For me, the end of summer always signifies a renewed interest in reading. Partially, that’s to catch up on my personal annual reading goal, whether it’s an ambitious 40 books like last year or a more manageable 25 books this year.
If you’d like to add a couple more books to your fall TBR list, here are four recent and captivating titles to keep you company on cozy evenings or holiday season travels.
‘Five-Star Stranger’
By Kat Tang
2024
UC Berkeley Law School alum Kat Tang’s debut novel is founded on an excitingly fresh premise — a protagonist who works as a “rental stranger,” booked through an app. He can be whoever the client wants him to be: a boyfriend who proposes in the middle of dinner, a pretend-father to the daughter of a single mom, a “friend of the family” at a funeral. Even though it sounds like a dystopian, Black Mirror-esque story, Tang excels in humanizing the concept, grounding it in the reality of our modern loneliness epidemic. It’s concise, impactful and the definition of a page-turner.
‘Margo’s Got Money Troubles’
By Rufi Thorpe
2024
Speaking of the social consequences of mobile apps, what better platform to explore than the ever-controversial OnlyFans? In Margo’s Got Money Troubles, author Rufi Thorpe chronicles the story of a young mother in Southern California who creates an account out of sheer desperation, as the title suggests. What follows is a complicated narrative about sex work, motherhood, addiction, strained family bonds and a new-age romance. Even before the novel was published in June, it was picked up by Apple TV+ and will soon become an eight-part limited series, starring Elle Fanning and Nicole Kidman. I can’t wait to see it, whenever it comes out. Until then, grab a copy from your library and give it a try.
