What You Should Worry About by Meryl Branch-McTiernan, Akashic Books, Ltd., $ 26.95, 304 pages
Meryl Branch-McTiernan’s What You Should Worry About is the kind of novel that feels like it’s constantly teetering between comedy and confession. Layla Moody’s attempt to reboot her stalled Hollywood career at Sundance quickly spirals into something messier, especially when COVID forces her into isolation in her parents’ Queens apartment. What makes the book work is how sharply it captures emotional avoidance disguised as ambition. Layla is funny in a self-sabotaging way, but never hollow. The Fire Island sections are especially vivid—full of awkward reconnections, performative independence, and the uncomfortable comfort of people who know your former selves too well.
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Holy F*ck by Joseph Incardona, Bitter Lemon Press, $ 16.95, 224 pages
Reading Holy Fck* feels like stepping into a dusty fever dream where satire, noir, and religious absurdity collide. Joseph Incardona builds a story around Stella, a miraculous healer whose method of salvation is scandalous enough to attract both devotion and assassins. Sam Taylor’s translation keeps the tone sharp and kinetic, preserving the novel’s strange balance of violence, humor, and spiritual unease. What stood out most is how unafraid it is of contradiction—Stella is both mythic and grounded, exploited and self-aware. The chase across a warped American landscape feels cinematic, almost Coen-like in its dark humor and moral chaos.
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Agnes Lives! by Hallie Elizabeth Newton, Bloomsbury Publishing, $ 26.99, 256 pages
Hallie Elizabeth Newton’s Agnes Lives! is a biting, stylish satire that turns existential despair into something almost performative. Agnes Maurer’s decision to seek out her own murderer before her next SoulCycle class sounds absurd on paper, but in execution, it becomes a sharp commentary on privilege, detachment, and emotional numbness in modern urban life. The humor is dry, polished, and deliberately unsettling—more raised eyebrow than punchline. What I found most effective is how controlled the narrative voice feels, even as Agnes unravels. It’s a novel that treats self-destruction like a curated aesthetic, and dares you to laugh at how recognizable it all feels.
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Look What You Made Me Do by John Lanchester, W. W. Norton & Company, $ 31.99, 336 pages
John Lanchester’s Look What You Made Me Do is a sleek, unsettling black comedy about narrative ownership and marital mythmaking. When Kate suspects that her private marital language has been borrowed—possibly stolen—by a younger screenwriter named Phoebe, the novel unfolds like a duel between interpretation and truth. What I appreciated most is how carefully the humor is layered: it comes from misreadings, generational friction, and the absurd seriousness with which people defend their own versions of reality. Lanchester keeps the tone tight and observant, letting tension and wit escalate together until it becomes difficult to tell where comedy ends and accusation begins.
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Two Lives With You by Lauren Ho, Mindy’s Book Studio, $ 16.99, 283 pages
Lauren Ho and Mindy Kaling’s Two Lives with You takes a high-concept romantic premise and turns it into a surprisingly emotional comedy about marriage, identity, and parallel possibility. When Dana and Nigel are granted a chance to live alternate lives where they never married, the novel finds its humor in recognition rather than reinvention. Watching them navigate unfamiliar versions of themselves—then unexpectedly collide in Bali—creates a steady rhythm of awkwardness, longing, and gentle disbelief. The comedy is subtle but effective, rooted in how strange it is to rediscover someone you thought you already knew completely. It’s romantic, but also quietly existential in its humor.
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