Mary Ellen Johnson's 3 favorite reads in 2026

Since Tolkien's father, J.R. Tolkien, served in WWI, perhaps he'd heard some of the stories. He certainly wrote as if he was experiencing them firsthand. Complicated characters from all different classes, all handled with sensitivity. Loved the description from the coal mines to WWI, the sadness and futility of the war. WWI fan and this is one of the best I've read.

This novel is based on a twelfth-century medieval fable about a gerwolf. Bisclavret, a knight in service to his king, struggles to remain loyal, to fulfill his duty to the man he loves and faithfully serves. Yet always lurking in the background is the fear of the inevitable—the moment when his body succumbs to the wolf sickness. When Bisclavret is betrayed, the means by which he can transform back into human form is taken from him, condemning him to remain a gerwolf.
Finn Longman's style is lyrical, at times almost dreamlike. She tells the story through three different points of view, shifts between tenses, and even weaves in passages of verse. Somehow, it all works seamlessly. The novel never feels "artsy" or pretentiously literary. Instead, these choices reinforce the sense that we are reading an ancient fable, one that draws us completely into another world—a world that, for my part, I would have happily spent even more time exploring.

One of the most haunting books I've ever read. Loved the style--elegiac and poetic, without being pretentious. Structured by months, rather than the usual chapters, which suited the mood of that special, yet doomed, summer. Asks so many questions about love and obsession, as well as perception, for as you look back on our main character's, account of his relationship with his first love, you wonder, how much of it was simply Kyle's chimera. Which leads the reader to ponder the stories WE tell ourselves. For example, when Kyle tracks down his beloved, Jack tells him, "You will always be the most beautiful man who ever loved me." Not "the most beautiful man I've ever loved." For me, that said it all. Not just for Kyle. For all of us. What is real? What do we stitch together out of our wishes and desires and needs?