📚On Reading in September 2025

Welcome to what my recent reading month looked like. While last month I did things a little differently, and listed everything I read in August, this month I’m back to standouts in my reading life.

The Golden Boy's Guide to Bipolar by Sonora Reyes

Sonora Reyes does not miss and remains an auto-buy. This is a standalone, contemporary YA about having to unlearn hateful teachings from the Catholic church, Latine culture, and society. It’s a companion read to The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School (also highly recommended), the way that romance novels stay in the same universe but change main characters.

Cesar is bi and after breaking up with Jamal because a priest told him he’d go to hell, he can’t deny he’s still in love with him—even if they’re pretending to just be best friends.

Even though he has a support system, his mom constantly making sure that he’s okay, being forced to go to therapy, and the pressure of a lifetime of being expected to act like “the golden boy” is deeply affecting him. After accidentally skipping his meds one day he decides it’s proof that he doesn’t need them and he starts pretending to take them. This snowballs into him feeling like he’s taking back control of his life but as you can imagine his mental health starts to deteriorate as his unmedicated brain keeps telling him he’s doing the right thing. The book does a hell of a job showing you the battle that can happen inside someone’s brain when they’re fighting internalized hatred and when their mental illness is a lying goblin that can’t be trusted.

Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino

This is a contemporary novel that slowly starts building into a crime novel in a very smart, fun way that equally has something to say about our society while also aiming to entertain. Bonus: excellent writing.

Margo Miyake wants to buy a house and have a baby but after more than 10 attempts to purchase a home go south she is feeling desperate. So desperate that she weasels her way into a couple’s life hoping that they’ll sell their house to her before they list it on the market. Except they figure out what she’s up to and instead of Margo being ashamed of her behavior–as her husband is–she decides to get revenge on one of the homeowners. What could go wrong?!

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

“You can’t ever have whatever prize you’ve yearned for, except in the sanctity of your own imagination.”

It’s so rare that I pick up a book about magic that feels unique, which was an added bonus to this book. I loved the characters, the story, and the depth of thought behind it. My only ding on this book—which is so personal it is clearly not a ding—is that the main character is named Jamie and while listening to the audiobook it kept fucking with my brain: If the book said “Jamie opened the door” my brain said “No I didn’t.”

Okay, in all seriousness, Jamie (not me) is a graduate student keeping a pretty big secret that she reveals to her mom: she has magic in her. What does that mean exactly? She can find a specific spot and manifest something she really desires. Jamie’s been doing it since she was a child and has slowly learned the rules to this. The problem (among many) is that her mom is deeply depressed and her attempt at magic is laced with anger so no one can predict the actual consequences…

This is the Only Kingdom ​​by Jaquira Díaz

I loved Díaz’s memoir Ordinary Girls so her debut novel was an automatic read for me. Once again, even though we’ve lived completely different lives, I felt her book in my bones.

This is a generational drama, blended with a coming-of-age, that focuses on mothers and daughters. It starts in Puerto Rico with Maricarmen as a teenager doing her best to follow her mother’s rules (But when she is overheard confessing her love for a boy her mother strictly forbade she’s thrown out of the house–only to later discover her mother moved away with her younger sister) and ends in Miami, during the AIDS Epidemic, with her daughter Nena, now a teenager, trying to find her own way in the world and make sense of the family’s generational trauma.

Almarie Guerra does a fantastic narration on the audiobook and this should have been chosen by the big book clubs as a selection.

Flip by Ngozi Ukazu

One of my lifelong favorite tropes is body-switching. Yes, I grew up in the ‘80s. On top of that Ngozi Ukazu’s Check, Please! is one of my all time favorite graphic novels so I pre-purchased this the day it was announced and I absolutely stalked the tracking number page and almost tackled the delivery person.

With all that excitement for one of my most anticipated reads of the year I can enthusiastically say it met my expectations!

Chi-Chi Ekeh is a Nigerian student at a Texas boarding school and while she’s not friendless—her 2 best friends Yesenia and Esther are hilarious and confident—she feels out of place as a poor kid in a school predominantly white and very wealthy. Not only has she internalized a lot of damaging things and has no self-esteem, she finds herself having switched bodies with the boy she’s in love with after he publicly rejects her in front of the school.

Some of the things I deeply loved: it has some truly funny moments; kpop fandom; Chi-Chi having to explain to the white boy in her body how to care for her hair and what to do when she gets her period; found family unites to figure out and fix the body switching; colonizer jokes; they don’t just switch bodies once, but rather they switch in and out of bodies–adding more layers of comedy, unpredictability, and exploration for their personal problems; Chi-Chi is forced to see herself literally through someone else’s eyes in order to question her internalized hatred.

My kingdom for an adaptation of this!

Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything: A Memoir by Alyson Stoner

This is a child-star memoir about the abuses of the industry and how children should never be the breadwinners of a family, that is well written and has a lot of heart, humor, and healing.

Stoner became widely known as the young white kid dancing in Missy Elliott’s Work It video along with as the tomboy in Cheaper by the Dozen and as Max in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. In their memoir they talk about how their childhood pivoted into moving to LA with their alcoholic mom to focus on acting and how they became a people pleaser from a very young age. Stoner does a great job taking readers into their experiences and not only writes another tell-all on Hollywood and predatory behavior but they end the book with ways they’ve been working to make the industry safer.

What Hunger by Catherine Dang

This book made it onto my TBR because of the cover and got bumped up thanks to an editor recommending it to me. It’s a novel that sneaks up on you and I never knew exactly what direction it was going to go in which is something I’ve especially been craving in my reading lately. The summer before Ronny starts high school and her brother Tommy starts college there’s a lot of tension in their home with Tommy fighting with his dad a lot. After one particular fight Tommy ends up dying in a car accident which sends the family into a spiral. And after Ronny gets a taste of flesh while defending herself from an assault she ends up not only with a hunger for raw meat but the need to do something with all her rage…

It’s a really well written novel that explores trauma—including generational—adolescence, and how well we know our family.

Maggie; or, A Man and a Woman Walk Into a Bar by Katie Yee

“You’re never too old to be afraid of what you can’t see.”

Katie Yee has successfully blended a literary novel about an affair and one about being diagnosed with cancer that feels much lighter, almost in a detached way, than the actual subject matters would lead you to believe. This has a comp to Nora Ephron’s writing and I can see that in how it looks at life’s difficult moments while also keeping humor and faith intact. What kept this from a 5 star, fave of the year, was that I wanted there to be more anger—even a batshit moment—but it always stayed restrained, which I’ve remained thinking if that was intentional and making a point about culture/society or was the author just not “going there”.

Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley

This is another companion novel that has characters from Angeline Boulley’s Firekeeper’s Daughter series, which I also recommend.

Boulley has a knack for writing a contemporary novel blended with a crime novel, excellent characters that jump off the page from the opening, and weaving in Ojibwe culture and Native history.

Lucy Smith grew up in the foster care system after her father died. Now, when a bomb goes off at the diner she works at she’s taken in by Daunis and Jamie (it happened again!) who are trying to protect her and teach her about the history that was hidden from her. And as Lucy’s leg surgery (injured in the bomb) heals, and she becomes the prime suspect, she’s forced to face her past and the home’s she grew up in…

Five Found Dead by Sulari Gentill

The nod to Agatha Christie is huge in the mystery genre and this one is for fans of Murder on the Orient Express who want a modern version, enjoy a writer MC with the meta trope of them writing a mystery, podcasters, red herrings, and the remote mystery becoming even more remote (already on a train) when passengers are sequestered because of a new Covid strain. It’s a fun book if you can keep track of many characters, don’t need realistically serious mysteries, and enjoy an author who clearly loves the genre and all its tropes.

Sweet Heat by Bolu Babalola

While I regularly point out that romance novels in series are standalones that rotate the main characters but stay in the same universe this one is different: it can still be read as a standalone but it’s a direct sequel to Honey & Spice in that it brings the same two characters from the first book back again later in life.

My own personal not-a-fan-of, is when series like Bridget Jones break up characters between books to get them back together again in the next book. However, Bolu Babalola is a fantastic writer of characters, dialogue, culture, and story and if I’m gonna give a pass to anyone doing this it, is her and why I read this book—also it doesn't hurt that I pick up books without reading the summary first.

Kiki is in a life spiral: her career is no longer, her best friend has gone full bridezilla, her parents business is struggling, and after years of getting over her breakup with Malakai he’s suddenly there again in her life forcing her to not only relive their relationship, and breakup, but accept how she feels now…

I am always looking forward to whatever Babalola writes next and this series is perfect to adapt into a TV series!

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to shout out anything you’ve been loving lately!