February Reads

of everything i read in february, here are my favorites!

American Rapture, CJ Leede

Sometime last year, I realized that I had stopped rereading my favorite books. I used to be a big fan of living inside stories that I already loved, over and over again. Each visit bringing something new. But then, the relentless crush of new releases and experiences.

One of my big reading goals for 2026 was to start incorporating this habit back into my life. And what a delight it was to revisit American Rapture—a dystopian novel that’s a mashup of Last of Us and a whole lot of Catholic guilt.

“Being your age, it’s the best and the worst. You know what I mean? Like, everything is so intense. So extreme, and it all feels life or death, even when it’s not. Everything does. Exams, friendships, first love. But that’s what’s so great about it. You just feel so alive all the time. You just feel.”

Everything Leede writes is soaked in adrenaline. Equal parts beautiful and horrifying. To finish this was to know that I’d be spending time with it again, soon.

Immersions, Kyle McCarthy

Incandescent. That’s the only word I can think which accurately describes this novel. The prose in here ripped me wide open.

I can’t tell you the last time that I fell into something this entirely. I was utterly enchanted by it.

“Push and pull. Love and hate. The violence of the foot, the grace of the arm. You showed me how they mixed together, the rhythm of it, and by following your body, putting mine where yours had been, I found it. A week later you were gone.”

A young woman hears that her sister’s ex husband, Johnny, is back in town—her sister, a once revered ballerina, who, after getting a divorce, quit dance and became a nun. And she is sure that he had something to do with this.

A narrative spun around obsession, sisterhood, and the search for identity. A must read when it releases in May!

Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite

I read this through audio and the moment that I finished it, I got myself a physical copy. A a rarity for me, but it’s that good.

Eniiyi is born on the day that they bury her cousin, Monife. The resemblance is striking, sparking the firm belief that she is Monife, reincarnated. A curse set right. What curse, you ask?

The Falodun women believe that they are cursed to lose the men that they love, never to share a life completely with them. It is this curse — or rather, the belief in it, which sets Monife’s own life in motion. Everything that happens to her an inevitability.

We spin back and forth between the thread of Eniyi and Monife, each desperate to have more for themselves than what came before, each faced with the impossible task of going up against a curse and the expectations of their family.

My palm was pressed against my chest, tears in my eyes, for almost the entire duration of this. I found Monife to be an unforgettable character and my heart was with her long after the book ended for me.

No God but Us, Bobuq Sayed

I’ve never read anything like No God but Us, and there will never be anything quite like it, either. It’s a remarkable book—glittery, shimmering, astonishing.

“My eager heart stood no chance of restraint. That’s the way I remember it still.”

Two queer Afghan protagonists, both forced to find new lives for themselves after being outed in excruciating ways, end up in each other’s orbit. Delbar, who dreams of becoming a drag queen and Mansur, who wants to be loved as hard as he has so often loved others. In Istanbul, the two meet when they find refuge in a queer community—activists, artists, poets, all weaving in and out of a company called PeaceMeals, which is run by Mansur’s partner, Leif.

Their connection is immediate, even if the ability to act upon it is not. Absolutely blistering to behold.

In every queer novel that I pick up, what I am hoping to find is the real grittiness of life. That is what the reader lucky enough to read this will find. A story wrapped around love, refuge, immigration and, above all, queerness. It is as lovely as the cover that binds it.

John of John, Douglas Stuart

What a rare treat it is, to find yourself at the end of a long book, with no idea how you got there, reluctant to let it go.

In John of John, as the name would suggest, two men—a father and son, both named John (though the son goes by Cal), must find a way to live with one another again, after years apart.

Cal was encouraged to return home after venturing out for college, aimlessly meandering around following graduation, when his father tells him that his grandmother, Ella, is ill. Now the three of them are crammed into the same house together, navigating all that has changed between them—and all that remains the same.

Nobody writes characters like Stuart. Not only did every person in here feel fully realized, wholly themselves, but the layers between everyone were given an equal amount of care and attention.

As a result, to pick up John of John, is less an experience of reading something and more so falling headfirst into a real place that you never want to leave.

And there’s so much more that I can’t wait for all of you to discover, yourselves!

The Burning Side, Sarah Damoff

Following the success of her previous novel, Damoff has once again created an insular world for the reader to step into — a family so rich and textured that I felt like a member, myself.

April and Leo are at the heart of the story. We meet them as they are on the brink of divorce, their house burned down, overnight. With nothing left to their name or marriage, they (and their two young children) move into April’s family home, where her parents are in the middle of their own troubles.

“When we open the back door, we’re met with a metallic scent. We squint up at a pewter sky, anticipating a spit of rain. It’s only when we look back down— dark disks swelling on the deck— that we realize it’s already raining. Some things are seen more clearly at their end then at their start. So we stand at the threshold as rain washes the world clean.”

We weave through a few different POVs, each member of the family doing their best at any given moment. It was like sitting at their dinner table, head in hand, listening in turn to all of them speak.

Damoff has a kind of Full House tone to her writing. Heightened problems, deconstructed until all that remains is a beautiful solution. And yet, my god does it work for me. This was chicken soup for the soul, truly.

Wasp’s Nest, Kat Stoddard

A comedy of errors that left me breathless. Each page managed to cut deeper than the one that came before it.

Peter is invited to his ex-wife, Tess’s upcoming wedding — a week-long event in Cape Cod. Even though he’s sure that this must be a mistake, he decides to go anyway, taking with him a handsome young waiter who pretends to be his new partner.

Sure enough, upon arriving, it is discovered that Tess’s brother, Sebatian, is the one who invited him. But, once they are all in the same room, it is decided that he should stay. Everyone is over each other, afterall.

Or are they?

The dialogue in here was jaw-droppingly sharp. Funny, intimate, revealing. But what really took me by surprise was how emotionally gutting I found the story to be. I became so attached to the characters in here that it was almost painful to let myself finish. I didn’t want to remove myself from the world Stoddard so expertly shaped.

Cannot recommend this one enough when it’s out in June!

I Love You Don’t Die, Jade Song

A confession : most of the Big Booktok Books which blew up and still circulate, endlessly, at the start of the app, were ones I had already read and disliked. Bunny, The Secret History…and, most notably, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

I’m not big on the disaffected narrator trend, mostly because I find it to be a hollow experience. It’s not particularly moving or poignant to me when someone doesn’t care, or is numb to the world. Even if the backbone to that narrative is the state of the world. The state of the world is exactly why we should all be caring. And caring very, very much!

“Everybody is unhappy and everybody is dying. It isn’t that Vicky doesn’t care. More that she cares so much that the inordinate amount paralyzes her. Easier to ignore the truth of eminent monotonous disaster. Easier to stay in bed. Easier to pretend everything is fine. Everything is fine! Everything is fine. Everything is fine—”

That being said, I Love You Don’t Die is the exception. This is what I wanted all of its predecessors to be! But I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure until maybe halfway through.

The narrator, Vicky, has been fascinated by death for as long as she can remember, viewing it as the only inevitable thing in life. She lives above a Chinatown funeral parlor and works at a celebrity start-up for bespoke urns, surrounding herself with death in all corners of her life. Her only meaningful connection, the only person who breaks her out of this shell, is her best (and only) friend, Jen.

This all changes when a dating app propels her into a throuple with an artist and a labor organizer. At the beginning it’s the perfect setup, but Vicky knows that this, too, must one day come to an and. The contrast between the connections she values and her certainty that nothing matters, begins to splinter—challenging everything she thought she knew, before.

This was beautiful. My heart crept up my throat, higher and higher until the last page.

I Was a Teenage Slasher, Stephen Graham Jones

In the middle of the month, my cat unexpectedly had to be taken to the vet (well, it’s never exactly expected, is it??)

This is how I found myself binging the entirety of I Was a Teenage Slasher—the only thing that distracted me from being absolutely positive my cat was dying (as it turns out he just has asthma, which is both a relief and a lot more expensive than death).

I loved this book. It’s about a teenager named Tolly who, the summer before his senior year, due to a turn of fate, ends up becoming a teenage slasher. It takes place in Texas, during the late 80s and manages to both nail the genre and the era. It was fun, fast-paced, and the ending left me (impossibly??) emotional.

It’s a lovely nod to slashers, carrying a sharp meta edge to it. If you need to be taken out of your head as much as I did—this is your book!

Until next time…happy reading!!!