June 2025 book releases

Billionaires, Love Island and toxic lesbian vampires

May 31, 2025

Park Avenue: Jia Song, the ambitious daughter of Korean bodega owners, is on the brink of having everything she’s ever wanted: she’s just made junior partner at her prestigious Manhattan law firm, has two devoted best friends, and is about to score the Birkin bag of her dreams. So when she gets pulled in to manage a crisis with a high-level client, she accepts without hesitation—only to find out that the client in question is one of the most famous Korean families in the world.

With a billion-dollar beauty empire at stake, a dying matriarch, and three feuding heirs, Jia is thrust into the family’s back-stabbing politics and embroiled in a drama that feels straight out of a Korean soap opera.

I want to read it because… This is pitched as “Crazy Rich Asians meets Succession” and it better deliver on its promise because

The Tiny Things Are Heavier: Sommy, a Nigerian woman, comes to the United States for graduate school two weeks after her brother, Mezie, attempts suicide. Homesick and plagued by the guilt of leaving Mezie behind, she soon enters a complicated relationship with her boisterous Nigerian roommate, Bayo, a relationship that plummets into deceit when Sommy falls for Bryan, a biracial American whose estranged Nigerian father left immediately after Bryan's birth.

During summer break, Sommy and Bryan visit the bustling city of Lagos, Nigeria, where Sommy hopes to reconcile with Mezie, and Bryan plans to connect with his father. But then a shocking and unexpected event exposes the cracks in Sommy's relationships and forces her to confront her notions of self and familial love.

I want to read it because… Not that I needed a reason beyond this gorgeous masterpiece of a cover, but I’ve heard this is a brilliantly written debut full of messy characters and complex family dynamics—my kind of summer read indeed.

Thriller & Mystery

Kill Your Darlings: Thom and Wendy Graves have been married for over twenty-five years. Wendy is a published poet and Thom teaches English literature at a nearby university. Their son, Jason, is all grown up. All is well…except that Wendy wants to murder her husband.

What happens next has everything to do with what happened before. The story of Wendy and Thom’s marriage is told in reverse, moving backward through time to witness key moments from the couple’s lives, all painting a portrait of a marriage defined by a single terrible act they plotted together many years ago. But its power over them is fraying, and each of them begins to wonder if they would be better off making sure their spouse carries their secrets to the grave.

I want to read it because… I don’t gravitate towards the killer lady trope as much as I used to (it’s been done and overdone by now), but I do keep an eye out for exceptions to the rule—stories that manage to reframe the trope, to make it their own. Kill Your Darlings sounds like that kind of story: we’ve got an apparently normal middle aged couple, murderous intent, and a (love?) story told in reverse. I’m in!

The Compound: You wake up in a compound in the middle of the desert, along with nine other women. All of you are young, all beautiful, all keen to escape the grinding poverty, political unrest and environmental catastrophe of the outside world.

You realise that cameras are tracking your every move, broadcasting to millions of reality TV fans. Soon, ten men will arrive on foot – if they all survive the journey. What will you have to do to win? And what happens to the losers?

I want to read it because… Is this giving The Hunger Games x Love Island or is it just wishful thinking? Either way, it sounds fabulous. I really want to get my hands on this book this summer.

Fantasy

Celestial Banquet: Once every generation, the Major Gods hold a Celestial Banquet, inviting chefs from all over the Continent to prepare mouthwatering fantastical feasts. The winner is awarded the fabled Peaches of Immortality, along with a lifetime of fame and fortune.

Hot-headed noodle chef Cai enters the competition with dreams of owning her own restaurant and supporting her impoverished Peninsula town. Along with the drunken Minor God Kama, her childhood crush-turned-friend Bo, and dreamy noble Seon, Cai must now compete against the Continent’s finest culinary masters in trials that range from hunting and serving up mystical sea serpents to preparing a magical omurice from the eggs of the legendary Jian bird. Battling impossible odds and inconvenient feelings for both Bo and Seon, Cai is determined to prepare a feast fit for the gods—even if she loses her life.

I want to read it because… What’s that saying, the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach, but if food isn’t available, the next best thing is a book about a noodle chef cooking for her life?

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: In 1532 Santo Domingo de la Calzada, María grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice.

In 1827 London, Charlotte lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

In 2019 Boston, Alice has moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

I want to read it because… This book’s summary reads extremely vague to me, but reviewers claim Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is about “toxic lesbian vampires”, which I’m immediately and without a second of hesitation absolutely sat for. That, and it’s by V. E. Schwab; I haven’t read enough V. E. Schwab books to trust her work blindly (in other words, she isn’t an auto-buy author for me just yet), but I really enjoyed Vicious, so I’m looking forward to this one.

Sci-Fi

Notes on Infinity: Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, they find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.

Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.

I want to read it because… Two main things drew me to this book: the friends-to-cofounders dynamic (which, really, is not that different from the friends-to-rock-band arc—people like each other, people work together, people hate each other) and the immortality of it all. It feels like 90% of new sci-fi these days is AI-centered, so I’m fully on board with a chemistry theme for a change. Keep those darn robots away from me!

The Unmapping: There is no flash of light, no crumbling, no quaking. Each person in New York wakes up on an unfamiliar block when the buildings all switch locations overnight. The power grid has snapped, thousands of residents are missing, and the Empire State Building is on Coney Island—for now. The next night, it happens again.

Esme Green and Arjun Varma work for the City of New York’s Emergency Management team and are tasked with disaster response for the Unmapping. As Esme tries to wade through the bureaucratic nightmare of an endlessly shuffling city, she’s distracted by the ongoing search for her missing fiancé. Meanwhile, Arjun focuses on the ground-level rescue of disoriented New Yorkers, hoping to become the hero the city needs.

While scientists scramble to find a solution—or at least a means to cope—and mysterious “red cloak” cults crop up in the disaster’s wake, New York begins to reckon with a new reality no one recognizes.

I want to read it because… You know when you take one of those life-changing mid-afternoon naps and you wake up not knowing your name or current location? This book is kind of doing that, but on a much bigger scale. I’m really intrigued by the concept of this location shifting system. Can’t wait to read this!

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