Canada Keeps Reading: Follow-up Reads to your 2025 Favourites

If you liked Watch Out for Her by Samantha M. Bailey,
try Dwelling by Laurie Freedman (At Bay Press)

The twisty domestic thriller championed by Olympic gold medallist Maggie Mac Neil Watch Out for Her, about a mother and a babysitter and the secrets between them, finds its match in Laurie Freedman’s seriously thrilling debut, Dwelling. Like Sarah in Watch Out for Her, Nora flees her hometown for the anonymity of Toronto, only to find it’s not as safe as she’d hoped. Both books feature the home as a place of unease rather than safety, and readers of Watch Out for Her will feel similarly terrified as Dwelling reaches its stunning conclusion.

If you liked Jennie’s Boy by Wayne Johnston, try
otherwise grossly unremarkable by Ashleigh Matthews
(Breakwater Books)

The by-turns sad and funny childhood memoir Jennie’s Boy by Newfoundland writer Wayne Johnston – and championed by thriller writer Linwood Barclay – finds its match in Ashleigh Matthews’s otherwise grossly unremarkable, a memoir about the Conception Bay writer’s experience with breast cancer at 35 years old. Like Johnston, Matthews’s memoir is raw and unflinching, and doesn’t shy away from the realities of illness nor the burdens it places on survivors.

If you liked Etta and Otto and Russell and James by
Emma Hooper, try Leaving Wisdom by Sharon Butala
(Thistledown Press)

In Emma Hooper’s Etta and Otto and Russell and James – championed by Heartland’s Michelle Morgan – readers follow 82-year-old Etta as she unexpectedly leaves home in rural Saskatchewan to head toward the Atlantic Ocean, or “the water,” thousands of kilometres away. The narrative bounces back and forth between Etta’s journey and the people – Otto, her husband, and Russell, their close family friend and neighbour – left behind, and their intertwined presents and pasts. Sharon Butala’s protagonist Judith in Leaving Wisdom also finds herself plumbing the depths of her memories after a fall and debilitating concussion brings them to surface, as she settles in rural Wisdom, SK.

If you liked Dandelion by Jamie Chai Yun Liew
(Arsenal Pulp Press), try The Wondrous Woo by Carrianne
Leung (Inanna Publications)

If you were rooting for Jamie Chai Yun Liew’s novel Dandelion, championed by pastry chef Saïd M’Dahoma, you’ll find similar themes of family struggles and coming-of-age in Carrianne Leung’s The Wondrous Woo, about the eldest daughter of a Chinese immigrant family. Miramar Woo is all set to leave for University when an unimaginable tragedy strikes her family, much like when the mother in Dandelion abandons her family, without a trace. Like Dandelion‘s protagonist Lily, Miramar has to rebuild her sense of self and her community, both new and existing.

If you liked A Two-Spirit Journey by Ma-Nee Chacaby,
try you are enough: love poems for the end of the world
by Smokii Sumac (Kegedonce Press)

If you connected with the difficult but ultimately hopeful life’s telling in Ma-Nee Chacaby’s memoir A Two-Spirit Journey, as championed by podcaster and wellness advocate Shayla Stonechild, you’ll love Smokii Sumac’s collection you are enough: love poems for the end of the world. Like Ma-Nee, Smokii is Two-Spirit and has experienced his own struggles with addiction and depression, as well as suffered the enduring effects of Canadian colonialism. Ultimately, these poems bend toward self-love and acceptance, drawing on Indigenous literary practice to do so.

* * *

What book did you hope would win CBC Canada Reads this year? What book will you read next? Let us know on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky @alllitupcanada.