Chang-Rae Lee, Téa Obreht and Virginia Eubanks Lead This Week’s Best-Reviewed Books

This week’s best-reviewed books list is headed by a mix of literary fiction and nonfiction that ranges widely in subject and style, but shares one thing in common: critics responded strongly to books that combine narrative ambition with close attention to form. Chang-Rae Lee’s A Tender Age, Téa Obreht’s Sunrise and Virginia Eubanks’ A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving all appear among the most warmly received titles, reflecting a week in which reviewers praised both emotional force and intellectual range.

Fiction at the top

Lee’s A Tender Age, published by Riverhead, sits at the top of the fiction rankings with 10 rave reviews and one mixed notice. Terry Hong of Shelf Awareness called it “luminous” and highlighted the novel’s carefully withheld ending, praising Lee for “shroud[ing] what exactly happened on that life-altering precipice” and leaving “room for interrogation and interpretation.” That kind of reception suggests a novel that is being read not simply as a story, but as an exercise in controlled ambiguity and moral pressure.

Close behind is Téa Obreht’s Sunrise, from Random House, with seven rave reviews and one pan. Donna Seaman of Booklist described it as “riveting in each time frame,” commending the novel for both drawing on and revising Old West storytelling while also confronting “gender, taboo love, myth, history, and our desecration of the wild.” The review points to a book that blends genre inheritance with revisionist energy, using the frontier setting to explore contemporary concerns about power, ecology and desire.

Richard Russo’s Under the Falls, published by Knopf, landed further down the fiction list but still drew a strong critical response overall, with one rave, seven positive reviews, two mixed notices and two pans. Carol Haggas of Booklist called it “cinematically lush and emotionally potent,” framing it as a novel about “the perils of reunion, remorse, and the quest for redemption.” Even with a more divided response than the top two fiction titles, Russo’s book appears to have prompted serious attention for its atmosphere and emotional stakes.

Two other fiction titles also drew notably favorable attention. Claire Carusillo’s The Responsible Party, from Henry Holt and Company, earned three rave reviews and one positive, with Elizabeth McKenzie of The New York Times Book Review praising its comic energy and its “vigorous and inclusive aside.” Brinda Charry’s Hocus Pocus, from Scribner, also earned three rave and one positive review; Chris Vognar of The Boston Globe called it “a vividly lived-in portrait” of an early post-Revolution Boston and a “stirring work of historical fiction” that balances “fantasy and authenticity, showmanship and, of course, magic.”

Nonfiction with literary appeal

Nonfiction this week was similarly varied, and some of the most praised books lean directly into literary or cultural criticism. Sam Roberts’ Are They Dead Yet?: The Art of the Obit, from Bloomsbury, received three rave reviews and one positive notice. Martin Green of the Jewish Book Council described it as “delightful,” calling Roberts a “genial” guide through obituary writing’s “complexities” and noting his warm tribute to fellow obituarists and their subjects. For readers interested in journalism as a craft, the book seems to offer both history and self-aware commentary.

Virginia Eubanks’ A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival, from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, also drew three rave reviews. Elisabeth Egan of The New York Times Book Review said the memoir could speak to “exhausted caregivers, intrepid explorers or government officials,” and praised its rigor, including the author’s willingness to examine her own behavior alongside her subject’s suffering. That combination of personal reflection and practical urgency appears to have made the book stand out as both intimate and socially alert.

Other nonfiction titles on the list included Daisy Dixon’s Depraved: The Story of Dangerous Art, which examines whether art depicting violence or morally troubling figures should be criticized or censored, and David E. Lieberman’s Fed Up: What Evolution Reveals about Food, Diet, Health, and Eating Well, which Publishers Weekly described as a well-researched and evidence-based guide through nutrition advice. Ashley Kahn’s Days of Miracle and Wonder: Paul Simon and the Trials and Triumphs of Graceland also made the list, with reviewers noting its decades of research and broad appeal.

Taken together, the week’s reviews suggest a publishing moment in which critics are rewarding books that do more than tell a compelling story: they test form, revisit cultural myths, and connect private experience to larger systems of care, art and history. For readers, that means a roster of books that are not only getting attention, but are being singled out for how ambitiously they think about what literature can do.