“No man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace.” In her second novel, Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite departs from the wonderfully sharp satire of My Sister, the Serial Killer to deliver a sweeping, gothic-tinged family saga. Set in Lagos, the novel follows the Falodun women, bound by a generational curse that condemns their romantic lives to disaster. Monife, 25, drowns herself after a crushing heartbreak. On the day of her funeral, her cousin Ebun gives birth to a daughter, Eniiyi, who looks so much like Monife that whispers of reincarnation follow her everywhere. As Eniiyi grows, her life increasingly mirrors Monife’s: is she doomed to repeat past tragedies? Does the curse truly exist?
Told through the shifting perspectives of Monife, Ebun and Eniiyi, the narrative leaps across decades, between 1994 and 2025. Eniiyi, pursuing a career in genetics, initially dismisses the curse as superstition. But when romance falters, even she seeks answers from a juju woman, illustrating the tug-of-war between science and tradition.
Suffused with dark romance and a gothic mood that brings to mind Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Braithwaite’s novel is filled with wit, warmth, superstition and cultural complexity.
As Abi Daré, best-selling author of Girl with the Louding Voice, said: “I devoured Cursed Daughters and immediately wanted to start all over again. It’s a triumph: bold, searing, and utterly original. From the first page, it grips with an electric pulse. Funny and fearless, soaked in secrets, spirit, heartbreak, and love, it’s told in a voice as scalding as it is tender. I won’t soon forget Eniiyi, Grandma East, Grandma West, Ebun, and Monife — daring and luminous, as lost as she is unforgettable — the one who carved herself deepest into memory. This is a taut, feverish novel that burns itself into you. Impossible to put down.”
By the novel’s end, Eniiyi achieves what her foremothers could not and may perhaps even break the cycle of inherited grief.
A love story set in fascist Italy
Jean-Baptiste Andrea won the Prix Goncourt, France’s top literary award, for Veiller sur elle (Watching Over Her), a 600-page epic that explores love, art, resistance and survival during Italy’s fascist years. Michelangelo “Mimo” Vitaliani is a dwarf and gifted sculptor who grew up in poverty. His life changes when he meets Viola Orsini, the adventurous daughter of a powerful, aristocratic family. Instantly drawn to one another, their relationship survives several decades of the tumultuous 20th century, tested by class divides, political upheaval and the brutal rise of dictatorship. Mimo’s great work, commissioned by the Vatican, becomes the defining focus of his life.
Believed to be a Pietà-like sculpture, it inspires both awe and unease. Considered too provocative, the piece is concealed in an abbey, where Mimo devotes his final years to “watching over” it. The statue embodies his talent, his passion, his grief, and his lifelong bond with Viola. Andrea’s focus is on how individual lives are swept up by history. The narrative moves between the personal and political, never losing sight of the horrors of fascism.
Ambitious in scale, Watching Over Her is a moving and profound exploration of the everyday struggles of its characters, and how love and creativity endure even when the world collapses around them.
Secrets and obsession in 1960s Ireland
Chloe Michelle Howarth follows her acclaimed debut, Sunburn, with Heap Earth Upon It, a tense story of family secrets, obsession and survival in rural Ireland. The novel opens in January 1965 as the orphaned O’Leary siblings — Tom, Jack, Anna and Peggy — arrive in Ballycrea hoping to escape their past.
Suspicious of outsiders, the village keeps them at arm’s length until well-regarded neighbours Bill and Betty Nevan take them in. The compassionate Nevans offer the O’Learys work, but their kindness sets off an unsettling chain of events. One of the siblings forms an attachment that grows into a dangerous obsession, dragging the whole family into a mesh of secrecy and suspicion.
Recounted from multiple perspectives, the narrative blends realism with gothic unease. The characters are far from reliable; what they hide, misinterpret or refuse to face deepens the already claustrophobic atmosphere. Shame and deceit shape the siblings’ lives as buried truths begin to surface.
Like Sunburn, Howarth’s second novel explores small-town Ireland with sharp psychological insight. Critics have praised its slow-burn tension, lesbian undercurrents and haunting sense of place. Comparisons to Julia Armfield, Yael van der Wouden and Shirley Jackson highlight its mix of intimacy and menace. Howarth keeps readers in suspense until the final page. Heap Earth Upon It confirms her as one of Ireland’s most compelling contemporary voices.
Betrayal and forgiveness in postwar Ohio
Patrick Ryan’s Buckeye is a sweeping yet intimate novel set in Bonhomie, a fictional small town in Ohio, that follows the intertwined lives of two families from World War 2 to the Vietnam era. The story begins on V-E Day in 1945, when Margaret Salt kisses Cal Jenkins in his hardware store, sparking an affair that will reverberate for decades. Cal, unable to serve in the military because of a congenital condition, has married Becky Hanover, who has a secret gift — she can communicate with the dead.
Scarred by a childhood in foster homes, Margaret is married to Felix, a Navy man stationed far from home. This is a story less about scandal than of ordinary people dealing with desire, shame, legacy and the limits of loyalty. Ryan follows both couples and their children, Skip Jenkins and Tom “Buckeye” Salt, as they live through postwar prosperity, cultural upheaval and the looming Vietnam draft.
Critics have praised Buckeye for its old-fashioned storytelling flair. The writing is patient, sympathetic and rich with detail. By the final pages, Ryan’s portrait of small-town America feels nostalgic and timely, a reminder that history is always personal.
An offbeat, biting literary nightmare
Mona Awad returns to the world of her cult hit Bunny with We Love You, Bunny, a darkly comic and unsettling sequel that works as a stand-alone novel. In Bunny, Samantha Heather Mackey was the outsider drawn into the orbit of a clique of unnervingly sweet, sinister master of fine arts (MFA) classmates. In this new book, Sam is no longer a student but a debut author on a book tour. When she stops in New England, she’s confronted and kidnapped by her former “Bunnies”, furious about the way she has portrayed them in her work.
“Oh, don’t cry, Bunny! We’re not going to kill you, don’t be silly! This isn’t your novel, this is reality, remember? We’re not murderers IRL, despite the very ick brush with which you chose to paint us. No, no, we’re just going to have a little chat, is all, one by one by one by one. Taking turns with you in our telling, doesn’t that sound fun? Sort of like the ultimate Smut Salon. (You remember Smut Salon, don’t you?) As for your novel, well, we have no intention of commenting, don’t worry, k? About all of that: no comment, as they say. Except that you got it wrong. So f---ing wrong. About us.”
Bound and gagged, Sam is forced to listen as the women recount their version of events: how they formed the Smut Salon, the secrets behind their creative power, and the origins of their strange, reality-bending experiments.
What follows is a fever dream: a fairy-tale slasher infused with dark academia, where friendship and rivalry blur and the act of creation itself becomes monstrous. Awad draws on the menace of Heathers and the surreal horror of The Vegetarian, producing a story that is wickedly funny and deeply unnerving.
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