Everyone Is Lying to You

Written by: Jo Piazza

First line: There are things I know I should be doing before bed in order to get a "good" night's sleep.

Why you should read this book: Lizzie and Bex were best friends in college, but they haven't spoken for over a decade, until Bex, now a famous trad wife influencer, invites Lizzie, who writes for a women's magazine, to join her at a conference and get the exclusive scoop. Lizzie's entire industry could use a boost, and Lizzie definitely wants to know why Bex ghosted her in the first place, so she takes the job and finds herself navigating the strange, plastic world of Mommy content creators. When Bex disappears after her husband is brutally murdered, Lizzie is reminded of her investigative journalism background and, following clues seemingly provided for her by an unseen friend, decides to uncover the truth.

Why you shouldn't read this book: Definitely a guilty pleasure sort of thing.

If You Could Be Mine

Written by: Sara Farizan

First line: Nasrin pulled my hair when I told her I didn't want to play with her dolls. 

Why you should read this book: Sahar has always known that she is in love with her best friend, Nasrin, and she's pretty sure, based on the way Nasrin is kissing her all the time whenever they're alone, that Nasrin feels exactly the same way about her, so she's surprised, confused, and hurt when Nasrin announces that she's marrying a much older man she barely knows. For Nasrin, this is the sensible decision, because they live in Iran and it's straight up illegal to be gay, so why shouldn't she marry someone who will love and care for her, and continue making out with Sahar on the side? Although homosexuality is criminalized, when Sahar finds that out that being trans is perfectly legal, she realizes she has a shot at holding on to their love. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You changed for love.

So Far from God

Written by: Ana Castillo

First line: La Loca was only three years old when she died.

Why you should read this book: This is a story in the tradition of Spanish magical realism, but set in modern-day New Mexico. Sofi has four daughters and no help from her good-for-nothing ex, but she keeps it together throughout her life, working hard while strange things happen to her family, beginning with the death of her youngest daughter, who proceeds to fly out of her coffin before they carry her into church, and announce that she has visited heaven and hell. Things do not get any simpler or easier for Sophie, but she does her best for her children as long as she is able, and for her community when her children don't need her. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: There's a lot of Spanish in this book and a lot of it seemed to be slang or regional dialect, so the internet couldn't translate everything.

Howl's Moving Castle

Written by: Diana Wynne Jones

First line: In the land of Ingary, where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exist, it is quite a misfortune to be born the eldest of three. 

Why you should read this book: As the eldest of three sisters, Sophie expects to lead a boring and unfulfilling life, until the day she bumps into Wizard Howl, learns that her sisters have swapped identities, and runs afoul of the treacherous Witch of the Waste. Transformed into an old woman (and gradually realizing she's more than a little witchy herself) Sophie takes refuge in Howl's moving castle, a magical hideaway powered by an opinioned fire spirit. While the Miyazaki film based on this book is delightful and one of my favorites, the book is much richer and deeper and will hold many surprises and details that wouldn't fit into the movie.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're a cowardly womanizer.

Maurice

Written by: E. M. Forster 

First Line: Once a term the whole school went for a walk--that is to say the three masters took part as well as all the boys. 

Why you should read this book: It's the early nineteen hundreds and Maurice Hall appears to be a typical suburban English boy--strong, snobbish, eager to conform--attending public school and then Cambridge, but within himself he recognizes a strange proclivity: Maurice is a homosexual, which, at the time was both a legal crime and an almost unspeakable moral offense. At Cambridge he carries on an emotionally intimate and romantic three-year relationship instigated by his friend Clive Durham, falls deeply in love, is eventually spurned when Durham determines to be "normal" and marries a nice girl. What's remarkable about this book is that, after grieving deeply and for more than a year, Maurice's heart heals and he is able to love again, passionately and without reserve, even knowing what fate may await a man of his desires in that time and place. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It wasn't published for a half century after it was written because you couldn't publish a story about a gay person with a happy ending a hundred years ago; this is a story for people with intellectual sensitivity and without cruel prejudice. 

The Secret School

Written by: Avi

First line: On a cool Monday morning in early April 1925, Ida Bidson, aged fourteen, carefully guided her family's battered Model T Ford along a narrow, twisting dirt road in Elk Valley, Colorado.

Why you should read this book: Ida loves education and dreams of becoming a school teacher, but to do so she has to graduate from the tiny one-room schoolhouse, pass her exit exams, and go to high school in town. Calamity strikes when Mr. Jordan, the head of the school board, who doesn't think girls need education anyway, decides to close the school down two months early. With the democratic support of the other seven students, Ida endeavors to secretly run the school until the end of the term, playing teacher for the other kids while working to maintain her studies and follow her dream.

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're one of those people who freaks out about children's stories where clever children disobey and outwit dull and stubborn adults.

My Life as a Fake

Written by: Peter Carey

First line: I have known John Slater all my life. 

Why you should read this book: Inspired by a real life literary hoax, this is a fictional novel about a literary hoax, but in the story, the literary hoax literally grows legs and walks around terrifying its creator in the manner of Frankenstein's monster. It's one of those strange, dreamlike narratives where you get the sense that absolutely every character is lying about almost everything they say, including the first person narrator, and everybody in the story is kind of unlikeable at the core, but the reader is drawn in enough to keep reading just to figure out what's actually going on. Sarah Wode-Douglass, the editor of a prestigious British literary magazine, takes a weird vacation to Kuala Lumpur with John Slater, a famous poet she doesn't like at all, and meets a disgraced Australian writer who once perpetrated a literary hoax that, if he is to be believed, was way too successful. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: I'm not entirely sure it ever explains itself satisfactorily. 

Nana and Kaoru Volume 3

Written by: Ryuta Amazume

First line: It's coming!

Why you should read this book: Nana finally recovers from her illness thanks to a well-placed suppository, after which the real world intrudes for a while, with Nana and Kaoru having a surprising encounter involving theatrical makeup, and another one where a bunch of people burst through Kaoru's door looking for Nana while she's restrained in his bed, and a very long sequence involving Nana and Tachi's year-long track and field rivalry. This results in another threeway breather where Nana and Kaoru both admit to themselves, but not each other, that they really, really, really want to cuddle. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: At this point in the story, it's hard not to get frustrated with how much effort the characters who have been engaging in hot BDSM scenes for thousands of pages are putting into pretending not to love each other. 

Our House Is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Written by: Greta Thunberg, Svante Thunberg, Malena Ernman, and Beata Ernman

First line: This could have been my story.

Why you should read this book: Svante and Malena, loving and successful Swedish musicians, understood what it was like to be a little different, but when their two daughters, Greta and Beata, both began exhibiting difficulty moving through the world, they had to stretch their understanding to find ways to accommodate neurodiverse kids in an unaccommodating world. While Beata suffered debilitating intolerance to noise, Greta became increasingly despondent over climate change and the fact that the people who should be doing something about it were not. Of course, at the age of fifteen, Greta's "student strike" outside Parliament turns her into one of the most well-known climate activists and inspires countless young people to join her cause. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: It's very difficult, emotionally speaking: a lot of the book is about how much Greta and Beata suffer before their parents are able to figure out how to keep their sensitive children healthy, and the rest of it is basically about the very dire situation threatening all life on planet Earth right now. 

Telling Tales: A History of Literary Hoaxes

Written by: Melissa Katsoulis

First line: From disgruntled Mormons and fake Native Americans to bored students and lustful aristocrats, the bizarre history of literary hoaxers is every bit as revealing as the orthodox rollcall of Western writers, as is their acute appreciation of what inspires, frightens and resonates with their generation.

Why you should read this book: This is not an exhaustive catalog, but rather a touristy journey highlighting some of the most remarkable and entertaining cases of literary hoaxes, perpetrated for various reasons. Some hoaxers are out for money, others for fame; some are trying to impress their parents, and other are attempting to discredit entire organization. It's interesting to learn their methods and their motivations, and of course, their inevitable unmasking. 

Why you shouldn't read this book: You're considering perpetrating your own literary hoax and looking for advice on how to get away with it.