A winding friendship novel and a literary examination of memory and technology

Plus must-know romance tropes and terminology and the most attractive books on dating sites

It has been a beautiful, exhilarating, crushing week of figure skating fandom. The Olympics is always a wild ride—there’s so much pressure on these athletes to peak and perform at exactly the right time. If you missed my Olympic preview with Layne Fargo and Denne Michele Norris, it’s not too late to listen. You can catch up on the drama and hear what we got right—or wildly wrong—in our hopes and predictions. And don’t worry, we’re already scheming about recording a wrap up conversation after all the events are over!

The Best Stories in Olympic Figure Skating with Layne Fargo and Denne Michele Norris

Between travel and Olympics viewing, I haven’t been reading much. But I do have a couple books to share with you and am very excited to hear about the books you’ve discovered lately, so don’t forget to drop your recent reads in the comments before you go!

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This week in books.

This week I read…

Clutch by Emily Nemens. I won’t bury the lede here: I didn’t like this book. But I couldn’t stop reading it because figuring out why I didn’t like it became more interesting to me than the book itself. On paper, this is a book that really should’ve worked for me. It follows five women who became best friends in college and are now forty with careers, kids, and dipshit husbands. The book spans a year of significant change for the group and Nemens employs an omniscient third person narrator, pivoting from character to character to show us who each woman is compared to who they think they are. But so much about this book frustrated me. None of the women felt fully developed to me and because of the way the book circled through their lives, by the time I arrived at the end, there were characters I felt I hadn’t seen in ages who were suddenly expected to serve an emotional weight. The men were uniformly terrible and the children were completely off the page, which I suppose was intended to highlight the importance of the friends to each other, but only made the realties of their lives distant to the reader.

But I think the biggest issue for me here was the writing style, both on the sentence level and in chapter structure. Nemens is an extremely clever writer and her sentences can be vibrant, punch, and playful. But it also started to wear on me. Nothing was conveyed simply or directly, but there also weren’t passages that stopped me in my tracks with their beauty or innovation. On a chapter level, there was too much backstory for me. Everything turned to exposition and it began to feel like the big emotional moments for these women were all in the past. It made the plot lack urgency and also didn’t allow us to see the bond of friendship truly at work in the women’s present lives. I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews for this book, but also heard from several other readers who struggled through it or stopped midway. I’m not sure if this is a case of a critical darling with a good PR push mismatched with what real readers are looking for, or if Clutch was just stylized in a way I personally don’t like. I would love to hear from those of you who’ve read this one. What am I missing here? Did you feel similarly or did this book click for you? Bookshop | Libro.fm

Transcription by Ben Lerner (out April 7). I actually read this book about a month ago and have been sitting on it trying to figure out what to say in my review. But I finally realized that I’m won’t be able to offer a robust review of this perplexing book until I take the time to reread it. So today I’ll do my best to encourage you to add Transcription to your preorder list and then if and when I revisit it, maybe I’ll be able to say more. Told in four distinct parts, Transcription is an exploration of memory, storytelling, and the way we record our lives. The book begins when an unnamed narrator travels to Providence, RI to interview his mentor—a 90-year-old retired college professor. When he arrives at his hotel, he drops his phone in the sink and it breaks. This is a point of crisis for our narrator: how will he contact his mentor? How will he record their interview? I was shocked by how tense I felt reading about this broken phone! This first story builds and resolves and then the remaining sections build on the plot and themes of the first in surprising, even disorienting, directions. I absolutely loved this book. I found it riveting, but also beautifully written and brilliantly constructed. However, after over a month, I don’t think I’ve satisfactorily resolved for myself what Lerner is trying to do with this novel. For that reason, I want to reread it and for that reason I feel ill equipped to review it. But because it’s short, entertaining, and thought-provoking, I highly recommend adding it to your 2026 reading list. Bookshop | Libro.fm

Now I’m reading…

I’m finally reading my choice read novel for This American Literature and it is turning out to be a perfect pairing for my favorite nonfiction about the Puritans.

New on my TBR…

Not to galley brag, but I just received a copy of Land by Maggie O’Farrell, and I might need to start it immediately.

Tell me about your week in books! What did you finish, what are you reading now, and what have you added to your TBR?

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Further reading.

The best reviewed books of the week. (Lit Hub)

The most anticipated queer books for spring. (Electric Lit)

How books fare on dating sites—I bet you can guess what gives people the ick! (Guardian)

Explore Black literary NYC with this map of 100 important stops. (Lit Hub)

What makes a good book to film adaptation? (NPR, Pop Culture Happy Hour)

Why Alfred, Lord Tennyson feels so modern. (Atlantic, gift link)

Never mind the lit bros: Infinite Jest is a true classic at 30. (Guardian)

Seven fake dating novels to read for Valentine’s Day. (Lit Hub)

How tropes took over romance. (Guardian)

Your A-Z guide for all things romance. (NYT, gift link)

Nine memoirs about dating, desire, and reclamation. (Electric Lit)

End notes.

• We’re getting a grown up Samantha novel—that’s right, the American Girl doll is all grown up and getting a new book penned by Fiona Davis. I am excited, but also highly trepidatious. I loved the American Girl doll books deeply as a kid (along with Dear America and The Royal Diaries) and this news definitely pushes my nostalgia button. But there’s also a weirdness factor at aging up a doll and character we loved as children and putting her into a for-adults novel. What do you think? Will you be reading this? Are you hoping for more??

• Louise has been obsessed with reading this book of Magical Creatures. She’s starting to get into mythology and fairytales, but some of the stories are still too dark or complex. This beautifully illustrated collection is a great entry point into myth, legend, and folklore from around the world without the scary plots that aren’t great for bedtime reading.

• I am so happy for Piper Gilles and Paul Poirier winning the bronze medal in ice dance after a truly stunning performance. If you haven’t watched this, do it now! It is truly art on ice.

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Happy reading!

Sara