Melissa Joulwan's 3 favorite reads in 2024

• 2023
• 2024

The writing has the sparkle of a Nora Ephron rom-com and the sharp agony of the TV show Fleabag, plus gorgeous food writing, a deep understanding of female friendship, and class-related snobbiness. Our heroine is Piglet, and she acquired that nickname from her family as a kid. She's grown up now, and she's doing very well for herself, thank you very much. Until her dreamy fiancé confesses a betrayal just 13 days before their storybook wedding. The wedding is still on, but you have to wonder if Piglet and Kit are careening toward the worst wedding ever. And maybe even the worst life ever. As the days tick down, Piglet is ravenous for food, for love, for all things she wants in her life.

This transportive novel combines literary writing with a bang-on sci-fi premise. There are aliens and Carl Sagan and communiques to space, and/but it's about a special girl and how we experience our humanity. In the world of this book, at the exact moment that Voyager 1 was launched into space, a baby girl named Adina — an alien from another planet — was born prematurely to a single mother in Philadelphia. Living undercover, she routinely sends messages to the aliens light years away; her communiques are silly and sweet, melancholy, wistful. She NOTICES things. Her observations are a record of the mundane and brilliant things that humans do. All of our contradictions. And beautiful hearts. And meanness. And possibilities.

My second recommendation is 'The Mars House' by Natasha Pulley. I'm a Natasha This This delightful, imaginative novel uses sci-fi tropes as a launching point into something whimsical and playful — closer to fantasy than hard sci-fi. It's a love story masquerading as a sci-fi novel and fantasy cosplaying as speculative fiction. And it all works like gangbusters. In a not-too-distant future, London has become a drowned city. Our hero January Stirling was the principal dancer in London's Royal Ballet — now he's living on a terraformed colony on Mars. And through a series of circumstances (that are equal parts hilarious and tragic), he's in a marriage of necessity with a politician who should be his sworn enemy. Big adventure ensues. The plot has things to say about issues like climate change, immigration, gender, and politics. But all that smart stuff unfolds through a story that includes powerful twins, a deadly dust storm, a love triangle, forays into linguistics, a mysterious disappearance that might be murder, and maybe a haunting.