February 2021 Honorable Mentions
Did you finish our February pick, Detransition, Baby in one sitting like us? Looking for more books to decorate your shelves?
Each month, we’ll be featuring the honorable mentions for our monthly picks — the books we debated on choosing, but ultimately picked something else. And for February, we had four other amazing titles, and it made it so hard to select one!
We Can Only Save Ourselves by Alison Wisdom
With echoes of The Virgin Suicides and The Fates Will Find Their Way, Alison Wisdom’s debut novel is the story of one teenage girl’s unlikely indoctrination and the reverberations in the tight-knit community she leaves behind.
What We Liked About It: It’s been pitched as Little Fires Everywhere meets The Girls, which is right up our alley! We can totally picture this one turning into an HBO show one day.
Bride of the Sea by Eman Quotah
Eman Quotah’s Bride of the Sea is a spellbinding debut of colliding cultures, immigration, religion, and family; an intimate portrait of loss and healing; and, ultimately, a testament to the ways we find ourselves inside love, distance, and heartbreak.
What We Liked About It: First of all, the cover is stunning. But secondly, this sounds like an important read dealing with culture and family, and it reminds us of the next The Vanishing Half.
No Heaven for Good Boys by Keisha Bush
Set in Senegal, this modern-day Oliver Twist is a meditation on the power of love, and the strength that can emerge when we have no other choice but to survive.
What We Liked About It: Its dark and heart-breaking, but it’s supposed to be the most beautifully written book. We’re sure you’ll love this one.
The Push by Ashley Audrain
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family—and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for—and everything she feared.
What We Liked About It: A character study that’s dark and unsettling, but eerily intriguing. Movie and TV rights have already been snatched up and an instant New York Times bestseller—we know we’re going to be hearing about this book for months.
