It feels sort of like cheating to say that a National Book Award finalist is the best novel I read this year—like, duh! Of course it is! But Thankam Mathews’s book about precarity and love and work and attempting to find meaning in your 20s hit all the right emotional notes for me. It’s smart but not showy, thoughtful but not maudlin, with a cast of characters whom I felt so much love for, despite their (well-articulated) flaws. –Nora Biette-Timmons