Six underrated new releases you need to know about

Underrated ≠ underwhelming

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I’ve trained my algorithm such that when I open Substack or Instagram, I mostly see books. This is how I find out about the books people are going crazy for. Did you see all the hubbub about On the Calculation of Volume by Solvej Balle? And Catherine Lacey’s The Möbius Book? For awhile, I couldn’t go anywhere without seeing those covers in my feed.

Last week my family and I went to a Twins game and my five-year-old kept rooting for the Yankees, just to mix things up. Inspired by my contrarian-in-the-making, I’m disrupting your feed with six books that have come out this year that you haven’t been seeing.

And So I Took Their Eye by

Ben C. Davies

I am so impressed by this debut collection of short stories. Each story takes place somewhere new and is a sharp cultural take on what it means seek justice.

We visit Guatemala and Italy. San Francisco and England. Bolivia. Through these interconnected stories, Davies explores humanity in its basest and richest form. A lot of what the protagonists are doing on the page is living their normal lives, but what’s “normal” for them looks different from my — and probably your — normal.

The title is a nod to the justice-seeking adage an eye for an eye and the stories explore what this looks like around the world. I found this collection to be honest and of-the-times while paying homage to the ancestral threads that tie us to our own cultures.

Kirkus Review calls And So I Took Their Eye a thoughtful collection that situates engaging characters in an array of distinctive settings.

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• Literary prose

• Immersion in several different cultures

Animal Instinct by

Amy Shearn

This is a Covid book you’ll actually have fun reading. It follows Rachel, a recent divorcée and mother of three who lives in Brooklyn during lockdown. Rachel is supposed to stay at home, but, newly emboldened by her divorce, she is rediscovering her sexuality.

But how are you supposed to date during lockdown? And for that matter, what about shuffling kids between divorced parents — how’s that supposed to work?

Working in tech and frustrated by the duds she found herself dating, Rachel creates an AI chatbot. She plucks the best parts of all the men and women she goes on dates with and compiles them into Frankie, her new perfect match — someone who actually understands her emotional needs!

Obviously, Frankie and Rachel don’t live happily ever after. And thank goodness, because otherwise Rachel would miss out on a lot of fun (and also some self-actualization).

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• A messy divorce story

• Hot sex

The Eights by Joanna Miller

This book takes place at Oxford in 1920, when the school first officially admitted and recognized female students. Though the first women’s colleges at Oxford were founded in 1879, and though the university itself had been around for 1,000 years, it wasn’t until 1920 that female students were considered actual members of Oxford, meaning for those roughly forty years, women attended school without recognition for their studies.

The Eights follows four female students assigned to Corridor 8, all of whom come with different histories but together take part in history-making at Oxford. These women face every roadblock and adversity you’d expect, but they stop at nothing for their continued pursuit of equal citizenship of the mind.

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• Smart women doing cool shit

• A history lesson on Oxford in the 1920s

Storybook Ending by Moira Macdonald

This book has been one of my favorite reading experiences all year.

Maybe I loved it because it takes place in a bookstore and two of the characters are blindly slipping handwritten letters to one another into a copy of The Hunger Games. Maybe I loved it because half the storyline is about books. Either way — I enjoyed it so much and I haven’t seen a single person post about it.

Storybook Ending is about Westley, a handsome¹ guy who works in the used book section of the neighborhood bookstore, and two women who think they are in a letter writing relationship with him. Readers are in on something the characters don’t know, which is always an interesting experience. You keep reading because you want to see the characters find out what’s really going on.

I loved the experience of reading this book because it’s an escape to a bookshop when I can’t always physically be in one. Who doesn’t want that?

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• A bookstore setting

• An unlikely love/friendship triangle

Girls Girls Girls by Shoshana von Blanckensee

This is a queer, Jewish coming-of-age story that takes place in the mid-90s in San Francisco. Honestly, say less! That’s all I needed to know to pick up this book.

In Girls Girls Girls, Hannah and Sam (best friends-turned-lovers) move from New York to San Francisco after they graduate from high school. They want to get away from prying eyes — particularly the prying Jewish eyes of Hannah’s mother and grandmother — and to a place they belong. They take crude jobs to afford living in the city, they meet new people they can relate to, and the two are pulled in different directions. Hannah and Sam belong in San Francisco, but maybe not with each other.

I spent last weekend in a rustic cabin on Lake Superior, which came equipped with exactly the kinds of books you’d find in a rustic cabin on Lake Superior. I finished Girls Girls Girls while I was there and I decided to mix up the cabin’s inventory by leaving my pretty copy on the shelf. I’m excited for the person who picks it up.

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• Mid-90s nostalgia

• A queer, Jewish protagonist having fun in San Francisco

All the Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman

This book should be optioned. It’s cinematic, fun, and completely explosive. It’s about 31-year-old Florence Grimes, an American mother living in England and learning to navigate the private school “mum” life.

When a boy in her 10-year-old son’s class goes missing on a field trip and she finds out her son has a weird tie to him, Florence — a broke former rock star with no detective skills — goes on full detective mode, lest her son be implicated.

It’s a propulsive thriller that’s also funny and, in a weird way, relatable. It’s painful to love someone so much that you’d do anything — even the slightly psychotic — to keep them from harm.

Read if you’re in the mood for:

• An unhinged protagonist making bad decisions

• British private school mum drama

Your turn

• What underrated new releases have you loved? Which ones do I need to read?

• Have you read or heard of any of the six I included above? Did you love them? Hate them?

Thank you for reading! Love, Kolina

What are you reading? What are you underlining?
What I’m reading: The Probable Son by Cindy Jiban. Cindy was my classmate in a weekend class at the Loft Literary Center a couple summers ago. She emailed me saying her novel is being published in December 2025 and sent me an ARC! I am so excited for Cindy and also thrilled to be reading the book, which I had read an excerpt of in class and loved. Congrats Cindy!

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1. My only complaint is how many times Westley’s handsomeness was brought up.