Have you read a book that you knew you would adore from the first sentence? N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became was one of those books for me.

The premise: What if cities could become living organisms, personified in our world by human avatars? What if those avatars, despite their differences, were forced to band together to fight destruction? That's what happens to New York City in The City We Became.

I've seen the criticisms of this book: it's too hokey; its characters are too thinly drawn; it's "woke." Well sorry, but this book was not written for you then. There's a lot of meta-commentary embedded in the book that isn't subtle, but that's because there isn't a reason to be subtle about it. Yet there's a lot of meta-commentary that certainly is subtle, stuff that you'll miss if you don't have the background to know what you're looking at. You have to know, for example, a bit about H.P. Lovecraft's work and why a new generation of authors is engaging the stunning and influential mythos that he created and yet doing so with an eye toward critically deconstructing his racism and xenophobia.

Above all, you might love this book if you love a particular city, even given its flaws, flaws that might make you hate it sometimes, a city that seizes your heart and soul and won't let go no matter how far away you are from it (hello, Chicago).

If all that sounds appealing to you, you need to check out this book. And there's a sequel, The World We Make, which is supposed to be even better. It's on my to-read list.