With all of our free time, baking the same loaf of banana bread isn’t as entertaining as it was a year ago. Here are some of our recommendations for highly anticipated literary releases in 2021.
Life, Unscheduled by Kristin Rockaway
Kristin Rockaway, author of hit novels How To Hack A Heartbreak and She’s Faking It, is set to release ‘Life, Unscheduled’ in June 2021. The romance novel follows Nicole Palmieri, a workaholic who doesn’t have time for a social life or a love life. This didn’t bother her, until her best friend announces her engagement and asks Nicole to be her maid of honour. It causes Nicole to meticulously schedule out the next six months of her life, in order to stay on top of her already hectic schedule. If she sticks to the schedule, everything will go to plan. However, she doesn’t factor in meeting Brandon Phelps and falling in love with this, which could send her schedule into chaos. – Megan
Life, Unscheduled will be published on June 29th by Montlake.
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
New York Times best selling author, Taylor Jenkins Reid, is set to release ‘Malibu Rising’ in June 2021. Taylor’s previous releases include Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo. ‘Malibu Rising’ is a novel set in 1983, which follows the famous Riva siblings. It’s a story about an unforgettable night in the life of the Riva’s. Over the course of 24 hours, their lives will change forever. They each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them and what they will leave behind. – Megan
Malibu Rising will be published on May 27th by Cornerstone.
‘Milk Fed’ is the second novel by poet Melissa Broder, released in February of 2021. It follows 24-year-old Rachel who has turned calorie restriction into a religion, that is until she meets Miriam, a young Orthodox Jewish woman who insists on feeding her. As the two women grow closer, Rachel embarks on a journey marked by mirrors, mysticism, mothers milk and honey. Excited is an understatement, to say the least, although I’ve not read any of Broder’s work before. I have only heard good things about her and her writing. Plus, the main couple are LGBT, which is always a win! – Minty
Milk Fed will be published on March 4th by Bloomsbury.
Klara and The Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro
‘Klara and The Sun’ is Kazuo Ishiguro’s thirteenth novel, available for purchase in March 2021. The book is set to be an extremely powerful one. It follows an ‘artificial friend’ in a shop, who carefully watches the behaviour of those who come in and those who pass the shop outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change forever, Klara is warned not to invest in the promises of humans. This is another release I’m very ecstatic about due to the emotional depth it appears to have. – Minty
Klara and The Sun will be published on March 2nd by Faber & Faber.
Beautiful World, Where Are You? By Sally Rooney
After the popularity of her two previous bestselling books, Conversations with Friends (2017) and Normal People (2018), expectations for Sally Rooney’s third novel are high. Her upcoming novel named ‘Beautiful World, Where Are You?’ is about two twenty-something friends, Alice and Eileen. They email back and forth about their lives, relationships and thoughts, set in Dublin and Rome.
The 29-year-old Irish writer has already seen much critical acclaim for her works. Normal People was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction and won the Costa Book Award. The BBC-Hulu television adaptation of Normal People was released in early 2020 and was nominated four times at the Emmy Awards. – Rebecca
Beautiful World, Where Are You? will be published on 7 September by Faber & Faber.
The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
Following in the footsteps of his successful non-fiction books Reasons to Stay Alive (2015) and Notes on a Nervous Planet (2018), British writer Matt Haig’s upcoming release titled ‘The Comfort Book’ is about hope and resilience.
The Comfort Book originated in the positive notes that Haig used to write to his future self when he was going through a difficult period of his life. It book features a self-help manual, a memoir from Haig, and histories of writers like Marcus Aurelius and Emily Dickinson. Waterstones has described it as ‘a big warm hug of a book’. – Rebecca
The Comfort Book will be published on 6 July by Canongate Books.
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
The upcoming novel from British author Pat Barker continues the story of the Trojan War, and its aftermath from the perspective of the women whose stories have been a footnote in history. ‘The Women of Troy’ picks up where The Silence of the Girls (2018) left off. The protagonist Briseis had been abducted by the Greeks during the war and awarded to Achilles as a slave. Now, Achilles is dead and she must make new allegiances to survive the new conflicts of the Greeks during peacetime.
In 1995, Barker won the Booker prize for The Ghost Road, the third book in her Regeneration trilogy about the First World War. ‘The Women of Troy’ is her 15th novel. – Rebecca
The Women of Troy will be published on 26 August by Hamish Hamilton.
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
Based on his podcast of the same name, ‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’ is American author John Green’s first non-fiction book. It is a collection of essays, some adapted from the podcast, in which Green reviews items from the Anthropocene. This is the current geological age in which the environment has been affected by human activity. The podcast has been running since 2018 but went on hiatus last year, while Green worked on the essay collection.
Green’s repertoire includes YA bestsellers The Fault in Our Stars (2012) and Turtles All The Way Down (2017). His novels have been adapted for both film and television. – Rebecca
The Anthropocene Reviewed will be published on 18 May by Ebury Publishing.
The Thursday Murder Club 2 – Richard Osman
Following the release of his critically acclaimed first novel in 2020, Richard Osman announced that the sequel to The Thursday Murder Club would be available this year. The Thursday Murder Club (1) shared the experiences of retirement living, and how the village retirees responded to murder on their doorstep. The novel shared moments of heartbreak, humour and suspense, with more twists and turns than your average whodunnit tale. Osman’s quick wit and storytelling charm has cemented him as one of the British public’s favourite authors. The sequel’s synopsis has not yet been revealed, but will likely share tales of PC De Freitas, and her so-called career mundanity in Kent. – Bethan
The Thursday Murder Club 2 will be published on September 16th by Penguin.
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