Books We Loved, July 2025

Here we are, moving into the height of summer, at least in the Northern Hemisphere: days still long and hazy, temperatures high, life slowing down in response to school vacations, time at the beach, and all the other pleasures that characterize July and August. The books we loved this month are not entirely escapist fare—each of them touches on at least one serious issue, and Sarah Wigman’s Still Life explores several—but they are all engrossing, with strong characters struggling to find their way in the world and butting heads as they do, a pleasure to dive into on lazy afternoons and evenings, whether at home or away.

S. Isabelle, The Great Misfortune of Stella Sedgwick (Storytide, 2025)

Although for most of my lifetime, Regency and Victorian England have been viewed as just about as white as a place can get, it’s now known that a multiracial population did exist in the nineteenth-century UK. Some immigrants came from South Asia, increasingly under British imperial control, but many arrived as the result of Britain’s long involvement in the African slave trade, including in the Caribbean. S. Isabelle, the author of two YA fantasy novels, uses this history as the backdrop to her new historical romance, also YA, due out in early July 2025.

Stella Sedgwick, when we meet her, is an eighteen-year-old Black woman living in reduced circumstances in an English village. Unlike the aunt and biracial cousin with whom Stella lives, she has a hard time brushing off the very real prejudice she encounters. In addition, Stella has a clear goal in life: to write novels. She is not interested in high society and has no intention of marrying a wealthy man—the only acceptable future for a young woman in 1860.

So when the father of the family that employed her mother during Stella’s childhood offers her a sizable inheritance on the condition that she wed first (for legal reasons: women could not own property in 1860s Britain), the offer thrusts her into a genuine dilemma. Accept the gift and have money to support her writing, or refuse, knowing that may lead to the death of her dreams. An alternative presents itself, and Stella snaps it up, but hard as she tries, she still has to deal with the “great misfortune” of her inheritance, including a childhood friend who might help her resolve her problem if the two of them could ever get through a day without quarreling.

Stella is just delightful—not an easy person to live with, I suspect, but captivating as a heroine. And the rest of this cast of characters is equally appealing and wholly believable as they navigate a Victorian London that may not be just like the one you’ve been trained to expect.—CPL

Ali Rosen, Unlikely Story (Montlake, 2025)

Nora is a relationship therapist who gives expert advice for a living—but secretly, she’s in love with a man she’s never even met. For seven years, she’s written an anonymous advice column, edited by the charming and insightful J, a London-based stranger she knows only through comments left in their shared documents.

When J casually mentions he’s newly single—and Nora’s boss asks her to travel to London—she takes it as a sign that maybe it’s time to turn their long-distance connection into something more.

But just as hope blooms, trouble moves in … literally. Eli, the ex-boyfriend of one of Nora’s clients, has taken up residence in the apartment below hers. He’s loud, brash, and clearly holds a grudge. Yet despite his grumbling and the renovations he’s making right under her feet, Nora begins to glimpse a surprising vulnerability beneath the surface.

As the two men in her life pull her in different directions, and a jaw-dropping revelation shifts everything she thought she knew, Nora must decide whether love is about the person you’ve imagined—or the one who’s unexpectedly real.

Unlikely Story will appeal to fans of Emily Henry and Christina Lauren as it explores love in the digital age—and the unexpected ways it can find us.—CJH

Sarah Winman, Still Life (Putnam, 2021)

In the hills of Tuscany near the end of World War II, a young English soldier by the name of Ulysses Temper meets Evelyn Skinner, an art historian in her mid-sixties, and takes her in his Army jeep to a newly discovered site—the wine cellar of a deserted villa—where the Germans have been storing looted Italian art. He and Evelyn are joined there by Temper’s commanding officer and the three share an evening—drinking wine overlooked by the Germans in the midst of excrement, flies, broken glass, dust, and incredible works of art. The conversation—about life and death and art—is so intense and perhaps essential that when artillery fire breaks out close enough to shake the villa, Temper finds himself holding Evelyn’s hands and singing to her until things settle again.   

Just before he leaves war-torn Florence to return to London’s East End, Temper saves the life of an old man about to jump off a rooftop of a multistory apartment building in the city center. Once he has the old man safely back in his home, the two sit down to talk about the war and what it’s done to the people who survived it, and though Ulysses knows no Italian and the old man knows no English, they understand each other perfectly. The old man gets on hands and knees and removes a few floor boards from under the kitchen table and produces a bottle of good wine and a hunk of cheese. Ulysses in turn brings forth a can of ham from his backpack, the site of which makes the old man cry—and another near miraculous and life-changing moment is crystalized.

Postwar, Ulysses returns to the bar where his old friends regularly gather, and where there is a room upstairs where he can stay. Peg, whom he married before he left for the war, has since fallen in love with Eddie, an American, and is waiting for him to return to the UK and take her and their daughter away. Ulysses can only bide his time and make the best of things—until one day when he receives a letter from an attorney; the old man whose life he saved in Florence has died and left him his apartment. Ulysses, though still hopelessly in love with Peg, opts for a second chance at a good life; he leaves for Florence with his best friend Cress, Peg’s then five-year-old daughter Alys, aka Kid (who, like her neglectful mother, was never reclaimed by the American), and a parrot who had been one of the bar regulars until Cress kidnapped him.

Still Life is a truly wonderful novel. The characters are all knowable and lovable—even the ones who mess up the most—and unforgettable. The villains here are war, strife, loss, death, and human error. The conquering counterforces are love, empathy, luck, and a bit of magic. Still Life is a tonic for the heart, a holiday for the head—an absolute joy to read.—JS