Q1(-ish) in Review: the highlights from the first 40 reads of the year

The Fiction Fox
Apr 24
6 min read

Updated: Apr 30

With the first quarter of 2026 behind us it’s time for me to give my first of many wrap-ups. And by “time” I mean, almost a month overdue… Thanks to the hectic and eventful month I’ve had, I completely missed the Q1-mark, and instead am giving you a “tertile” review instead… At the time of writing, I’ve completed 41 books, according to Goodreads. Here are the ones that stood out the most.

Favourites:

Hemlock – Melissa Faliveno
A blend of disorienting magical realism and horror, that explores the feral nature of trauma and a powerful journey of healing through immersion in (one’s own) nature. Full review here
The Iron Garden Sutra – A.D. Sui
A sci-fi meditation about life, death and grief, following a space-traveling Death-monk tasked with delivering funeral rights to the victims of the Counsel of Nicaea - a generationship, found adrift and abandoned without a living soul aboard. Full review here
The Renovation – Kenan Orhan
A magical realism novel about memory, political exile and displacement, in which a Turkish-American woman, who’s become the full-time care-giver to her father suffering from dementia, makes a baffling discovery during her home-renovations. Instead of a new en-suite bathroom, the builders have installed a Turkish prison cell.Full review in the making.

Other standouts:

Arborescence – Rhett Davis

For the most unique premise that still has me thinking about it, even though I didn’t completely love the novel itself. Bren and his partner Caelyn are feeling at a standstill in their lives. One day they come across a video of people in the forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough they will transform into trees. The idea is absurd. But it's spreading. Soon, people start to go missing and trees appear in unlikely places.

Wolf Worm by T. Kingfisher

Because at the time I was in desperate need of a comfort-read, and T. Kingfisher’s brand of “cozy horror” just reliably delivers that for me. Please take the word “cozy” with a grain of salt here, as that’s obviously a very subjective moniker, and anyone with an insect-phobia might find this book a true nightmare. For me, the mixture of historical nature-horror, snarky yet lovable protagonists, and Kingfishers distinct writing style just works. Wolf Worm follows a female scientific illustrator in 1899 summoned to the North Carolina manor house of an eccentric entomologist, to document his vast collection of insects. Soon, strange events in the surrounding woods and local whispers about “blood thiefs”, make it clear that there’s more at play at this house than first meets the eye.

An Impossibility of Crows by Kristen Kaschock

A gothic folk-horror novel with themes of Frankenstein, motherhood, and the cyclical nature of trauma and abuse, done to absolute perfection. This novel was strange and disorienting in ways that I’m still struggling to put into words, but keep thinking about long after finishing it. We follow a female chemist who returns to her childhood home after the death of her father. In the small town of Letort, Pennsylvania, her family has lived for six generations—bound by twisted folk wisdom and an uncanny kinship with the crows that loom over their land. RetBack in the grim farmhouse of her youth, Agnes is drawn into the strange legacy she tried to leave behind. When she discovers an abandoned nest in the barn, she becomes consumed by a scientific—and deeply personal— to breed a crow large and intelligent enough to carry her daughter, Mina, to a freedom Agnes has never known herself.

Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris

For being my favourite re-read of the year so far. In this eco-horror novella, a female artist in the depth of grieving the loss of her father, is offered a solo-stay as in a remote forest cabin, in order to paint in peace. Soon the edges of land, memory and reality begin to bleed together, and she discovers that in the swamp's decay the end of one life is sometimes the beginning of another. Green Fuse Burning made my favourites-list of 2024, when I first read it, and it definitely held up to a reread. With time, I might have even come to love this more. It’s lush, heartfelt and manages to do so much in a limited number of pages.

The Geomagician by Jennifer Mandula

Simply because it brought me joy and is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a cozy fantasy that isn’t all about the romance. Mary Anning wants to be a geomagician—a paleontologist who uses fossils to wield magic—but since the Geomagical Society of London refuses to admit women, she’s stuck selling her discoveries to tourists instead. When an ancient egg hatches in her hands, revealing a loveable baby pterodactyl Mary names Ajax, she knows this is the kind of scientific find that could make her career—if she’s strategic.

Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro

Finally, this is my wild-card of the quarter, as I realize it’s probably very specific to me, and probably won’t translate too well to a large audience. This novella explores the experience of a female captain of a transatlantic freighter, who impulsively decides to bring the ship to a standstill to allow her crew to swim in the open ocean. Shortly after, an uncanny dread creeps over the ship. A thick mist covers their route, there seems to be a mysterious extra crewmember among them, and one-by-one both crew and captain begin to feel more unmoored than they’ve ever had before. Again; this won’t be a novella for everyone. Despite the premise, there’s no overt horror (or even much plot) to be found here, and the language constantly teeters on the edge between lyrical and overwritten. Instead, it’s a highly psychological exploration of liminality and the uncanny feeling of being surrounded by the absolute vastness of the ocean. Personally, that was the exact part I resonated deeply with. I’ve shared the authors experience of crossing the Atlantic on a tall-ship, and I’ve actually done a mid-Atlantic swim like this. Both have filled me with the exact kind of existential dread that this novel describes. It was something truly special to see such a unique experience mirrored in a book, despite the fact that I think the novel itself has some flaws.

Most disappointing:

I have full in-depth (often long!) reviews on each of them, so I won’t go into details here.

The Body Builders by Albertine Clarke
Vigil by George Saunders
Counting Backwards by Binnie Kirschenbaum
This is Body Grief by Jayne Mattingly

Adaptations and other Media:

Rarely do I have a book-to-movie adaptation that I’m actually truly in love with, but this year I have a wholehearted answer. I both read and watched Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir in short succession for the first time in April 2026, and absolutely adored both versions. Just like The Martian, I felt the adaptation was handled incredibly well. The visuals are truly stunning and Ryan Gosling as our main character Grace truly carries the film on his back and adds depth to the performance. If you haven’t seen this movie, I highly recommend you see it in theatres if you can. It might be one of my favourite adaptations from a recent novel ever.

Anticipating for Q2:

Underlake by Erin McCoy A magical realism novel about the friendship between two women – each haunted by their own losses – who investigate a local legend of a sunken town underneath a lake where “refugees of a world obsessed with change” find a home.
One Leg On Earth by 'Pemi Aguda A magical realism novel about an inexplicable force haunting the pregnant women of Lagos, Nigeria, drawing them to throw themselves into bodies of water. I’ve just received my ARC, and can’t wait to get into this.
The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer The sophomore horror novel by the author of We Used to Live Here. If that first book was anything to go by, I’ll be sleeping with the lights on during my time reading this one!
Carnalis by Tiffany Morris The latest horror-novella by the author of the aforementioned Green Fuse Burning. With how much I loved that story, even on a sentence-level, I can’t wait to see what the author writes next. I will even put up with a cannibal-trope that I’m usually not a fan of…