With the new year comes new books and new voices joining our shelves! Whether you’re looking for a devastating story about rediscovering your place in a community or a fun love story set on the Formula 1 racetrack or a novel that redefines gothic literature for the modern day, 2026 debuts are ready for you. EnVi celebrates the arrival of spring by highlighting five debut novels we’re excited to read this year.
WEAVINGSHAW by Heba Al-Wasity
Publication date: February 24
Publisher: Del Rey (Penguin Random House)
Did someone say gothic fantasy? Leena Al-Sayer has a secret: she can see the dead. And that secret is very, very valuable to the Saint of Silence, the master of the cursed estate Weavingshaw. Al-Wasity’s debut novel takes the best of gothic literature, weaves pieces of her Iraqi heritage into its pages, and dives into discussions of refugee rights and economic equality.
Weavingshaw was only published last month, but it’s already stirred up praise from readers and review platforms like Publishers Weekly. The novel also was selected as a February Favourite Staff Picks on Apple Books and one of Reactor’s most-anticipated 2026 SFF reads.
THE BLUE DRESS by Rebecca K. Morrison
Publication date: March 24
Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux, Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group
Iranian American journalist Rebecca K. Morrison is adding her voice to the middle grade book space with The Blue Dress. Publishing just a few days after the Persian New Year, Nowruz, The Blue Dress follows 13-year-old Yasmin. In the novel, she navigates a new country, puberty, and a body that never meets her mother’s expectations.
Morrison brings her personal experience to her debut. She has published personal essays about her mother, body image pressure, and the immigrant experience in national publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times. We can’t wait for young teens and other bookworms to read Morrison’s much-needed story.
Morrison’s Website | Morrison’s Instagram
SHAPES OF LOVE by L.V. Peñalba
Publication date: May 19
Publisher: Wednesday Books (Macmillan)
Aromantic asexual representation. Can we just say that again? Aro. Ace. Rep.
Nineteen-year-old Sasha is an aroace musician, whose first album shoots her into stardom. But fans are now clambering to know who exactly inspired her love songs — who cares if they were actually based on Sasha’s favorite book and anime ships. Pressured by her label and the questions from her growing fanbase, Sasha agrees to “fake date” her estranged best friend after he unexpectedly comes back into the picture.
It’s important to remember: Shapes of Love is not a romance. But it’s still a love story, because finding people who feel like home is also love.
EVERYTHING TO THE SEA by Alicia Upano
Publication date: July 14
Publisher: William Morrow (HarperCollins)
Sometimes you want to read a love story. Sometimes you want to read about how love — in all its many forms — persists despite the odds. And sometimes, you want to read this love story as it’s woven through a sweeping tale of family, grief, and the struggle to rebuild your place in a community.
Enter Everything to the Sea by Alicia Upano, who was born and raised in Hawaiʻi. Set in Hilo, found on the eastern side of the Big Island, Everything to the Sea imagines a fictional tsunami (though based on Hilo’s historic tsunamis, particularly the ones from 1946 and 1960) striking the community.
Upano considers three questions in her author letter: “Amid omnipresent peril, how do we connect and disconnect, treasure and abandon, embrace and mourn? How do we navigate a future we can’t possibly predict? Could we rebuild, and if so, how?” They guide readers, too, as they join Jane and Kenji and Hilo in their journeys to rediscover who they are.
THE FAST TRACK by Angelica Cheng
Publication date: August 4
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
If you’re a Formula 1 fan like we are here at EnVi, then you might need something after devouring season 8 of Drive to Survive (Netflix’s F1 documentary series) and after F1 takes its 2026 summer break. Luckily, The Fast Track, written by Angelica Cheng, will be coming to shelves in August.
This young adult rivals-to-lovers romcom takes the F1 world and flips it on its head. Seventeen-year-old Justine Kwong is racing towards becoming the first female F1 driver. But will those dreams crash and burn as she starts to fall in love with…gulp…her rival?
For those who love F1 and F1 Academy, an all-female racing series dedicated to bringing more female racers to the F1 grid, The Fast Track is a must for your TBR!
Cheng’s Website | Cheng’s Instagram
Want to read more about books? Check out EnVi’s feature on “Uptown Books,” a one-act play about a bookstore and set in a bookstore!
