Reviews of the 10 Books I Read in September 2026

1. The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff

Ryan and Lillian Bright are deeply in love, recently married, and now parents to a baby girl, Georgette. But Lillian has a son she hasn’t told Ryan about, and Ryan has an alcohol addiction he hasn’t told Lillian about, so Georgette comes of age watching their marriage rise and fall.

When a shocking blow scatters their fragile trio, Georgette tries to distance herself from reminders of her parents. Years later, Lillian’s son comes searching for his birth family, so Georgette must return to her roots, unearth her family’s history, and decide whether she can open up to love for them—or herself—while there’s still time.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Wow, wow, wow. I had seen Sara Carrolli recommend this in one of her YouTube videos months ago, and finally got around to reading it on my Kindle. Told from three different POVs, we watch young love turn into a family, that then starts to fall apart. The story also spans decades timeline-wise but keeps the emotions high the whole way through.

The Brighter Years is heartbreaking and incredibly written for a debut novel. I’m excited to see what Sarah Damoff does next.

2. Love Song by Elle Kennedy

After a brutal breakup, college junior Blake Logan escapes to her family’s lake house in Tahoe, determined to shut out the world. Her plan is simple: no men, no drama. Until Wyatt Graham shows up. Four years older and far too good at getting under her skin, Wyatt is the living embodiment of a “bad idea,” and the guy who shattered her pride when she confessed her crush at sixteen.

With his music career stalled, Wyatt has come to Tahoe for inspiration. The last thing he expects is to find it with Blake. He’s spent years keeping his distance, convinced he’s all wrong for her, but she’s no longer the innocent girl he once knew.

My Rating: ★★★★

I loved this. Mostly because it ties in with the Off Campus series, and now we have all the hockey stars’ kids take the main roles. I loved that we still had the dads as characters with their dads group chat, and you could see their mannerisms and unique personalities still shine through the dialogue, years later.

The story itself was a little like The Summer I Turned Pretty, I won’t lie, where the kids of two best friends have grown up together their whole lives and suddenly are old enough to start looking at each other a different way. Add in a summer house and the two kids spending weeks alone, it was obvious what would happen.

I’m hoping this becomes a series, and it was the kick I needed to get back to reading the Off Campus series in general.

3. So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he might have spent his life, had he acted differently.

All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude ― and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.

My Rating: ★★★

Of all the short stories I’ve read by Claire Keegan, I would say So Late in the Day is probably my least favourite. Nothing has really compared since reading Small Things Like These, and I don’t think ever will.

So Late in the Day follows a man travelling home after a day at the office, who is resentful towards a woman that left him. Since the book is around 120 pages long, there’s not much more I can say without spoiling it.

4. Heated Rivalry (2) by Rachel Reid

Nothing interferes with pro hockey star Shane Hollander’s game. Now that he’s captain of the Montreal Voyageurs, he won’t let anything jeopardize that, definitely not the sexy rival he loves to hate.

Boston Bears captain Ilya Rozanov is everything Shane’s not. The self-proclaimed king of the ice, he’s as cocky as he is talented. No one can beat him, except Shane.

Publicly, they’re enemies. Privately, they can’t stop touching each other. The smart thing to do? Walk away, once a few secret hookups turn into a struggle to keep their relationship out of the press. The truth could ruin them both.

My Rating: ★★★★

Like book 1 in the series (Game Changer), Heated Rivalry was 90% smut, 10% plot. Comparing the two, I can see why this was chosen as the first to be adapted to screen, but I would also like to see Game Changers adapted too.

We basically follow the same premise as the first book, with hidden love in the world of sports, only we have two famous hockey players on rival teams. Will I continue the series? Probably, but I imagine the storylines are going to be the same throughout. I will be watching the TV show, though.

5. Tales from the Cafe (2) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

With faces both familiar and new, Tales from the Cafe follows the story of four patrons who visit to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula’s time-traveling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each one must face up to the past to move on with their lives.

Kawaguchi’s wistful and heartwarming new novel once again invites the reader to ask themselves, “What would you do if you could travel back in time?”

My Rating: ★★

I think I might leave this series here. I didn’t enjoy the first book, Before the Coffee Gets Cold, and found this second book to be a struggle too. For me, the characters names are very confusing, trying to work out who is who, who works in the cafe and who is related to who.

I’ve read a few books with hidden meanings and books that are almost fable-like, but this series isn’t doing it for me.

6. This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

Lucy is the tourist vacationing at a beach house on Prince Edward Island. Felix is the local who shows her a very good time. The only problem: Lucy doesn’t know he’s her best friend’s younger brother.

Lucy and Felix’s chemistry is unreal, but the list of reasons why they need to stay away from each other is long, and they vow to never repeat that electric night again.

Each year, Lucy escapes to PEI for a big breath of coastal air and fresh oysters with her best friend, Bridget. And every visit, Lucy promises herself she won’t wind up in Felix’s bed. Again.

When Bridget suddenly flees Toronto a week before her wedding, Lucy drops everything to follow her to the island. Her mission is to help Bridget through her crisis and resist the one man she’s never been able to. But Felix’s sparkling eyes and flirty quips have been replaced with something new, and Lucy’s beginning to wonder just how safe her heart truly is.

My Rating: ★★★★

Carley Fortune’s books are made to be read at the beach, or during the summer. Since we’re getting closet to summer here in Sydney, I’m hoping to make my way through all of her books over the next few months.

This Summer Will Be Different is one of the few romance novels that I tore through in a few days. I loved the secrecy, the long timeline, and the yearning for each other that you could physically feel through the pages.

‘Yearning’ is probably the word of 2026, but I could really sense it in this novel which made me want to keep reading to find out how it ended. I can’t wait to make my way through Carley Fortune’s catalogue.

7. Want to Know A Secret? by Freida McFadden

Influencer and baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April. Secrets she’d rather you didn’t know.

Like… Where did her son go when he snuck out late at night? What was she doing with the local soccer coach behind fogged windows?

And what’s buried in her backyard? April’s secrets are enough to destroy her.

My Rating: ★★★★★

This was one of my favourite Freida McFadden books in a while. I’ve now read 21 of her books and this was a 5/5 read, easily. It was fast-paced with characters you don’t know whether to love or hate, and with those frustrating scenes that make you want to scream at the character for being so oblivious.

The twist at the end took me by complete surprise, it was perfect.

8. Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together.

Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

My Rating: ★★★

Quite like Ashley Poston, there’s always some form of woo-woo in Rebecca Serle’s books, so I knew what to expect going into this.

The thing I probably loved most about Expiration Dates was the Los Angeles setting. I had just visited LA for the first time last summer, and there was a scene were the main character met a friend in a coffee shop on Melrose. I sat in that exact coffee shop. I could picture everything so clearly, and I really enjoyed the twists throughout.

In my review of In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, I mentioned how I loved the vivid New York setting, so I think it’s safe to say Rebecca Serle really picks you up and sets you inside her novel, quite literally.

9. John of John by Douglas Stuart

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry back home to the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides to find that little has changed except for him.

He returns to the windswept croft and the two pillars of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, tweed weaver, and lay preacher in the local Presbyterian church, and his maternal grandmother Ella, a profanity-loving Glaswegian whose steady warmth helped Cal weather the sudden departure of his mother.

Cal privately wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, while John is dismayed by his son’s long hair, strange clothes, and seeming unwillingness to be Saved. But Cal isn’t the only one in the croft house who is keeping secrets.

My Rating: ★★★★★

Douglas Stuart can do no wrong. I had already read his Shuggie Bain (one of my favourite characters ever) and Young Mungo, so I was familiar with his style.

John of John was definitely a lot slower in pace, but I loved the use of the Scottish Gaelic throughout, since it’s so close to Irish Gaelic. I’m an advocate for keeping languages alive (I’ve been re-learning Irish for the past three years), so love the setting of John of John and the troublesome family relationships. I can see why this made the Booker Prize shortlist this year.

10. The Witch by Freida McFadden

When Julia Barlow loses her job and her apartment, she has nowhere left to go but Pemberton, her family’s sprawling seventeenth-century estate in rural Massachusetts. Officially, she’s there to check in on her aging grandmother. Unofficially, she’s hoping the old house will give her a place to disappear.

Instead, Pemberton begins to unravel her. Every night, the grandfather clock stops at exactly 3:41 a.m. The lights flicker without warning. And a disembodied voice cries for help outside Julia’s bedroom door.

As Julia digs into the house’s dark history, she uncovers the story of a woman executed for witchcraft in 1692―and realizes the past may not be finished with Pemberton yet.

My Rating: ★★★

This is Freida McFadden’s fourth book this year alone. Fourth. Not only is that quite absurd, but I found The Witch to be very different from any of the 21 books of Freida’s that I’ve read previously.

Set between two time periods, one being present day and the other back in the 1600s, it was almost like reading a YA Halloween novel, since it dipped into the Salem witch trials era.

I didn’t devour the book like I have other Freida books in the past, and the twists didn’t make my jaw drop. I’m not complaining about having four new Freida books per year, but I’m not sure that’s sustainable.