Before we dive into our January selections, we want to take a moment to thank our subscribers and everyone who supported Well Read Women throughout 2025. We are so incredibly grateful to have you along for the journey. We have lots of exciting plans for the year ahead and can’t wait to share what’s coming next. We hope your 2026 is filled with brilliant books.
We want to start the year with a bang, and we think these selections are a brilliant reflection of what Well Read Women is all about. From a dazzling debut on sisterhood, to a novel that questions the ethics of immortality, and a radical, interconnected short story collection exploring femicide and female rage, we think these books will get your reading year off to a flying start.
Hardback Selections
Who Wants To Live Forever by Thomas Uose
Would you take a drug to extend your lifetime? In Who Wants To Live Forever, we meet Sam and Yuki, a young married couple navigating that very question. Sam is an aspiring musician, while Yuki is an outspoken opponent of the introduction of a drug named Yareta. When Sam chooses to take the drug, he makes a decision that will leave Yuki behind in more ways than one. What follows is a beautiful, thought-provoking story about the consequences of that decision, how it shapes the world, and whether it was really all worth it.
Perfect if you love: innovative speculative fiction with diverse characters that explore ethical, political, and societal questions, and the complexities of love.
The Original Daughter by Jemimah Wei
In this dazzling debut, Jemimah Wei explores the formation and dissolution of family bonds in a story of ambition and sisterhood in turn-of-the-millennium Singapore. Before Arin arrived, Genevieve Yang was an only child, living with her parents and grandmother in a cramped flat in working-class Bedok. Arin’s sudden appearance brings the revelation of a grandfather long presumed dead to the surface. The sisters grow inseparable, and this epic narrative explores abandonment, estrangement, guilt, and resentment, centring the complex, unbreakable ties between sisters over two decades.
Perfect if you love: books about sisterhood, strong character-driven novels, and stories of family, community, and loyalty.
Perfect if you love books on sisterhood, strong character driven novels and books about family, community and loyalty.
The Names by Florence Knapp
This one received a lot of buzz in 2025, nominated for multiple awards and loved by so many readers. This extraordinary novel asks: Can a name change the course of a life? Cora travels with her nine-year-old daughter, Maia, to register the birth of her son. Pressured by her controlling husband to follow family tradition and name the baby after him, Cora hesitates, a decision that changes everything.
Spanning thirty-five years, the novel is told through three alternate versions of their lives, each shaped by that single choice. In rich, layered prose, The Names explores the lasting impact of domestic abuse, the complexities of family, and how one decision can change the course of our lives.
Perfect if you love: books with multiple layers, clever and creative writing, and films like Sliding Doors.
Paperbacks
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan
We read Bellies by Nicola Dinan a few years ago and knew straight away she was an exceptional new voice in fiction. Her follow-up, Disappoint Me, certainly didn’t disappoint us.
For Max, a trans woman in her early thirties, meeting Vincent after matching on a dating app feels like finding what she’s been looking for. Despite the expectations of his corporate colleagues, traditional friends, and Chinese parents, none of whom ever imagined their son dating a trans woman , Vincent shows Max a love she never quite believed was possible. But he carries his own unresolved past. When the consequences of a long-buried entanglement resurface, Max is pushed to question how far forgiveness can go. Funny, sharp, and poignant, Disappoint Me is a sweeping exploration of love, loss, millennial angst, and the relationships, both familial and romantic, that make us who we are.
Perfect if you love: emotional contemporary fiction, nuanced love stories, modern romance, and self-discovery.
Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda
Nominated for the 2025 International Booker Prize and translated from Spanish, this is a gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny short story collection from Mexico.
In these interconnected stories, thirteen Mexican women prod the bitch that is Life as they fight, sew, skirt, cheat, cry, and lie their way through their tangled circumstances. From the all-powerful daughter of a cartel boss to the victim of transfemicide, from a houseful of spinster seamstresses to a socialite who supports her politician husband by faking Indigenous roots, these women spit on their own reduction and invent new ways to survive, telling their stories in bold, unapologetic voices. At once social critique and black comedy, Reservoir Bitches is a raucous debut from one of Mexico’s most thrilling new writers.
Perfect if you’ve: set a goal to read more translated fiction, and love books packed with personality and powerful writing.
Colony by Annika Norlin
A mega bestseller in Sweden, with rights sold to over a dozen countries, a TV adaptation underway, and the winner of two of Sweden’s biggest literary awards, Colony is a gripping portrayal of contemporary society and its alternatives.
Burnt out from a demanding job and a bustling life in the city, Emelie has left town to spend a few days in the country. There, in the peaceful, verdant hills by the river, she encounters a mysterious group of seven people, each with personal stories full of pain, alienation, and a longing to live differently. They are misfits, each in their own way, and all led by the enigmatic and charismatic Sara.
How did they end up there? Are they content with the rigid roles they’ve been assigned? And what happens when an outsider appears? Initially drawn to their alternative lifestyle, but cannot help stirring things up?
Perfect if you love: a translated gem, books that explore cult dynamics, charismatic leaders, modern-day burnout, and the fragile line between belonging and control. A
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