The Best Novels I Read in 2026 (Part 1)

It’s time to share the best novels I’ve read in 2026 so far. (If you want still more recommendations, check out my new virtual bookshop!)

These reviews are collected and abbreviated from my Goodreads account. Come friend me!

Please note: This post contains affiliate links to the books that you can purchase from Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Thank you.

Horror

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

I guess I expected your typical haunted house story and to be absolutely gripped by fear. But Anne Rivers Siddons‘s The House Next Door was not that, and I did not feel that way, despite a few moments sprinkled here and there that were hair-raising and were still hair-raising when I was thinking about them the next day.

This was more of a gossipy thriller than anything. And despite not being exactly what I expected, I really enjoyed it. I liked its chatty tone, and living in its world of tennis clubs, lots of parties, and sitting with the neighbors in the evenings, enjoying cocktails.

I would say that this book is to horror what magical realism is to fantasy. It’s supposed to be about a haunted house, but every creepy or disturbing thing that happens in it has a perfectly mundane explanation that the characters dramatize into “it must be haunted”. And almost everyone in this book spends the bulk of it rationalizing it all away, which I respect, because I was doing the same and would do the same in their situations. That said, the things that happened were very dark and sobering and the perfect counter to the light and fluffiness of the neighborhood gossip and cocktails vibe it started with.

Very good writing.

I really enjoyed the quick read that was Josh Malerman‘s A House at the Bottom of a Lake.

I don’t know that I would call it horror, necessarily, which is what it was marketed as. To me it had almost more of a dark faerie tale vibe, with some eerie, horror-like elements.

I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing itself. I thought the way the characters spoke was stilted, stiff, and not very believable. But the story was a lot of fun. I could completely see myself, like these kids, being simultaneously terrified of and pulled to/seduced by the house. I could feel it happening as I read, and I could imagine it happening in real life, as well.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ending. I think it was probably perfect for what this was. I would obviously love to know more, but I also feel that to know more would ruin it, and that it’s the not knowing that makes it so eerie.

Jac Jemc‘s The Grip of It was a fun, creepy read that reminded me a bit of a great episode of The X-Files, but I can’t name it due to spoilers. I really loved that the chapters were so short. It kept me soaring through page after page. The only thing I didn’t really love is that the voices were so similar, I had to check around for context clues for whose chapter I was on. But there were some really good creepy moments, and all the drama around the creepy moments was intriguing to read about, too! I also liked the pacing. It was disorienting in all the right places.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell was EXCELLENT!

The story was kind of slow to start, and with multiple perspectives–the “current” perspective, the one where most of the action happens, and the earliest one, where additional action occurred to set the stage. They were all interesting, but especially the first two. I expected to dislike one of them and to be annoyed every time it changed, but they all kept me hooked, so it was done well.

When the creepy stuff started happening, it really got good. It started as a slow, eerie trickle, and then the events continued to build and got completely out of control! The ending was also wild.

At first I found the two main characters unlikable, but they started to grow on me. I enjoyed the sisterly relationship between the main character and her sister-in-law, the more it went on, especially as the creep factor really ramped up.

This is perfect if you want locked rooms that unlock themselves, settings that completely transform themselves depending on who’s looking at them, magical shops that appear and disappear overnight, and existential dread.

Fantasy

Paige Harbison‘s The Other Side of Now is one of the most wonderful things I’ve read in a long while! It’s a Sliding Doors-type plot that is like one of the very best episodes of The Twilight Zone mixed with one of the palatable Hallmark Christmas movies.

The ending was perfectly bittersweet–it was neither as happy nor as sad as I feared it would be, but the perfect blend. Like, the characters dealt with heavy stuff, grew, and moved on appropriately! I was genuinely sad to be leaving them behind when I closed the book, and that almost never happens to me with modern books. I teared up several times, too. I kept worrying, especially the farther along I got, that there was no good way to end it all, but the author found the perfect way.

Another thing I loved was that this was much more about friend love than romantic love. That remained the major focus for most of the book, which is rare. It passes the Bechdel test with flying colors. That said, I also very much enjoyed the romantic subplot, and was glad that it wasn’t the main story.

I also appreciated, especially since it was the author’s adult debut, that these actually felt like characters in their 30s, instead of like teenagers, which seems to be a common issue with YA writers switching to adult fiction. And the theme of needing to live a “big life” like the main character (and/or her counterpart) was deeply relatable.

Another thing I enjoyed was all the music references throughout the book. I started making a playlist of all the favorite songs/albums the MC mentioned. (And I included the author’s brother’s band, which she mentioned in the acknowledgements.) The author put her own playlist at the end, but I made a much longer version that included all that and much more mentioned throughout the book. You can listen to it here.

I cannot recommend this more highly! It’s going to stay close to my heart for a long time and will probably get several rereads, which I almost never do these days.

I loved everything about H. G. Parry’s The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door. Imagine it’s the 1920s, and Hermione gets accepted into adult Hogwarts and befriends Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson, and Neville Longbottom, and they have The Secret History-like academic adventures together, with a dash of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell vibes.

This was a five-star read for me from start to finish. It feels very much like a Harry Potter spinoff–with only a few minor alterations, it could fit into that world almost seamlessly. Despite that, it does not read at all like bad fan-fiction. The writer is incredibly talented.

I loved the world, the characters, the found family vibes…everything about this. I cannot recommend it more highly and will be reading everything this author has ever written.

Historical Fiction

On the one hand, Stephanie Dray‘s My Dear Hamilton had anachronistic vibes to it that jolted me out of the story from time to time. On the other hand, I found the story compelling and the characters intriguing.

This is essentially speculative historical fiction. Most of this is made up because there are no documents to tell how Eliza thought and felt about much of anything, as the authors explain in the afterword. And while I know some would take issue with that, I have to say I was impressed with the ability to piece together a complete story based on so little. I admire how they wove a coherent thread between the bits that they knew and created so much detail around it.

A Girl Called Samson by Amy Harmon was a wonderful story! I was hooked from the get-go. I loved the author’s style and the fast pace, the characters, the plot…just everything! I didn’t even realize this tale about an American Mulan had a romance element to it, but I loved that, too. (I couldn’t help drawing comparisons to the Disney movie and even got “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” stuck in my head a few times while reading!) Knowing it was based on real people, I was so scared that it might not end happily, and I really had to try hard not to peek at the end because I was under such duress wondering if they would live happily ever after or not.

That said, I’m only giving this four stars, because I was given to believe (perhaps unfairly) that this was much more biographical than it was, and after reading the author’s note at the end, I realized almost all of it was completely made up! She wrote, “History has not done her justice, but I sincerely hope I did.” And I have to say…no, I’m sorry, but from what I learned in the rest of the author’s note, I don’t believe this book did her justice at all. I feel like this book would have been so much better and more deserving of the full five stars had it simply used Deborah’s story as inspiration and then been about a fictional character, rather than changing her entire story, the people in her life, and her relationships with them. My entire way through the book, I kept saying, “This feels a little too coincidental/fanciful…I wonder if this part was made up” only to find that almost everything had been. However, all that said, I would still highly recommend this. Just make sure you go into it knowing almost none of it actually happened that way. Kind of like Disney’s Mulan, really.

Narrative Nonfiction

Not technically a novel, but Erik Larson‘s In the Garden of Beasts was excellent, and I very much enjoyed the read, so I’m giving it honorable mention. It’s been decades since I really studied Nazi Germany, really read any academic works about it, and I feel like I learned some new things about the world at that time. I think my actual biggest takeaway is that Nazi Germany, in the years leading up to the war, felt a lot like the parable of the frog in the pot. Hitler put the people of Germany in a pot of tepid water and slowly boiled them so they didn’t notice the danger around them…and much of the world seemed to think the same. William Dodd tried to warn Americans, and they didn’t listen.

Not only did the people of Germany seem so much like the frog in the slowly boiling pot–at times they seemed to see what was going on and to be gleeful in their eagerness for it, so resolute were they in their hatred. The story of the Reynolds family encountering the woman who was made a spectacle of, with an entire parade, for marrying someone they didn’t approve of was utterly sickening. The way the people around them were laughing, giddy, and delighted that day made me queasy.

I liked Larson’s choices of Dodd and his daughter Martha to be our eyes through this. It had somehow never occurred to me to wonder what the American ambassador to Berlin was doing during these years, yet he seems like the obvious person to tell the tale. Dodd is, as Larson describes him early on, “complicated”. Martha is so absolutely unlikable, to a degree that was actually humorous, and I found myself eagerly waiting to see what awful thing she would say or do next. From beginning to end, I found myself shaking my head and scoffing at how outright detestable she was. Just when you thought she couldn’t get worse, she only continued to grow exponentially more repugnant, and I loved Larson’s choice of a coda where Hitler and his men discuss her in private.

It had also never occurred to me that the rest of the world, including America, might have been complicit in keeping the truth about what was really going on in Germany quiet. For his part, Dodd, while initially wanting to keep the peace and not interfere where they had no right, eventually became one of the sole voices telling the truth.

So this book, in addition to being a great read, definitely opened my eyes to a lot that was going on both behind the scenes and in plain sight that contributed to the eventual war and all of the atrocities in Germany.