Library AF

Featuring another adult novel debut from a prominent YA author, our pick for October is Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo. Her storytelling is unique and all-encompassing; her audio performances are nothing short of astounding.

“Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila.

But Flor isn't the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.

Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces--one family's journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come."

Synopsis from catalog.saclibrary.org

The Other Significant Others was one of those books that I read and continually recommended to those in my circle because I wanted to talk to someone about it! I'm really looking forward to the discussion on this one 😊

“Why do we place romantic partnership on a pedestal? What do we lose when we expect one person to meet all our needs? And what can we learn about commitment, love, and family from people who put deep friendship at the center of their lives?

In The Other Significant Others, NPR's Rhaina Cohen invites us into the lives of people who have defied convention by choosing a friend as a life partner. Their riveting stories unsettle widespread assumptions about relationships, including the idea that sex is a defining feature of partnership and that people who raise kids together should be in a romantic relationship. Platonic partners from different walks of life—spanning age and religion, gender and sexuality and more—reveal the freedom and challenges of embracing a relationship model that society doesn't recognize. And they show that orienting your world around friends isn't just the stuff of daydreams and episodes of The Golden Girls, but possible in real life.

Based on years of original reporting and drawing on striking social science research, Cohen argues that we make romantic relationships more fragile by expecting too much of them, while we undermine friendships by expecting too little of them. She traces how, throughout history, our society hasn’t always fixated on marriage as the greatest source of meaning, or even love. At a time when many Americans are spending large stretches of their lives single, widowed or divorced, or feeling the effects of the "loneliness epidemic," Cohen makes the case that one model of a flourishing adulthood—lifelong romantic partnership—isn't enough. A rousing and incisive book, The Other Significant Others challenges us to ask what we want from our relationships—not just what we’re supposed to want—and transforms how we define a fulfilling life."

Synopsis from Goodreads

Let's wrap up our 2025 book group year with a cozy fantasy novel from Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built.

“Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.

Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?"

Synopsis from Goodreads