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Every month, I make (pretty accurate) predictions about which books will be featured by Book of the Month (BOTM). I take a lot of time to research upcoming releases, analyze past selections, and choose books that are solid bets.
With the last publication date in July being the 30th, I think there will at least be one July 30th pick. From the hints, it looks like The Wedding People will be an August pick. I have included The Wedding People below, but all other July predictions can be found here.
I think the books will likely drop next week on July 29, 30, or 31. I have an inkling that July 30th will be the date.
Contemporary & Literary Fiction
I wavered whether to include a few books but ultimately ruled them out, including Someone Like Us by Dinaw Mengestu, Peggy by Rebecca Godfrey & Leslie Jamison, A Season of Perfect Happiness by Maribeth Fischer, and Off the Books by Soma Mei Sheng Frazier.
Five-Star Stranger
Kat Tang
Synopsis: In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger”—a companion hired under various guises—walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways. Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.
Debut
The Wedding People
Alison Espach
This book was indicated by the third app hint.
Synopsis: A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew. In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
And So I Roar
Kat Tang
Synopsis: A stunning, heartwrenching new novel from Abi Daré, New York Times bestselling author of The Girl with the Louding Voice. When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria—and her aunt, the repercussions will send her on a desperate quest to uncover a secret her mother has been hiding for nearly two decades.
Repeat Author
There Are Rivers in the Sky
Elif Shafak
Synopsis: From the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees, an enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time. A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries.
A Great Marriage
Frances Mayes
Synopsis: When a perfect wedding is called off just days before the big event, it sends two people—and their families—reeling, in this poignant novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun and Women in Sunlight
Plays Well With Others
Sophie Brickman
Synopsis: In the vein of Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Fleishman Is in Trouble, a wickedly funny and incisive debut novel following a mother trapped in the rat race of NYC parenting as her life unravels. A shimmering epistolary novel incorporating emails, group texts, advice columns, newspaper profiles, and more, Plays Well with Others is a whip-smart, genuinely funny romp through the minefield of modern motherhood. But beneath its fast-paced, satirical veneer, Brickman gives us a fresh, open-hearted, all-too-real take on what it means to be a parent—fierce love, craziness, and all.
Debut
Clickbait
Holly Baxter
Synopsis: With the dark comedy and sharp observations of Monica Heisey and Dolly Alderton, a whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about a disgraced, newly divorced journalist demoted to a “clickbait” job at a Manhattan tabloid.
Debut
Historical Fiction
Historical fiction is still the genre I struggle most with when it comes to predictions. I considered a few August books that did not make ultimately make it into my predictions: By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult, The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable, The Thirteenth Husband by Greer Macallister, A Pair of Wings by Carole Hopson, and The Paris Gown by Christine Wells.
The Singer Sisters
Sarah Seltzer
Synopsis: Two generations of a folk-rock dynasty collide over art, love, longing, and family secrets in this captivating and poignant debut. With the richness of a beloved folk song, The Singer Sisters moves between ’60s folk clubs and ’90s music festivals, chronicling the ups and downs of stardom while asking what women artists must sacrifice for success.
Debut
The Volcano Daughters
Gina María Balibrera
Synopsis: A searingly original debut about two sisters and their flight from genocide—which takes them from Hollywood to Paris to San Francisco’s Cannery Row—each haunted along the way by the ghosts of their murdered friends, who are not yet done telling their stories.
Debut
Our Narrow Hiding Places
Kaia Alderson
Synopsis: From the author of Sisters in Arms comes the incredible, untold story of Effa Manley, a black businesswoman in the male dominated baseball industry, and, currently, the only woman inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Repeat Author
The Fertile Earth
Ruthvika Rao
Synopsis: An unforgettable story of love and resistance surrounding two young people born across social lines, set against a tumultuous political landscape in India.
Debut
Our Narrow Hiding Places
Kristopher Jansma
Synopsis: For fans of All the Light We Cannot See and The Nightingale: an elderly woman recounts her Dutch family’s survival during the final years of Nazi occupation, shedding new light on old secrets that rippled through subsequent generations. Our Narrow Hiding Places is a sweeping story of survival and of the terrible cost of war—and a reminder that sometimes the traumas we inherit come along with a resilience we never imagined.
Romance
I wavered whether to include a few books but ultimately ruled them out: Rules for Ghosting by Shelly Jay Shore, Morbidly Yours by Ivy Fairbanks, The Break-Up Pact by Emma Lord, and Given Our History by Kristyn J. Miller.
The Pairing
Casey McQuiston
The first app hint points to this novel.
Synopsis: In #1 New York Times bestselling author Casey McQuiston’s latest romantic comedy, two bisexual exes accidentally book the same European food and wine tour and challenge each other to a hookup competition to prove they’re over each other―except they’re definitely not.
Repeat Author
The Days I Loved You the Most
Amy Neff
Synopsis: Unforgettable and utterly romantic, The Days I Loved You Most is an emotional, life-affirming novel that asks, What if you could write the final chapter of your own love story?
Debut
Four Weekends and a Funeral
Ellie Palmer
Synopsis: When thirty-year-old post-double-mastectomy BRCA1 carrier and reluctant thrill-seeker Alison Mullally arrives at her ex-boyfriend Sam’s funeral to discover that no one knows he dumped her, she agrees to play the grieving girlfriend for the sake of the family. Little did she know this meant packing up Sam’s apartment with his prickly best friend, Adam Berg. After all, it’ll only take four weekends . . .
Debut
Love and Other Conspiracies
Mallory Marlowe
Synopsis: The hardest thing for a paranormal conspiracy theorist and a web series producer to believe in is finding love in this swoony debut romantic comedy.
Debut
Prime Time Romance
Kate Robb
Synopsis: A young divorcée finds herself in the ideal world of her favorite 2000s teen soap in this “gleefully nostalgic and completely fresh” romance from the author of This Spells Love.
Repeat Author
Thrillers, Mysteries, & Horror
I also waffled about a couple of books, primarily Someone in the Attic by Andrea Mara, Till Death Do Us Part by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn; The Madness by Dawn Kurtaggich, I Need You to Read This by Jessa Maxwell, In the Blink of an Eye by Jo Callahan, The Divide by Morgan Richter, and Then Things Went Dark by Bea Fitzgerald, but ultimately left them off my prediction list. If there is an early release, my bet is that it is Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty.
House of Bone and Rain
Gabino Iglesias
Synopsis: In the latest from Shirley Jackson and Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Devil Takes You Home, a group of young men seek vengeance after one of their mothers is murdered in a Puerto Rican slum; Stand By Me with a haunted, obsidian-dark heart.
Repeat Author
The Chamber
Will Dean
Synopsis: And Then There Were None meets The Last Breath in this tense and suspenseful locked-room thriller that takes place inside a hyperbaric chamber from the author of the brilliant, twisted, and clever novel First Born.
Repeat Author
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kimberly McCreight
Synopsis: When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened. But what? Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.
Repeat Author
What Have You Done?
Shari Lapena
Synopsis: Nothing ever happens in sleepy little Fairhill, Vermont. Curtains rarely twitch. Front doors are left unlocked. But Diana Brewer isn’t lying safely in her bed where she belongs. Instead she lies in a hayfield, circled by vultures, discovered by a local farmer. How quickly a girl becomes a ghost. How quickly a town of friendly, familiar faces becomes a town of suspects, a place of fear and paranoia. Someone in Fairhill did this. Everyone wants answers.
Repeat Author
Riptide
Colleen McKeegan
A heartfelt and suspenseful novel about two sisters returning to their childhood beachfront home who are forced to confront their traumatic past when a body washes ashore. Told in fast-paced, dual timelines, Rip Tide is a steamy, tension-filled tale of suspense about family, friendships broken and repaired, young love lost and rekindled, forgiveness and second chances, taking control of your life, and the dangerous decisions we make when blinded by desire.
The Body Next Door
Maia Chance
Synopsis: Hannah McCullough’s life is far from perfect, but you’d never know it by looking at her. Instead, you’d see a beautiful young mother wholly devoted to her two children and a docile wife utterly besotted with her self-made millionaire husband, Allan. You wouldn’t see the dark secret she carries. But when a construction crew unearths the body of a young girl near the McCulloughs’ vacation home on Orcas Island, Hannah has no choice but to confront her past.
The Snap
Elizabeth Staple
Synopsis: Dangerous secrets. A toxic workplace. And an unsolved murder. . . . A football professional reckons with the choices that made her career in the boys’ club world of sports possible in this riveting and sharp Friday Night Lights meets I Know What You Did Last Summer debut.
Debut
Fantasy, Science Fiction, & Magical Realism
There is at least one possibly from my July predictions that I can see as an August pick: My Mother Cursed My Name by Anamely Salgado Reyes. I debated about whether to include The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins and Strange Folk by Alli Dyer.
Hera
Jennifer Saint
This book was alluded to in the second app hint.
Synopsis: From the #1 internationally bestselling author of Ariadne, Elektra, and Atalanta, a propulsive, empowering retelling of Hera, reclaiming her as a feminist hero. In this enthralling retelling, Greek mythology’s most famous and maligned goddess finally tells her own story, as power, passion, and divine strength collide in the heart of Olympus.
Repeat Author
Lady Macbeth
Ava Reid
Synopsis: From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ava Reid comes a reimagining of Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare’s most famous villainess, giving her a voice, a past, and a power that transforms the story men have written for her.
Debut
Hum
Helen Phillips
Synopsis: Named Most Anticipated by Goodreads, LitHub, and Book Riot, this tense dystopian thriller captures an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman’s fight for her family’s security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress.
Voyage of the Damned
Frances White
Synopsis: A mind-blowing murder mystery on a ship full of magical passengers. For a thousand years, Concordia has maintained peace between its provinces. To mark this incredible feat, the emperor’s ship embarks upon a twelve-day voyage to the sacred Goddess’s Mountain. Aboard are the twelve heirs of the provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing. All except one: Ganymedes Piscero—class clown, slacker and all-around disappointment. When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people and without protection, Ganymedes’s odds of survival are slim.But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be.
Debut
Short Stories
I also considered There Is A Rio Grande in Heaven but ultimately decided against including it as a prediction.
Wild Failure
Zoe Whittail
Synopsis: A dazzling debut collection of ten powerful, feminist, and queer short stories from bestselling author Zoe Whittall. Wild Failure is replete with Whittall’s perceptive humor and acute insights into human nature. It’s also a dynamic and vibrant collection of poetic fiction that contend with the meaning of desire in a world that devalues femininity and queerness.
Nonfiction
I also waffled about a couple of books, primarily You’re Embarrassing Yourself by Desiree Akhavan, The Witch’s Daughter by Orenda Fink, A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings, and Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta, but ultimately left them off my prediction list.
The Devil at His Elbow: Alex Murdaugh & the Fall of a Southern Dynasty
Valerie Bauerlein
Synopsis: Power, privilege, and blood—this is the definitive and thrilling true story of Alex Murdaugh’s violent downfall, from a veteran Wall Street Journalreporter who has become an authority on the case. Through masterful research and cinematic writing, The Devil at His Elbow is a transporting journey through Alex’s life, the night of the murders, and the investigation that culminated in a trial that held tens of millions spellbound. With her stunning insights and fearless instinct for the truth, Bauerlein uncovers layers of the Murdaugh murder case that have not been told.
Debut
All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art
Orlando Whitfield
Synopsis: A dazzling insider’s account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his friend and fellow dealer.
Debut
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