Most Anticipated Books of 2021

From March onward last year, I found myself turning to all types of stories in order to cope with the pandemic. At times I ran as far away from it as I could, finding comfort in sweet stories like Eric Smith’s Don’t Read the Comments or Margaret Finnegan’s We Could Be Heroes. When I couldn’t go anywhere else, I escaped to weird new worlds like Quietus in Brian K. Vaughan’s SAGA or Staten Island via What We Do in the Shadows. Other times, I ran headfirst into apocalyptic territory in hopes of finding some new understanding with stories like Station Eleven, Wanderers, and Contagion. Regardless of which route I took, the stories were right there with me, either holding up a mirror or providing a welcome distraction, lessening the blow of, you know, everything.

Now we’re in 2021, and though the vaccine is rolling out and January 20th continues to inch closer, there’s still no certainty for when it will be safe to let our masks down and relax again, which is why I’m so thankful for all the good stories we still have coming out. I’m not going to lie and say that stories will make everything better, but for me, they’ve always helped, at least a little bit.

So here are the books I’m most excited for this year. I’ve included preorder links for indie bookstores that are shipping during this time. Support them if you can.

Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas (January 12th)

Angie Thomas, the incredible author of The Hate U Give and On the Come Up, is back with her third novel. In Concrete Rose, Thomas takes us back to the familiar setting of Garden Heights, seventeen years before the events of The Hate U Give, to tell the story of a young Maverick Carter. Having just learned that he’s a father, seventeen-year-old Maverick decides to go straight and leave his life selling dope behind. However, Maverick finds out quick that when King Lord blood runs in your veins, walking away isn’t easy.

Hate U Give readers will remember Maverick as the wise yet tough father to Starr. I’m so excited to read his story and, being a teenager of the late 90’s, I’m looking forward to plenty of hip-hop references from that era. My preordered copy actually just showed up on my doorstep as I write this. I’m going to let myself start it as soon as I post this dang thing.

Concrete Rose is out now, you can order a SIGNED copy here from Lemuria Books in Jackson, MS.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain (something something something about Russian authors whatever I’m in) by George Saunders (January 12th)

I once briefly met George Saunders at his reading for Lincoln in the Bardo at the St. Louis public library. When I told him that I was trying to be a writer, he lit up, put his pen down, and kindly offered some advice. It was so awesome and inspiring. It reminded me of attending my first SIU basketball game as a little kid, where all I wanted to do as we left the stadium was get home ASAP so I could heave three-pointers in the backyard. Except in this case, I was just so pumped to get home, open my laptop, and write (both instances resulted in just as many bricks and airballs, however). I just wish i could tell you now what advice Saunders had given me that night, but I can’t. I was too blown away by his earnestness and too wrapped up in my own (constant) effort to be chill to actually take it in.

Which is why I’m stoked for his new book with the actual title of: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. For over twenty years, Saunders has taught a writing class at Syracuse University, the book is intended as a brief version of that class, which is cool because I could never afford to go to Syracuse, nor would I even be able to get in if I could. At least this time though, I should be able to actually retain some of his advice.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is available now, you can order it here from Bookshop.org.

The Electric Kingdom by David Arnold (Feb 9th)

I really liked Arnold’s first two novels Mosquitoland and Kids of Appetite, but I straight-up loved his third novel The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. It was so weird and interesting I never knew what was going to happen next. I’m expecting more of that with Arnold’s newest novel, The Electric Kingdom. It’s a sprawling fantasy about three survivors navigating post-apocalyptic New England following a deadly Fly Flu that has ravaged the planet. To some, a story about a deadly pandemic sweeping the globe could be a tough hang right now, but I’m confident Arnold’s magnificent prose will provide some comfort and fresh understanding to our current reality.

The Electric Kingdom is out February 9th, you can preorder it here from Lexington, KY indie bookstore, Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (Feb 12)

True to the title, I hadn’t heard of Patricia Lockwood or her new book until I saw the following tweet from John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats:

Really, that’s all I need to know to order this book, but I assume you probably need to know a little more so here’s what the description from Left Bank Books in St. Louis has to say:

“As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"

Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.”

No One Is Talking About This is out on February 12th, you can preorder it here from Left Bank Books in St. Louis.

I Think I Love You by Aurian Desombre (March 2)

This cover rules. I Think I Love You is the story of two girls who start as rivals, competing against each other for a first-prize trip to a film festival, who then find themselves falling for each other.

I Think I Love You is out March 2nd, you can preorder it here from Left Bank Books.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton (April 20)

Dawnie Walton’s new novel is a fictional oral history of a beloved rock & roll duo who rose to fame in 1970’s New York, and the dark secret that lies at the peak of their stardom. I love fictional histories, rock bios, and NYC stories of any era (hey, small town kid here), so I’m an easy mark for this one.

The Final Revival of Opal & Nev is out April 20th, you can preorder it here from Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.

The Box in the Woods by Maureen Johnson (June 15)

Amateur sleuth Stevie Bell is back in her hometown for what she’s sure will be a boring summer when she gets a message from the new owner of the local summer camp about an unsolved murder case from 1978. The new owner offers Stevie the chance to come to the camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the murders. Stevie agrees as long as she can bring her friends from Ellingham Academy—sorry, real quick, I want to take a break right here to say, I like Stevie already, even as I read this plot description, I was like “aw, man, come on, Stevie, don’t go to that campground with this owner dude alone, he could be (and is likely) a creep” and then she made sure she got to invite her friends, smart move. Okay—But when Stevie begins to dig into this long-dormant case, she unearths more than she bargained for. Though it’s been over forty years, evil still lurks in the woods, because, of course it does.

Listen, I’m a sucker for an “anything” in the woods story. I’m also a sucker for a mystery box story. So this title has it all for me. Don’t open the box in the woods? What’s in the box? I don’t know. I don’t know. I must know and I’ll find out on June 15th.

Reader Note: I took out a rather painful riff on Brad Pitt from Seven in this brief post for your benefit. I know, I know, because of this, somewhere back in 2007, a DVD copy of it just vanished from some dude’s dorm room.

The Box in the Woods will be opened on June 15th, you can preorder it here from Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn.

In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner (August 10th!)

When my friend Major and I are truly excited for an upcoming movie or album, we do as much as we can to avoid ever hearing/seeing anything about it until we can consume the work in its entirety. I’ve seen Major go as far as to get up and walk out of a theater when a movie trailer is playing for a movie he’s really eager to see. It was particularly tough back in the spring of 2014 when that Interstellar trailer was everywhere and oh, so loud. Most the time though, Major just closes his eyes, covers his ears, and hums softly to himself. It’s really sweet. Man, I miss movie theaters. It’s a similar thing for albums, where we forgo listening to early-released singles until we can hear them in the context of the album as a whole. Anyways, I’m telling you all this because though I rarely feel the need to go to these extremes with books, I’ve caught myself doing this with Zentner’s new novel, In the Wild Light.

I know I could sign up for it on NetGalley and likely have it read by the weekend. Or I could log onto one of Zentner’s virtual readings and hear a sample of it to satiate my appetite until August 10th. Or I could at least go online and read a quick 2/3s plot synopsis. But I don’t want to do any of those things. I want to wait until I can hold this book in my hands and read it from start to finish. I want to go in as fresh as possible. I pretty much just know that the title reminds me of a Mumford & Sons song and that it’s about friends at a boarding school. That’s it.

That may not convince you why you should read this book though so let me say…

Jeff Zentner is one of my absolute favorite authors. There are a lot of reasons for this, some that I can explain kind of well and some that I can’t at all, but I think the most prevalent reason is best summed up with these two lines from Zentner’s first novel, The Serpent King:

“People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think.”

Each of Zentner’s novels 2016’s The Serpent King, 2017’s Goodbye Days, and 2019’s truly wonderful Rayne & Delilah’s Midnite Matinee live and breathe these lines. As a person from a small town very much living a mostly quiet life, and being surrounded by people mostly doing the same, it’s cool to see Zentner give so much care to characters that would often be overlooked altogether by another author. Every character is treated with a certain level of dignity and because of that, they all feel like real people that I know. No, better than that, the characters often feel like friends that I actually miss once I finish the book.

So while I don’t know much about the plot details of In the Wild Light, I’m confident that I’ll get more of that, and again, for me, that’s all I need.

In the Wild Light is out August 10th, you can pre-order a SIGNED copy here from Parnassus Books in Nashville.

Battle of the Bands YA Anthology Edited by Lauren Gibaldi & Eric Smith (Sep 14!)

Just look at that lineup! Much like going to a big concert bill with trusted headliners and (to me) somewhat unknown opening bands, I’m just as excited to read stories by my favorites as I am to discover new artists on this one. Justin Courtney Pierre from Motion City Soundtrack and Farewell Continental (sigh, sorry, I’m legally obligated to tell you my band opened for them once) will also be contributing a story to what will surely be a really cool overlapping narrative taking place at a high school battle of the bands. In a year of uncertainty, this is likely going to be as close to an actual concert as I’ll get. It’s a worthy replacement. An added bonus, is that unlike going to an actual concert, I’ll be in bed by 9pm, reading this in my comfy pants.

Battle of the Bands is out on Sept. 14th, you can preorder it here from Head House Books in Philadelphia.

More Novels I Plan to Check Out: Rise of the Red Hand by Olivia Chadha (January 19th) Game Changer by Neil Shusterman (February 9th)
Later by Stephen King (March 2nd)
Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera (March 2nd) Yolk by Mary H.K Choi (March 2nd)
Kate in Waiting by Becky Albertalli (April 20th) Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter (May 4th)
Indivisible by Daniel Aleman (May 4th)
The Woods are Always Watching by Stephanie Perkins (August 3rd)
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead (Sep 14th) You Can Go Your Own Way by Eric Smith (November 21st)

Middle Grade Novel I’m Stoked For: Susie B. Won’t Back Down by Margaret Finnegan (October 5th)

A Book About One Thing and Then Some Other Things I’m Eagerly Anticipating: Rap (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano (Fall, 2021)

Nonfiction Book I’ve Already Preordered: Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP by Mirin Fader (Aug10th)

Picture Books My Kids and I Are Pumped to Read:

Princess Can Fix It by Tracy Marchini, illustrated by Julia Christians (May 4)

Battle of the Butts by Jocelyn Rish, illustrated by David Creighton (2021)

Between Two Worlds & Dumpling Day by Meera Sriram (Fall 2021)

Books That May Not Come Out Or Even Exist Yet But I’m Desperately Anticipating:

(The return of ) SAGA by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

Jesmyn Ward’s next novel

Anything that Charlene Chua works on (especially if it’s a longer form graphic novel)

A Few Quick Non-Book Superlatives

Most Anticipated Album: I Won’t Care How You Remember Me - Tigers Jaw (March 5th)

Second Most Anticipated Album: Little Oblivions - Julien Baker (February 26th)

Two Artists That Haven’t Announced New Albums Yet But I’m Waiting For All the Same: Kendrick Lamar, Big Thief

Movie I’m Most Excited For (If It’s Safe for Theaters Again And/Or It Comes to Streaming): Old (New M. Night Shyamalan)

Other Movies I’m Excited For (blah, blah, if theaters are safe again or streaming etc): The Green Knight (A24 scary movie), Malcom and Marie, Dune, Judas & the Black Messiah, The Matrix 4, Black Widow, Candy Man, Saint Maude, The Many Saints of Newark, The Card Counter, A Quiet Place II, The Northman, The Killers of the Flower Moon, Soggy Bottom, and the untitled Spider-Man sequel (doesn’t seem like that one will come out).

Okay, the Movie I’m ACTUALLY the Most Excited For: Space Jam: A New Legacy

TV Show I’m Most Excited to Return: Atlanta

Two Other TV Shows I’m Also Pretty Excited to Come Back: Succession and Stranger Things

Event I’m Most Looking Forward To (besides that dude being gone from the white house and the Covid vaccine becoming widely available): Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 for the Nintendo Switch.


Thanks for checking this out. I hope you read some of the books I mentioned. Good stories will help at least a little bit. I promise.