With the Easter bank holiday weekend on the horizon, you might be looking for a good book to relax with in between the chocolate egg eating.
There are some fantastic novels coming out in April 2026, from an addictive satire of tradwife life that was impossible to put down to a swoony romance about second-chance love. Whatever you're planning - and reading - enjoy!
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Tradwife fiction is one of the biggest book trends of the last 12 months, with everything from thrillers to comedies both celebrating and skewering the art of home-making and the women who endorse it. This debut from US author Caro Claire Burke is half-satire, halfmind-bending thriller and a truly original take.
Natalie Heller Mills is the woman at the centre of the story, a mum and very successful influencer who documents every detail of her ‘perfect’ life for her millions of followers. Behind the scenes, things aren’t quite what they seem and there’s a whole team facilitating the daily schedule of butter churning and home-schooling.
Then, one morning, everything changes and Natalie wakes up in a new world – 1805, to be precise – where the traditional life she’s been cosplaying is now her reality. Gone is the boujee farmhouse she’s renovated; instead, there’s dirt on the floor and endless chores to be done. With no nannies, producers or assistants around to help, she struggles to adjust to the manual labour and demands of her children and husband. Without giving away any spoilers, this is no time-travel novel and the story goes in a very different direction than I was expecting, with an explosive twist I definitely didn’t see coming.
Natalie is such an interesting, complex character – she’s hard to like at times and yet you can’t turn away from her compelling voice.
What I loved most is the way this clever book holds up a mirror to the current obsession with influencers and their curated lives – we all know it’s an edited version, yet we consume it as if it were real. It has a lot to say, especially, about the way children are presented on screen.
It’s no surprise the film rights have already been snapped up by Amazon MGM Studios, with Anne Hathaway slated to play Natalie. This is one of those books I predict everyone will be talking about – it’s the perfect mix of propulsive and thought-provoking. I devoured it!
Upward Bound by Woody Brown
Upward Bound is a daycare centre for autistic adults – some non-verbal – in southern California, and their experiences, along with the staff who work with them, are told here through a series of connected short stories. It’s a moving, illuminating glimpse into a world and perspective we rarely have access to.
Jonathan Cape Upward Bound by Woody Brown
Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell
I couldn’t get enough of this swoony second-chance romance. It’s been a year since Cherry’s husband, Tom, left for Hollywood to adapt his comic – based on their life together – into a film. When she reconnects with a crush from her 20s, things begin to look up – then Tom reappears on the scene…
Go Gentle by Maria Semple
The author of huge word-of-mouth hit Where’d You Go, Bernadette returns with another madcap novel that’s part mystery, part romance. The main character, Adora, a philosophy teacher for the children of a wealthy Manhattan family, is a brilliant creation – witty, sarcastic, clever - I loved her.
The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart
This graphic novel is a provocative exploration of class, friendship and marriage. Fortysomething couple Fran and Adrian invite Fran’s best friend and her partner to share their countryside house to create a utopian community. For the first summer, it’s idyllic, but it doesn’t take long for old tensions to reappear.
Jonathan Cape The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart
The Palm House by Gwendoline Riley
Riley is exquisitely good at capturing dysfunctional relationships – anyone with a difficult mother should read My Phantoms. Here, it’s alongstanding friendship that she dissects, examining how we fall into patterns of behaviour with people we’ve known for a long time.
The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
Fans of Knives Out’s tongue-in-cheek tone will enjoy this twisty thriller. World-famous author Arthur Fletch is dead, his final novel unfinished, so his publisher and agent invite six writers to his private island in Scotland for the opportunity of a lifetime: whoever writes the perfect ending to the book gets a million pounds.
HQ The Ending Writes Itself by Evelyn Clarke
