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WPL's Fiction Book Group chose Nikki Erlick's debut novel, The Measure (2022), to be the first book up for discussion in 2025. In light of the pressure many feel to begin each new year with personal resolutions, the story felt particularly timely in January. That said, I think The Measure is the kind of novel that makes for great conversations in any season.

If you enjoy a story with an emotional punch to the gut ending, then Seven Days of Us (2017) by Francesca Hornak might be for you! I picked this older book up because of the Christmastime setting and the interesting premise of a family in quarantine together, in a pre-COVID world.

Imagine this, if you will, you and thirteen other contestants have been chosen to take part in a week-long game of 'Hide and Seek' in an abandoned amusement park ala Mr. Beast-style. Each day there are two participants that are taken out, the game is active from Dawn until Dusk, and every night you sleep alongside your fellow contestants forging alliances and creating rivalries. The sole winner earns $50,000, AND the game might even become televised so you have the potential to be an internet celeb just by playing. 

Set in London and Cairo from 2010-2011, These Impossible Things (2022) follows childhood friends Malak, Kees, and Jenna after a fight fractures their connection on the eve of college graduation. With alternating points of view, a moving story unfolds.

If you love horror, an unreliable narrator and a story that makes you want to scream at the characters, We Used to Live Here is a perfect read.  Fast paced and full of suspense, Marcus Kliewer has written a horror story about a queer married couple renovating their new hom

The Murderess (2024) by Laurie Notaro is a historical true crime novel based on notorious “trunk murderess” Winnie Ruth Judd. In October 1931, Judd arrives from Phoenix at the Los Angeles train station and her trunks soon attract attention from the station porters, as there appears to be blood oozing from them.

For anyone looking for a mix of 'We need to defeat the evil overlord to free our world' and 'I was bored so I decided to join up with the hero and save the world', look no further!

Debut novelist , Emma Knight, writes a delightful story about two Canadian girls, Pen and Alice, who travel to Edinburgh to study at university, but also to find themselves; their passions and pitfalls. Pen contacts Lord Lennox, an intriguing old friend of her father, visits for the weekend and falls in love with his family. But something always seems a little off and Pen needs to find out what secrets are being hidden from her.  

Hate Follow (2024) by Erin Quinn-Kong is a timely, behind-the-scenes family drama about an influencer mom and a teenage daughter who is tired of being featured in her mom’s social media posts. After becoming a widow at 35, Whitney Golden supports her four kids by working as a blogger and a social media influencer.

Josh Malerman (Bird Box) brings a realistic and scary imagining about every child’s nightmare-  a very real and very scary monster in the closet. After the usual routine 'Good nights' from her parents, a voice oozes from the closet… “Can I go inside your heart,” says the Other Mommy to 8 year old Bela.

Amanda Peters is a Canadian writer of Mi’kmaq and settler descent, who lives in Nova Scotia. The Berry Pickers (2023), her first novel, was inspired by stories of her father's family, who, like so many other First Nations' people, faced hardships and challenges as they struggled to survive within a larger post-colonial culture.

If you have ever loved fairy tales, cozy magical stories or wished you could walk through a wardrobe door to a new realm, you will want to read The Lost Story (2024) by Meg Shaffer.