama club – is harder to face. A poignant, thoughtful YA verse novel about navigating identity and the joys and pains of first love, ideal for Dean Atta fans.

These Shattered Spires by Cassidy Ellis Salter, Bloomsbury, £16.99
In a dying, decaying world, Fourspires Castle houses arcanists of four rival disciplines – bone, blood, botany and stone – whose rites maintain the precarious status quo. When the king is assassinated, the arcanists and their human familiars must fight for survival in the ritual of the Slaughter; but bone witch Taro, botanical familiar Nixie, cursed blood familiar Elliot, and Alix, banished from the Stone Arcania, become allies despite their spiteful, mistrustful history, aiming not just to survive but to lift the curse that binds their world in its rotting chains. Ambitious, gruesome and appallingly fascinating, this queer gothic fantasy kicks off a trilogy that’s sure to attract legions of strong-stomached YA readers.

The Guardian