‘Tis another season where the autumn chill lingers in the air and the leaves change color, which also means that a slate of new books is hitting shelves. Keep scrolling for the latest installment of Quite Simply Miranda’s Book Nook, and there might be a handful of Austenian stories, because it is me compiling the list. And, as always, happy reading!
Holiday Ever After by Hannah Grace
In Holiday Ever After, Clara is the heir to her family’s toy company and eager to work her way up the corporate ladder. After the firm is accused of stealing a popular doll design, Clara is tasked with smoothing things over, which takes her to the small town of Fraser Falls. Jack, who initially designed the doll in question, has a distaste for Clara’s company and, by extension, Clara herself, despite a sizzling attraction. Clara, meanwhile, realizes that Jack is the key to winning over the town, so she sets out to prove that she’s not an evil corporate robot.
Hannah Grace brings her writing chops and open-door spice scenes to her first adult romance, set in a quirky small town over the holidays, Like, think a Stars Hollow-esque town. It’s a slow burn for the first 100 pages or so, but it’s cute and I’m intrigued. Things ramp up (literally and physically) when FMC Clara and MMC Jack (this is a dual-point-of-view book) start liking each other. All in all, I think Grace has had better books, but this one is still a fun holiday read.
Rating: Three and a Half Stars
Available: Now
Told You So by Mayci Neeley
This is a very raw, vulnerable memoir about Mayci Neeley’s adolescence, pregnancy journey, marriage, and career as an influencer/MomTokker leading up to her role on Hulu’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. This book reads quite quickly and was engaging to keep turning each page. It pulls back the curtain on Mayci’s life, which she hasn’t frequently shared via social media or on SLOMW.
Sharing this type of heavy story certainly takes guts, and I have to applaud Mayci for sharing her truth so honestly and in a way that helps her move on. My only thing is I wish SLOMW included more of her story because I felt like I knew nothing about her history going into this memoir.
This book feels very conversational, and like Mayci is just speaking her truth. There’s also a lot of bombshells about her past and struggles that you wouldn’t know from social media or SLOMW. It covers everything from growing up Mormon in California, being a teen athlete playing a D1 sport, grief, parenthood, marriage, and more. It’s an honest portrait of her life from age 16 to 30. Told You So concludes with her third pregnancy. I read this ARC in July 2025, before her daughter Charlie was born.
Content Warning: Assault, Suicidal Ideation, Grief
Rating: Three and a Half Stars
Available: Now
Anne of Avenue A by Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding
I really liked these authors’ past Jane Austen adaptations, and was automatically intrigued by their modernized Persuasion story. They write with such compelling language that made me desperate to keep reading. Told in dual points of view, Anne of Avenue A feels like an adaptation, yes, but also something fresh and new, exciting, and enthralling all rolled into one. This ended up being totally unputdownable.
In Anne of Avenue A, Anne broke up with Freddie in college after she refused to give up her five-year plan for the sake of adventure. By 30, she’s living in her family’s East Village apartment with no plan in sight and working at her dad’s reality TV production company. After her dad’s spending habits nosedive out of control, he sells their apartment … to Freddie, now an entrepreneur back in the city after years overseas. While they both want to leave their past behind, both Anne and Freddie keep getting thrown together, especially after she sublets another apartment in the building and starts bonding with his sister.
As a romance, Anne and Freddie’s second-chance story is slow burn until they get to that first kiss. But, regardless, boy, is their story swoonworthy and sweeping, paced at the exact right time so each step feels earned. Then, the sex scenes don’t feel raunchy or smutty, even though open-door action does happen. It, instead, feels romantic and like an act of real love. And then that HEA, let’s talk about it. As much as I wanted more details at the end, I’ll take what we were given with its nod to their first moments together way back when. Yeah, Freddie is a damn good book boyfriend. I’ll stand by that.
If Anne of Avenue A makes one thing clear, it’s that authors Bellezza and Harding are masters at adapting Austen’s beloved works for modern times in New York City. That’s a well-deserved niche in itself. And yes, there are sweet post-HEA cameos to the other couples in the “For the Love of Austen” series. Putting Anne, Emma Woodhouse, and Elizabeth Bennet (aka three of Austen’s greatest heroines) together is something completely unexpected, yet Bellezza and Harding made it fully necessary and exactly what the Austenian fangirl in me wants to see. Insert my squeals here.
Rating: Four Stars
Available: Now
A Queen’s Match by Katharine McGee
I’ve been eagerly looking forward to this since I first picked up A Queen’s Game. This is the conclusion to the duology, once again following the three noblewomen as they navigate courtships and life in high society England.
A Queen’s Match starts with Helene dealing with the fallout from her broken engagement to Eddy over blackmail, trying to figure out how to win her match back. At the same time, Alix promises to wait for forbidden love Nicholas, even though the queen is looking for matches elsewhere. And then there’s May, who might have finally figured out how to get a crown now that Eddy is on the market again.
This book picks up almost immediately where the last left off, and is still told with compelling language that’s fun and witty. It reads quite quickly, as readers continue following the lives of these engaging FMCs as they each try to balance what they want with family obligations and expectations. Both novels are, obviously, based on real people, yet the stories do feel original. It’s a perfect balance between fiction and reality. It’s so dramatic that it feels made-up, yet it’s not. I was so enthralled, like, I couldn’t put it down.
Rating: Four Stars
Available: November 4, 2025
Ladies in Waiting by Adriana Trigiani, Sarah MacLean, Eloisa James, Elinor Lipman, Audrey Bellezza, Karen Dukess, Emily Harding, Nikki Payne, Diana Quincy
This is a short story anthology collection for all the fellow Jane Austen girlies, like myself. Here, a group of authors each picked a female minor character from one of Austen’s novels, reimagining how to make her the star in either the original or a modern story.
The short stories each read quickly, and I found it so interesting to look at each underutilized character and see how the authors create new epilogues, story lines, and vignettes at different time periods. It’s fun to see potential insights into where these minor characters would be if they were the heroine. For me, I was truly mesmerized by the stories devoted to Eliza Brandon (with a nod to Audrey Bellezza and Emily Harding’s preexisting modern adaptation series), Caroline Bingley (Nikki Payne brought such depth to the Pride & Prejudice side character), and Hetty Bates (okay, this was just plain adorable), though the rest were equally fun to devour. It’s incredibly cute and engaging for all the other Austen fans out there.
Rating: Four Stars
Available: November 4, 2025
The Cuffing Project by Lyla Lee
If there’s one thing about my reading preferences, it’s that I’m a total sucker for an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. While The Cuffing Game is a sweet YA version of Austen’s romance, it also very much feels like it’s original and can stand on its own. It’s not a faithful adaptation, and it melds in other content too. So, it’s more than just a P&P adaptation.
In The Cuffing Game, Mia is a freshman at film school and has a secret crush on class enemy Noah, a senior and social media star. To bury her crush, Mia comes up with a Love Island-style campus dating show where all the contestants (including Noah) hole up in a ski cabin over winter break with the purpose of finding love with their secret crush. As Mia, the host and showrunner, watches Noah on camera, she slowly starts falling for him off-camera. But what happens when our Mr. Darcy wannabe starts pining back?
Told in dual points of view, author Lyla Lee writes with compelling and captivating language that makes me desperate to keep reading to find out what’s next. It reads quite quickly, and Lee delivers a fun concept and a play on Austen’s classic work.
Rating: Four Stars
Available: November 18, 2025
Pitcher Perfect by Tessa Bailey
If you’ve read all the other books in Bailey’s sports romance series, then you’ve already been introduced to Robbie Corrigan and Skylar Paige. This is an enemies-to-lovers, fake-dating romance between the Boston Bearcats hockey rookie and a collegiate softball player.
In Pitcher Perfect, Skylar wants nothing to do with Robbie “Orgasm Donor #1” Corrigan because he’s an obnoxious player. At the same time, he sees her pining for her older brother’s best friend, Madden, and offers to fake date during her family’s annual competition weekend as a way to finally impress her longtime crush. He also agrees to tutor 22-year-old Skylar in different dating lessons, but of course, it doesn’t take long before everything that’s fake doesn’t feel so fictional after all.
Told in dual points of view, this is chock full of witty language, banter in spades, and Bailey’s now-signature levels of spice. It’s a fun summer beach read (even though it comes out in fall, but summer beach read is more of a state of mind if you ask me), and the ending was so damn cute. I truly love how Robbie was such a soppy melt for Skylar, and she’s the badass who finally lets her guard down. Obsessed. I didn’t want to put this book down. It’s fun, sweeping, steamy, vulnerable, and romantic; and hell, might I say one of Bailey’s best in her athlete series?
Rating: Four Stars
Available: November 18, 2025
100 Rules for Living to 100 by Dick Van Dyke
I think it’s impossible not to root for the legend Dick Van Dyke, weeks away from his milestone 100th birthday, and this memoir further proves this. It’s like part memoir and part life lessons, told in the style of brief essays highlighting his experience in life, career, grief, marriage, parenthood, friendship, and more. It’s primarily very wholesome until Van Dyke details his past struggles with alcoholism and navigating the death of his loved ones. Those passages were completely raw and vulnerable, offering another glimpse of his storied life.
Rating: Three and a Half Stars
Available: November 18, 2025
Something Wicked by Falon Ballard
True to form, Falon Ballard once again delivered an unputdownable romance novel. Though this time, she tried something new and created a mystical historical/fantasy world, as well. And well, honestly, the Netgalley summary had me at “blend of Macbeth and Moulin Rouge.”
In Something Wicked, the country of Avon is in turmoil after the Uprising overthrows the monarchy and orders anyone who kills the last monarch to be eligible to run for president. Callum Reid is the son of one of the kings, hoping to follow in his father’s footsteps and run the new nation. In order to be comfortable with the idea of, you know, taking the life of his dear old dad, Callum turns to Lady Caterine “Cate” (a courtesan working at the country’s underground pleasure club) for so-called bedroom lessons. After all, she has a magical Gift that allows her to manipulate the emotions of those in her presence mid-tryst. While Callum is distrustful of the mystical Gifted individuals, he can’t deny an undeniable chemistry with Cate. Plus, there’s a sinister force lurking around the corner of the club, and it might come down to Callum and Cate to save the country and the business.
Told in dual points of view, Ballard continues to write with such compelling language that totally drew me in as a reader. So much so, that I (someone who doesn’t usually gravitate toward historical or fantasy novels at all) was intrigued and wanted to keep reading. I’m completely drawn into this world and the characters’ circumstances, desperate to find out what will happen next. It’s intriguing and compelling with its plot, like toss the spice to the side for a moment (because, yes, it does get spicy as one could infer by the nature of the FMC being a courtesan) because my goodness, there’s so much drama, twists, and turns. Something Wicked is Ballard’s spiciest book yet, sure, but it’s also her first set in a new world, and she smashes it. Like, wow, it’s so good, fun, unputdownable, and all the other things.
Rating: Four Stars
Available: December 2, 2025
Advance reader copies of the books listed were provided by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
quite simply miranda 