Inspire Great Reading for Fall 2021

October is here, which means we are fully into the Fall 2021 season. It has been an unusual season this year (at least, in the Midwest) with warmer temperatures and sunshine. As someone who loves warm weather and sunny days, I'm not complaining. I know the cold weather will eventually arrive, so I am enjoying the last few weeks of warm weather. 

This relaxing season is giving me the perfect excuse to read some new books. Luckily, there are plenty of options for finding the perfect book to read this season. These books are imaginative, self-reflective, engaging, and they allow readers to explore a new perspective of the real world. In addition, they provide an opportunity for readers to escape reality, which is exactly what we need. We can escape to an imaginative world of reading. 

Find your escape with these five reading recommendations.

1. "Beautiful World, Where Are You" - Sally Rooney 

Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You?
(photo/Penguin Random House Canada)

Bestselling author Sally Rooney (of Normal People and Conversations with Friends) has returned with a lucid, confident novel, Beautiful World, Where Are You. One of the most anticipated novels of the year, the book follows novelist Alice as she meets Felix, who works in a warehouse. After a psychiatric breakdown, she spontaneously invites Felix to travel with her to Rome. Meanwhile, in Dublin, Alice's best friend, Eileen, is healing from an intense break-up. She starts flirting with Simon, a friend she has known since childhood. 

These four characters are young but life is starting to catch up with them. The separate couples desire each other, get together, break up, have sex, worry about their intimate relationships, and if they can ever be "just friends." How can they make these complex relationships work? By intertwining the four characters' personalities, stories, and relationships to each other, Rooney explores the intense connection humans have with each other. 

In a crazy, confusing world, how can we make up and live together? Can the characters find a way to believe in a beautiful world? Will their relationships survive? You will certainly want to know the answers to these questions. 

2. "The Night She Disappeared" - Lisa Jewell 

Lisa Jewell's The Night She Disappeared (photo/Amazon.com)

In Lisa Jewell's dark, suspenseful thriller, The Night She Disappeared, the year is 2017 and on a beautiful summer night in an English suburb, a teenage mother asks her mother to watch her baby boy so she can attend a party in the nearby woods with her boyfriend. However, the young girl and her boyfriend disappear without a trace. 

Two years later, mystery novelist Sophie moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods, known as the Dark Place. Sophie loves to walk in the woods to find inspiration for her stories. On one of these long walks, she stumbles upon a note that simply reads, "DIG HERE." 

Is this the clue toward discovering what happened to the young mother and her boyfriend? What else has happened in these spooky woods? With her signature twisted, rich, dark prose writing, Jewell delivers a suspenseful story about the harrowing lengths to which humans can descend. The slow-burn mystery will leave you on the edge of your seats--and maybe a little afraid to go for a walk in the woods this Halloween season. 

3. "Beautiful Country: A Memoir" - Qian Julie Wang 

Qian Julie Wang's Beautiful Country (photo/Penguin Random House)

Qian Julie Wang's memoir, Beautiful Country, is described as one of the best nonfiction books of the year. When Wang was seven years old, her family immigrated to the United States from China. They huddled--impoverished and undocumented--in the concrete crevices of New York City. They were forced to forage through trash to find food to survive, but it was worth it to find "freedom." 

Wang's memoir revisits her childhood experiences--at how her parents grappled with illnesses, struggled to cope with the transition from being professors in China to working as illegal sweatshop workers in New York's Chinatown, and how she was an outcast at school. Wang eventually found comfort in the school's library, where she learned the English language through books. Literary characters became her first real American friends. 

Throughout these experiences, Wang learned the lessons of the streets, and she dares to imagine a better future. The lyrical memoir is her coming-of-age story about the immigrant experience in the U.S. 

4. "Monster in the Middle" - Tiphanie Yanique

Tiphanie Yanique's Monster in the Middle (photo/Amazon.com)

Tiphanie Yanique's electric novel, Monster in the Middle (available October 19), is another anticipated work of fiction for the fall 2021 season. When Fly and Stela meet in New York City, it seems like fate. However, there are already many complications: Fly is a Black American musician from a mixed-religious family, and Stela is a Catholic science teacher from the Caribbean. Fly has had his heart broken numerous times and Stela is eager to find lasting love. Are they "meant to be"? To find the answer, they have to go back several decades--all the way to their parents' earliest loves. 

Vibrant and moving, Yanique's story moves across decades from the U.S. to the Virgin Islands and Ghana, and then back again, showing how one couple's romance is influenced by decades of family lore and love stories. How are Fly and Stela affected by their parents' pasts? 

Told through multiple points-of-view (POVs) and set against the backdrop of several historic tragedies, including the 1986 Challenger explosion and the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, the novel explores desire and identity, religion and class, and obligation between families. In order for Fly and Stela to discover if they are "meant to be," they must first learn who they are and how they came to be. 

5. "The Wish" - Nicholas Sparks 

Nicholas Sparks' The Wish (photo/Goodreads)

Nicholas Sparks has done it again. The famous romance novelist has returned with one of his best works yet, according to critics. In The Wish, Sparks wonders if you can ever forget your first love. In 1996, 16-year-old Maggie Dawes is sent to live with her aunt in Ocracoke, North Carolina, a remote village on the state's Outer Banks. She hates it...until she meets Bryce Trickett, one of the few teenagers on the island. He helps her accept the beauty of the small town, and he introduces her to a love for photography. This passion would define the rest of her life. 

Twenty-three years later, Maggie is living in New York City as an elite traveling photographer with her own art gallery. Her memories of Bryce are in the past. He went to West Point and she moved on. That's the way it was supposed to be. 

At Christmas, she is forced to stay home due to a devastating medical diagnosis. She must rely on a young assistant, and she finds herself becoming closer to him. As they count down the days to Christmas, Maggie tells him about another Christmas, decades earlier, and a love that set her on a course for her life. Can she have a second chance at her love story with Bryce--decades after they said goodbye? 

Like always, Sparks has delivered a dazzling, romantic work of art that makes readers want to believe in love. 

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Reading is so important, and it offers us a time to escape reality and get lost in an imaginative world. We learn new perspectives, valuable life lessons, and more. You can even learn more about yourself. Reading is fundamental. It always has been and it always will be. 

I hope you can find the time to curl up with a good book this fall season. You can visit another world and become a different person--all within the pages of a book. You'll fall in love with the characters and their stories. 

Consider adding these five reading suggestions (and many other new books) to your reading list this fall. Have fun! 

Read on.

-KJL-