RavePopsugarDebut novelist Emily Itami has crafted a complicated romance with immense empathy for all its characters and their flaws. Following the lead of a sharp and charming protagonist Mizuki, readers absorb a wonderfully nuanced take on Tokyo life ... Fault Lines is a romantic story full of wit and charm, lovingly exposing the cracks in each of its characters\' facades. In the end, it shakes each one until they have no choice but to confront their own choices.
Sally Rooney
PositivePopsugarRooney\'s biggest ideas are tucked into wide-ranging, intellectual yet warm emails traded back and forth between Eileen and Alice. Unpacking shared anxieties about climate change, religion, abandonment, the book industry, and, of course, love, Alice ends each letter with a plea for Eileen to come visit ... Rooney proves she\'s still unnervingly adept at picking out the tiny ways humans try and fail to hide our vulnerabilities. The way a close friendship conducted mainly over revealing, long-distance missives can feel shy and angsty in-person; how a small, polite deflection mid-conversation can be used to hide a well of loneliness ... Some might argue that Rooney\'s themes of young Irish love and friendship in Beautiful World, Where Are You are repetitive of her earlier works. But in the end, Rooney argues, what else matters? I wholeheartedly agree.
Kristen Arnett
PositivePopSugarWith Teeth is a decidedly Floridian tale about family, and the stories — true or not — we tell ourselves about where we fit into our family unit and the world at large. Through alternating laughs and audible gasps of horror, readers will come away from Kristen Arnett\'s darkly comic story with a new appreciation for the mysteries and puzzling perspectives each person we cross paths with holds inside ... At less than 300 pages, take it with you to the beach and you could easily finish this one in a long weekend.
Patricia Lockwood
RavePopSugarWhile 300-odd pages spent swimming around in Lockwood\'s satirical Twitter-verse would be a delight, the book pulls a sharp U-turn partway through when tragedy rips the protagonist out from the safe meaninglessness of the portal and back into the \'real\' world ... Unlike some cautionary tales that take an overly simplistic view of social media use as inherently \'bad\' or narcissistic, Lockwood grapples with its nuances from the viewpoint of someone who deeply understands its specific language and community. Teasing out the bizarre nature of a life performed on Twitter with comedy and startling incisiveness, readers will surely be talking about Lockwood\'s No One Is Talking About This for years to come.
