To put it lightly, 2025 has been . . . tumultuous. This madcap year marks the halfway point of the 2020s, a period that has brought instability and chaos like we’ve never seen before. What started with a pandemic has grown into a laundry list of collective traumas we’ve endured this past half-decade. (Of course, it hasn’t all been bad – I adopted a cat, Rosalía started doing opera, we still have “The Great British Baking Show” on Netflix, and so on.)
As this year approaches its end, we not only have the opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been, but also where we’re going. And if there’s one tool that helps us envision those possibilities best, it’s books. Our favorite books hold a mirror to our worlds – whether that’s a funhouse mirror or one of those awful magnifying mirrors that they have in hotel bathrooms – and allow us to see bits of ourselves in all sorts of different scenarios and beings. Yes, books offer an escape, which can be especially welcome in times of such harsh discord. But they can also keep us grounded, helping us confront the very real challenges we face as individuals and communities.
Looking at the crop of books coming in 2026, we should be in good hands (in a literary sense, if nothing else). There’s sure to be plenty more romantasy coming down the pike, able to satiate the masses of hungry readers looking for their next shadow daddy obsession. But we’ll also be seeing standout works that tackle subjects like environmental collapse, TikTok politics, and the messy layers of everything from colonization to tragic love stories, in genres across literary and historical fiction and YA. These books and others like them promise to be a life raft for us readers, no matter what inclemency next year may bring.
Below, you’ll find excerpts from interviews with the authors of four of the most anticipated books of next year (edited and shortened for clarity) to learn more about why their work deserves a spot on your 2026 TBR list. (Have those Popsugar Reading Challenge prompts handy!)
