# The 14 Best Debut Novels of 2025 and 2026

> Fourteen first novels, some carried by word of mouth in book clubs and some by prize lists. First books rarely agree with each other.

*By YPB Team · Published September 13, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/the-14-best-debut-novels-of-2025-and-2026*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Correspondent** — score 1000/1000
   Virginia Evans's 2025 debut, told entirely through one woman's letters.
2. **Homeseeking** — score 692/1000
   Karissa Chen's 2025 debut following a love story across decades of Chinese history.
3. **The Lawyer and the Laundress** — score 546/1000
   Christine Hill Suntz's 2025 historical debut.
4. **Theo of Golden** — score 546/1000
   Allen Levi's 2025 debut about a stranger who arrives in a southern town buying paintings.
5. **Good Girl** — score 473/1000
   Aria Aber's 2025 debut about a young Afghan-German woman in Berlin's club scene.
6. **The Slip** — score 473/1000
   Lucas Schaefer's 2025 debut centred on a Texas boxing gym and a disappearance.
7. **Great Black Hope** — score 387/1000
   Rob Franklin's 2025 debut about class, race and an arrest that reshapes a life.
8. **Deep Cuts** — score 387/1000
   Holly Brickley's 2025 debut about two people bound together by arguing over music.
9. **Lady Tremaine** — score 387/1000
   Rachel Hochhauser's 2026 debut, a retelling built around Cinderella's stepmother.
10. **Leave and Come Back** — score 284/1000
   Lavanya Lakshmi's 2026 debut novel.
11. **Junie** — score 284/1000
   Erin Crosby Eckstine's 2025 debut, historical fiction with a thread of magical realism.
12. **Fundamentally** — score 284/1000
   Nussaibah Younis's 2025 debut, a comic novel about deradicalisation work in Iraq.
13. **Family of Spies** — score 0/1000
   Christine Kuehn's 2025 debut about a family pulled into espionage.
14. **Luminous** — score 0/1000
   Silvia Park's 2025 debut set in a reunified Korea full of robots.

Tags: books, 2020s, debuts, fiction