Staff Picks: Amber Grell’s Favorites

The day after his bachelor party, Daphne’s fiancé, Peter dumps her for his childhood best friend, Petra. Now Daphne is stranded in a city where the only people she knows belong to Peter. With nowhere else to go, Daphne moves in with Miles, Petra’s ex and the only other person who knows what she’s going through. I adore Emily Henry’s writing, characters, and worlds and I can’t praise her enough.

Michelle Zauner was the only Korean American child in a small, white-dominant town in Oregon. Growing up, Michelle’s relationship with her mother was tumultuous, the gap between them widening with age. However, Michelle’s life abruptly turned on its axis after her mother was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer and she moved home to care for her, desperately trying to navigate immense grief by reconnecting with both her mother and her Korean roots. Zauner wrote a memoir that not only authentically honors her late mother, but dives into the intricacies of generational trauma.