Spill the Novel Tea #3: Speculative Novels and Far-Flung Settings

Our June 2025 Reads

It’s finally time for summer reading! But we’ve got a confession: we don’t love summer reading — with everything we’ve got going on, including our full-time jobs that definitely don’t slow down over the summer, it sometimes feels stressful to find time for reading amidst the many social events and long sunny days that pull us out of doors. Nevertheless, we managed to read some great books this month!

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Neha’s selections for this month all center bold, speculative ideas: immigration is possible through magical doors, time travel exists, and dreams can now be accessible, but wait, it’s all government-mandated. It was particularly interesting to consider these ideas given the current political climate. There were some interesting attempts at genre blending — all these books leaned ‘literary’ — which worked in some cases, but not so much in others. Also, a movie review!

Shruti’s stand-out reads were all set in foreign locations: France, Italy, and, the farthest of all, outer space. These books delivered on a strong sense of place, a longing for something intangible, and the sense of isolation that sometimes comes with hot summer months. I write about some books that I loved and will probably become lifetime favorites — but I also skewer a popular book (which I can’t figure out if I liked or not) and digress into a theory on recent trends in literary fiction.

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Neha’s Reads

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The Ministry of Time launches an intriguing premise: a British government agency plucks historical figures from moments before their deaths and drops them into present-day London. This mission is experimental and requires “bridges” or chaperones to help these figures through their adjustment by befriending them.