Episode 562 || Unsung Books of 2025
Happy New Year! This week on From the Front Porch, Annie chats about the unsung books you may not have heard about in 2025.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 562) or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood
Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen
The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
So Far Gone by Jess Walter
Among Friends by Hal Ebbott
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is reading The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller.
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We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, and Amanda Whigham.
Transcript:
[squeaky porch swing]
Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.
“She guessed it all came down to hope. Being able to have hope for the future when you were young, before the world let you down in all sorts of ways”.
Aja Gabel, Lightbreakers.
I'm Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia. And this week, happy new year! I'm sharing my favorite unsung books of 2025. If you're craving more From the Front Porch, or if you want to listen to episodes ad-free, join us on Patreon. This year, listener favorite Hunter McClendon and I are sharing our monthly recaps of our conquering of The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor. Episodes air on the last Friday of each month, and it's never too late to start reading or listening, or to cajole your friends and family into joining us, too. To join Patreon, just visit patreon.com/from the front porch. Three tiers are available. The $5 a month tier will give you access to our Conquer a Classic episodes, including our back catalog of episodes and monthly porch visit Q&A sessions. The $20 a month tier will give you ad-free episodes of From the Front Porch, plus a deep dive into some of Flannery O'Connor's other works. I hope you'll join us. Now, back to the show.
[00:01:46] Before we officially say goodbye to 2025-- although, I guess we kind of did at midnight because this episode releases on January 1st. But before we really dive in to 2026, I wanted to look back and see what titles I wish I had shared more about. So these are the unsung books that might have flown under your radar. That doesn't mean these are all five-star books. It doesn't even mean that these are the best books of the last year. I feel like we already kind of did that in our conversation with Hunter a couple of episodes ago. Instead, these are books maybe I quietly and truly enjoyed, but I didn't give them as much air time as books like, for example, The Correspondent or A Guardian and a Thief. So these might be books that your own local bookstore talked about a lot. Maybe these are even in some cases award-winning books, but they didn't get my full attention either until later in the year, or maybe I read them but they missed the deadline for podcast recording. So when I looked back, I took my list of 2025 books and I think what I landed on was about seven titles that I thought, man, I wish I had shared more about those. And so that's what we're going to talk about today.
[00:02:58] So first up is Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel. This is the book that I kicked off the episode with. I really could have quoted so many passages from this beautiful book. This one released in November, so it's kind of fresh on the mind. You probably have seen this one. I think it's got a pretty eye-catching cover. We also heard Hunter talk a lot about this one, which is why I ultimately picked it up. So I loved Aja Gabel's debut novel, The Ensemble, that released back in 2018. We have talked about that book a lot. You can go back, probably, and listen to a lot of episodes where I discuss The Ensemble, most recently in episode 465, where we did an into the backlist episode about The Ensemble. Then I saw that her new book was coming out this year. It was highly anticipated for me. But a couple of things happened. First of all, I did not receive an ARC and so did not get to read this one in advance. And sometimes if I don't get to read a book in advance, it misses me because by the time it releases to the general public, I've moved on to another season of reading. I don't know if that makes sense, but when you're book selling, you are in my mind reading so much on a timeline. I'm reading for Shelf Subscriptions, I'm reading for literary lunches, I'm reading for podcast episodes. And if I don't get an early copy, I might have a hard time getting to it. So that was the first kind of problem with this one.
[00:04:24] The second problem is that when it did release into the world, the blurb on the back, the publisher description, it just felt like there was a lot going on and I wasn't sure I was going to like it. This happened to me, maybe a little bit different, but this happened with The Mothers by Britt Bennett, which was a debut novel I loved. Then she wrote The Vanishing Half, and I put off reading it. I did get an advanced reader copy of that. So I'd like to be clear. The publisher did send me an advanced reading copy of that book, but I kept putting it off because I really loved her first book. And I was worried, what if the second one doesn't hold up? What if the sophomore novel is the sophomore slump? And so I put of reading The Vanishing Half, then I read The Vanishing Half and loved it. And so there are lots of exceptions to the sophomore slump rule, but I think I read the description of Lightbreakers and thought I don't know if this is going to be for me. Then Hunter read it. And Hunter actually has something in common with Olivia, I think, where the way they describe books, they get so excited and so passionate. It immediately makes you want to read them as well. So Hunter discussed this one on our Best Books of 2025. He raved about it on his Instagram. So finally I was like, okay, I going to read this book. I love Aja Gabel. What am I doing? I need to pick up this book? So I grabbed a copy from The Bookshelf and I loved it. I loved it and honestly I'm a little irritated more people weren't talking about it. Kudos to Hunter, but I do not know why this one hasn't been more places. I really don't.
[00:05:53] I don't know why I haven't seen it on Bookstagram. I don't why it hasn't been up for any kind of awards kind of chatter because what she is doing here is honestly remarkable. So this book combines science fiction, dysfunctional family dynamics, the art world, marriage, all into this book that feels like it shouldn't work together, but it totally does. So one of our main characters is Maya. She is married to physicist Noah. And Noah's first wife is Eileen. So we hear this story through Maya, Noah, and Eileen's voices. And I should note, because I was impatient, I started listening to this book and then I picked up the printed book. The audio book is great. So if you are on the fence about this one but you like the audio book, I think Hunter mentioned this, the audio is fantastic. So I probably listened to a third of this in audio book format, and then I picked up the physical format for the back two thirds. So you have Maya, Noah, and Eileen. Noah is a physicist. He gets this job offer from this eccentric kind of billionaire type figure. Maya is an artist. She decides, okay, let's do this together. They move to Marfa, Texas, where she starts to work at an art gallery. Noah works for this billionaire, for this top secret project that involves time travel. To me, Lightbreakers is combining Blake Crouch meets Xochitl Gonzalez, if you've read Xochitl’s work, where you've got this relationship at the center of the book, the relationship between Maya and Noah. But there's a lot of science in this book. It did not overwhelm me. It really didn't. What it did do is make me think, is Aja Gabel a physicist? I really did look up what her background was because I couldn't believe the details that she was giving regarding this kind of top secret time travel project. But then I should have known that she wasn't a physicist because she gives that same level of detail and attention to Maya's career in the art world.
[00:08:04] So there was a moment where I was like, well, is Aja Gabel an artist? Because the detail with which she was drawing these characters and their careers, the way she writes about these is fascinating to me, and it's so well-plotted, well-thought out. So Maya and Noah head to Texas, and it reminded me of the movie, did you guys see Past Lives? That was one of my favorite movies a couple years ago. You know that Noah has in his past-- not only this marriage, his marriage to Eileen, his first wife, but you know that Noah and Eileen lost a child. And so I do need to say, probably should have said from the outset, that this book does deal with child death. And I have read some heavy books this year. Tilt, Fox, this book was extremely heavy. And so it will not be for every person, which may be why it hasn't quite made the rounds. I did have to read some parts of this and then put it down and watch a football game, like have a palate cleanser because it was intense, especially after having Isaac this year. I don't think Isaac has totally changed or upended my reading life, but the idea of a young child passing away, it was extremely difficult to read about. Aja Gabel handled it beautifully and she's got some great thank yous and the acknowledgement to writers who helped her write these really tough scenes. So Noah and Eileen and their first marriage together, they had this tragedy. And so you, the reader, realize, okay, Noah is taking part in this time travel project. Is he going to go back? And is the temptation going to be to be with that first family? And if so, what will happen to Maya? And so, you have this marriage dynamic, this relationship dynamic. You have this this heartbreaking tragedy at the center of the book.
[00:10:02] But it's also just a book about nostalgia, about what happens when we choose to look back rather than look forward. I think those are the parts of the books that really resonated so deeply because I naturally am a pretty nostalgic person and I tend to look on the past with rose colored glasses. And I think this book very quietly is perhaps a cautionary tale about that. I loved every single one of these characters, Maya, Noah, Eileen. I loved the science fiction nature of this book. I loved the art world. That's why I wanted to include the social Gonzalez comp. There's also marital dynamics that very much remind me of a Lauren Groff or a Wallace Stegner or something like that. There are just insights into marriage that I don't think you often get in lit or you rarely get in lit. This book is fantastic. I loved it. If you can handle that content warning or that content-- and I could. I mean, for the record, I could. If you can handle the content, then I highly suggest this book because she has created something really outstanding. And partly the reason I say that is because she's able to tie these stories together. When you read the publisher blurb, or at least when I read the publish blurb, I thought there's no way. Like there's too much happening. There's too many going on in this book. There was too much happened in the blurb quite frankly. And it was a little bit of a turnoff. And then I started it and was immediately swept up in the story because she is so tied into who these characters are. She's so focused on who these characters are. I was immediately hooked and I immediately knew who these characteristics were. This was one of my favorite books of 2025 and it just missed the cutoff. I read it after the episode, but this easily would have been in my top 10. So that is for sure an unsung book for me. And I personally think an unsung book in the literary world, I don't know why more people aren't talking about it. That is Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel. Just fantastic and so different from The Ensemble and yet equally compelling. I loved it. Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel.
[00:12:07] Okay, another book that missed my personal deadline but would have for sure been in my top 10 and was not unsung critically, I would like to say. Critics and award lists, this book made those lists. So this wasn't unsung everywhere. It just was unsung to me. And then I read it and I was like, why didn't more people force this book into my hands? Why didn't somebody make me read this? And that is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. I picked this one up solely because I'd seen it. I'd see it a few places. Somebody did mention it to me earlier this year. I think somebody may be on Patreon. But the only thing that pushed me over the edge, the thing that made me pick it up at the end of 2025 was the New York Times did this list of 100 notable books of the year. It was an interesting list, wide ranging. I finished that list and there were only a handful of books where I thought, oh, I wish I'd read that. This was one of those books. I read the description and I thought why didn't I read that? It doesn't make any sense why I wouldn't have read it. It deals with a convent. Why would this not have made its way to my nightstand. So this book was released in the U.S. Last February, but it did release in 2023 for the UK and Australia. And so I don't know if that was why it never felt fully front-list to me. It is releasing in paperback for us here in the States. It's releasing in paperwork next month, so I wanted to include it on this list for multiple reasons, but one of them I thought, well, maybe somebody will read this and want to pre-order the paperback, or listen to this and want pre-ordered the paper back.
[00:13:53] Is a book like this considered unsung if it was shortlisted for the Booker prize? Well, I don't know. I don't know, but it was unsung to me. We have an unnamed narrator living in Australia. I started the year, started 2025 with Memorial Days, also set partially in Australia. And I ended it with Stone Yard Devotional. I weirdly think those books are related, by the way. I think they would sit happily on a shelf together. So we have an name narrator living in Australia. And the book opens with her visiting a convent. And you sense that she's had some kind of career fallout or a breakup and she has gone to a convent for like a five day retreat. I took a retreat like this. I don't know if I ever shared about that here, but a couple of years ago, I went to a convent in Alabama and had a personal retreat, just stayed for a couple nights. And I'm very sorry to say that that convent recently closed. It closed in 2025 due to lack of financial resources, which broke my heart because it became a pretty sacred space for me. There were wild boars in the area. So sacred and also scary, which is great. That's great for a personal retreat. It really makes you have to look yourself in the mirror and face your fears. But anyway, I took a personal retreat to a convent back in 2024. So I was immediately intrigued by this premise where this woman who is not a nun, she's not particularly religious, but she needs a reset. And so she goes and has this quiet retreat at this convent. I do not want to spoil what unfolds, but we're talking a mice infestation. We're talking a close look at convent life and sister to sister interaction. We're talking about a dead nun's bones. Like there's a lot going on here and I do not want to spoil any of it for you.
[00:15:48] I loved this book. I am so mad I did not read it earlier in the year. It would have been in my top 25. I could have said that I read a book that was finalized or shortlisted for the Booker prize because I don't read a ton of Booker prize nominees. It's not my award of choice, but this was Matrix by Lauren Groff meets the non-fiction book I read a couple years ago called Millennial Nuns. It feels like it reminded me-- oh, meets Memorial Days. I mean, there really were because in Memorial Days, Geraldine Brooks is writing a lot about the Australian landscape and there's actually some really beautiful nature writing in Memorial days. There is some beautiful nature riding in this book. I loved it. I loved it. Here's the good news for you and for me. A friend of mine was talking and she said that book had been on my list. I tried to check it out from the library. And then she said but then I actually really liked reading it in the winter. She read it right when I did at the end of last year. And I do stand by that mantra where I believe a book will find you when it's meant to. And so as much as I wish I had read this when it came out, it probably would have been a shelf subscription for me, but as much I wish I'd read it last winter when it come out. The good news for you is it is a great winter book. We're smack dab in the middle of winter right now. So you can either get the hardback or wait for the paperback when it releases in early February, but I loved this book. And if you are an Annie reader, I suspect you will like it as well. Lightbreakers really did a good job of combining character-driven literature with I still think there was definitely a plot in Lightbreakers. A lot is happening in that book. I think Stone Yard Devotional is quieter than Lightbreakers. There is plot happening, but it is subtler. And instead you're kind of focused on the sisters and this unnamed narrator who wonder what's going on with her. You kind of wondered, now, wait a minute, why are you here again? I loved this. I absolutely loved it. It is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It's not unsung to the general public, because again, it made the New York Times notable list. So it was plenty sung, but it was not sung to me. And so allow me to sing it to you. Allow me to bring it to the forefront to From the Front Porch listeners.
[00:18:02] All right, a drastic turn. Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen. That's the name of the book. I wasn't telling you before I forget. The name of book is Before I Forgot by Tory Henwood Hoen. I do think I talked about this one on From the front porch, but, and you'll notice a trend here, a lot of books that I consider unsung come out at the end of the year. Man, a book with a November or December release date, it is tough. It's tough out there. It's stuff out there because people aren't reading new releases. I mean, that's what I do at the end of the year. I am either reading for 2026. I'm either reading for the new year for Shelf Subscriptions or I take December to finally go back and read books that I wish I had read, which is part of the reason Lightbreakers and Stone Yard Devotional were things that I read in December. So before I forget, released the first week of December. And I did make it my Shelf Subscription. So again, I did sing it when I could, but it's one of those titles that it's not particularly Christmassy. And so I was like, this is not going to hit people. This is not going to make a lot of people's lists and I feel like it should. So I just think December books kind of get lost in the shuffle. So I wanted to talk about this one. This is called Before I Forget; the main character is Cricket. Cricket is having a, I don't know, quarter life late 20s, early 30s crisis. She's a little bit lost, doesn't fully know who she is or what she wants to do with her life when she finds out that her father has early onset Alzheimer’s or dementia and their family owns this lake house in the Adirondacks and they need to sell it because her dad isn't doing well and her mom has no time for it and she's like we got to get rid of this house. And Cricket says, well, instead of getting rid of the house, which Cricket loves, has a lot of memories for her, she says, what if I take care of dad at the house?
[00:19:57] And Cricket is kind of the younger, certainly maybe the stereotypical younger daughter. Her older sister is a lot more responsible, a lot capable, but her older sister has already done her time. Her older sister has already taken her turn with the dad. And so the sister is skeptical, but she tells Cricket, sure, come on. So Cricket moves to the Adirondacks to take care her dad. And this is a really beautiful father-daughter story. To me it very much reminded me of a Carly Fortune book, only no romance. Carley Fortune, but a little bit of Tom Lake by Anne Patchett because Tom Lake was set during the pandemic and this mother and her daughters were kind of forced together. Well, this is the father and a daughter who are kind of forced together. A father and daughter who are kind of forced together, not because of the pandemic, but because of what life is throwing at them. And so they're kind of confined to each other. And then Cricket also has to take care of this falling apart lake house. So the lake house looms large in my memory. I think it is a big part of the story. There are some wacky parts that go on in this book where I was a little bit like, where is she going with this? Again, I do not want to spoil it for you. So I won't tell you more, but what I will say is, you can trust Tory Henwood Hoen because the parts that I thought, oh, this feels a little weird or wacky or unrealistic, instead somehow it works. And I wound up really liking the wacky parts. It's like a Hallmark movie without a Christmas theme and like a little deeper. And that's what I think maybe brings it to the Carley Fortune comparison. Carley Fortune writes in this same literal place, like the same geographical location. And so that's why these books, I feel like, could sit on a shelf with each other. The Carley Fortune books in this book because they're both set in the same part of the world. Only this one has a more wintry, maybe even autumnal feel because of when Cricket is caring for her father. I loved this book. It's got a fun cover. It's going to great cover. So if nothing else, you might be intrigued by that. It's got a really cool cover with a loon on the front. I loved it. This is Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen. Great book to wrap up last year. It would be a good book to read right now while you're kind of at home and hunkered down. I liked this one a lot. That is Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen.
[00:22:19] Okay, now we're going to talk about, let me look, I think it's two or three books that released in June. Yeah, three books released in June, which part of me is like, okay, were they just unsung to me because I was in baby hibernation? I don't know. The first book I want to talk about is The Girls Who Grew Big. This is by Leila Motley. This released in June. I do understand why this book wasn't everywhere. This book is so good. And Leila Motley is known and recognized for her book Nightcrawling. So I don't know if Nightcrawling made it so big that then this was another kind of quiet sophomore release. I did make this my June Shelf Subscription. So I sung it as best I could, but a Southern reader especially should have picked up this book. It's got a fantastic cover, eye-catching cover. It's about a group of teenage mothers who are living on the Florida Panhandle in the Florida Panhandle. And it's told in a variety of voices, including the voices of Adela, Emery, and a couple more, but basically the mothers tell this story. And you as a reader, maybe are inclined to pass judgment, or maybe you feel like you know these characters, these types of characters, and instead, Leila Motley, oh my gosh, these characters are so memorable, they're so complex, so complicated. The way they take each other's under their wing. I've already talked about The Mothers by Britt Bennett, but I think this one could sit next to that one on a shelf. I truly don't know why this one wasn't more-- it's very well written, feels like great literary fiction. And I am always looking for a book that represents Florida correctly. Not necessarily well. I know Florida is a unique place in the Union. It's a unique state, but so often I feel like people are writing about Florida who have either never been there or they've never lived there.
[00:24:13] And I did look up, Laila Motley is not from the Panhandle, but the reason I looked it up is because I read it and thought she had to be. I thought she had to be. Because the dialog in this book, this would probably be good in audiobook format, but the dialog, the accents, you can hear the accents based on how she's written the dialog. And then just the storytelling component felt so truly Florida to me. But I don't know why this wasn't more places. Maybe it appealed to me because I read it, it released in June, I think I read before that. Certainly part of the reason it appealed to me was I was pregnant at the time of reading it. But I don't think that's the only reason I enjoyed it. I mean, this is about a young group of mothers. One of them is a former swimmer and she's convinced that if she can just have this baby she will go back to her 'normal life'. She'll be able to finish high school. She'll be to do all the things she dreamed she would get to do. And then she meets these other mothers, some of whom have had more than one child as a teen. And she starts to wonder if her future will look different than she thought. Other than the mothers, I don't really know a great comp title for this because I don't know that we've gotten a book like this. If you didn't read it this summer, I would highly recommend it. It does read summery to me. So maybe that's part of the reason you've put off reading it. Maybe because it essentially has, if I recall, a woman in a bathing suit or tank top on the cover. Get this one, save it for summer if you need to, but do whatever you need to do so that you can read it. I mean, it's so good. The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Motley.
[00:25:51] Another book that released in June, I think to not have fanfare, is So Far Gone by Jess Walter. Fans of Margo's Got Money Troubles, I think would really like this. Main character is Reese. He is an older guy living in the Pacific Northwest, kind of estranged from his family, when his two grandchildren wind up on his front porch, front stoop, and he looks around and wonders where their mother is, where their father is, and realizes that he now is perhaps responsible for these kids. And if not fully responsible for those kids, he is responsible for finding out what happened to their mother and father. And so the result is kind of this road trip story throughout the Pacific Northwest, and this kind of doomsday, prepper cult. The other book that this reminded me of, which I loved and was in my top 10, was The Road to Tender Hearts. So Far Gone is like The Road to Tender Hearts' darker cousin. They're doing similar things where you've got this older man who's the main character, this kind patriarchal figure, and then you have him trying to make amends maybe with some people in his life. Maybe overcome some of his personal demons, but where The Road to Tender Hearts is lighter, perhaps, and certainly funny. So Far Gone is funny. I mean, I laughed out loud, but it is also more, almost kind of suspense, S.A. Cosby, less violent, but S. A. Cosbey. That's why I say it's The Road to Tender Heart's darker cousin. This is another book with a fantastic cover. You could read this anytime. It does not have to be read in the summer. It released in the Summer, but it's not the only time it needs to be read. I think I saw that Knox McCoy posted about this to his Instagram as like a book that might have been one of his favorites of the year. And I can totally see why. My dad would probably love this book. I loved this book; I thought it was fantastic. That is So Far Gone by Jess Walter.
[00:27:48] Okay, down to our last two. Another book that released in June that I don't know why some of these books didn't make it bigger than I wanted them to. Among Friends by Hal Ebbott. I did talk about this one on the podcast, but I wound up not making it my Shelf Subscription. I picked the Layla Motley instead. And so, as a result, this feels unsung to me. This is a book that I feel like five years ago would have made the New York Times bestseller list, would have caught folks' attention, could have been a Reese or Jenna pick. In fact, it reminded me most of The Paper Palace, which I think was a Reese Witherspoon pick a few years ago. So this one is set-- at least most of the book is set over the course of one weekend in a country house and two couples and their families get together for a birthday gathering. Immediately you, the reader, sense the tension. There is something going on. Hal Ebbott does a beautiful job of writing about male friendship. And the two men at the center of the books, if I recall, one of their names is Ames. They have great names. He did such a good job with their character names. But you've got these two guys at the center of the book. They kind of are maybe a gen X. I think this is like I want to say a 50th birthday weekend or something. They've been friends. You can immediately sense they have history. These are friends with history and they are friends, but now they've brought their families into the friendship as well. So their wives, their children, the friendship to me seems immediately like the defining relationship rather than the men's marriages. You as the reader immediately know, okay, this is not a book about marriage, this is a book friendship.
[00:29:22] This is a slow, quiet, suspenseful book. Reminded me a little bit of the dinner in this way in that it just kind of builds to this, I'm not even going to say climactic moment, but maybe it builds to an inciting incident that you don't really see coming, although you kind of get this deep sense of foreboding. And then what happens over that weekend since aftershocks into the relationship. I could not put this one down. The tension is really well done. And because of the tension, because the pacing of the book, you just immediately need to read it and finish. Good news for you if you read seasonally is that this book released in June, but I'm pretty sure the birthday weekend at the heart of the book is in the fall. And so this is very much a fall/wintry book. The cover is fantastic. This is one, actually, I think I read this on my Kindle and I wish I owned a copy. I'm making a mental note that I think I need the physical copy of this one because the cover is so striking. I believe Hunter read this one and liked it. I loved it and maybe I loved more than most. I should have looked up like the Goodreads rating or whatever, but I didn't because it's unsung to me and I want you to read it. And so that is Among Friends by Hal Ebbott.
[00:30:37] And then last but not least, Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky. This released way back in March of 2025. I loved Marcy Dermansky's book, Hurricane Girl. Loved it. So when I saw Hot Air was coming out-- that's a funny sentence. When I saw that book was releasing, I immediately picked it up. I did receive an ARC of it. This is a quirky, weird, surreal kind of book that if it had been any longer, it wouldn't have worked. But because of its length, it totally worked. Let me see if I can get this straight because the character names in this one I think are intentionally confusing. I think that leads to part of the farce of it all. So Joannie is on her first date in seven years. You can blame the pandemic, you can blame her precocious daughter, Lucy. Johnny is the dad of a kid in Lucy's class. Joannie goes over to Johnny's house for a date. They're just at the cusp of thinking should I spend-- Joannie is like, should spend the night here? Do I need to go home? They haven't really had a great time. It's not been a great date, but they're contemplating a sleepover of sorts when a hot air balloon crashes into their backyard pool and ruins the date. In the balloon are Jonathan and Julia. So, so far we have Joannie, Johnny, Jonathan, and Julia, which again is ridiculous, but I think it's supposed to be ridiculous. And they are a super, super wealthy couple celebrating their anniversary. This is set over the course of-- it's a day or two. Like that's part of the charm of this book is it's set over I want to say maybe that day.
[00:32:20] But anyway, there's lots of chaos, potential partner swapping, pandemic-related epiphanies. I think if you're a plot-driven reader, do not read this. It is not for you. But if you are familiar with Marcy Dermansky's work, if you read Hurricane Girl, then you'll like this. If you read and liked Hurricane Girl then you will like this. The characters in this book are so bizarre and make the weirdest, often most terrible choices. But every so often they stumble into wisdom and I loved it. I read this one kind of laughing, chuckling to myself with a smile on my face because it's so delightfully weird. It's so weird. And not a lot of people are doing weird. I feel like not enough people did weird in 2025. So if you need a quirky, short, weird book with interesting characters, then I think you should pick up Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky. So those to me are some unsung books, books I wish I'd talked a little bit more about in 2025. Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel, Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, Before I Forget by Tory Henwood Hoen, The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Motley, So Far Gone by Jess Walter, Among Friends by Hal Ebbott, and Hot Air by Marcy Dermansky. All of the books I talked about on today's episode can be found through our store website. That's bookshelfthomasville.com. You can type episode 562 into the search bar, and today's books will pop up. It's a super easy way to support our indie bookstore. If you have read any of these, I would love to know your thoughts on them. And if you have an unsung book of 2025, I hope you'll share it with us on our Instagram. That's @Bookshelftville. This week, I'm reading The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller.
Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website:
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found at:
Special thanks to Studio D Podcast Production for production of From the Front Porch and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
Cammy Tidwell, Linda Lee Drozt, Martha, Stephanie Dean, Ashley Ferrell, Gene Queens, Beth, Jammie Treadwell…
Executive Producers (Read Their Own Names): Nicole Marsee, Wendi Jenkins
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