I tend to see myself as someone fairly chill and, at the same time, quite picky about what I let take up space in my life. I choose a few things I genuinely enjoy and give myself permission to do them slowly, without the pressure of FOMO.

The Reader I Thought I’d Always Be

Reading is one of the few things I’ve made room for, alongside other interests like journaling, gardening, and fresh flower care. As a reader, I’ve never cared much about the visual of having shelves sagging under books. Borrowing from the library is fine with me. Renting a book is fine too. It’s okay for me to read a book without ever owning a physical copy of it. I also never wanted to chase whatever everyone else was reading just to keep up. I pick a book when I feel like picking it. I read it if the genre pulls me in. I put it down the moment it stops holding my attention.

New releases were never part of the equation. The book, I told myself, will always be there anyway. I do not have to be in a hurry to read something.

That belief held steady for a long time.

Recently, something changed, and I finally understood the pull that draws readers toward new releases in the first place.

Enter Under Story

September and October are when publishers seem to release everything at once. A month or so before that rush, I usually spend some time browsing book platforms, noting down titles due for release and adding them to my TBR list.

September arrived, and Under Story came out on the first of the month. I had nothing lined up to read at the time, and the synopsis had already gotten under my skin with curiosity. So I read it.

It was so good. You’ll have to read my full review to understand just how good it is, even that review falls short of capturing the mental and emotional wreckage this book left me in, in the best possible way.

Why Reading It Early Actually Mattered

Reading and leaving a review about the book while it was still fresh changed how I thought about the whole ‘new release’ impulse. I realized I could be one voice among many, nudging a future reader toward a book, offering a little balance against the readers who didn’t connect with it the way I did, the ones who might dismiss it outright because of a string of lukewarm reviews. Whether someone ends up loving the book or not isn’t really the point. What matters to me is that I get to hand them the chance to experience it on their own terms and form their own judgment. Reading and sharing the review online early means more people might read it and pick it up, which means more readers get to stretch their own reading horizons a little further.

Was I Just Avoiding Bad Reviews?

For a while, I assumed that reading new releases would insulate me from bad reviews, that the earlier I read something, the less chance I’d have of being swayed by other people’s opinions before I’d formed my own. Once a book has been out for a while, the negative reviews start piling up, and my reading experience can start bending under their weight without me even noticing. I become biased before I’ve turned the first page.

But then I think of books I’ve loved fiercely despite their reputation, for example Orbital by Samantha Harvey being the clearest example, a book that became one of my all-time favorites even though it sits with fairly mixed, tend to bad, ratings on book platforms. So no, this isn’t really about dodging other people’s opinions. It’s something else entirely, and I think I’m still figuring out what to call it.

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Maybe it isn’t about new versus old, or early versus late. Maybe it’s about the small window where a book still belongs mostly to itself, before it collects a reputation, before it becomes “that book everyone either loves or hates.” Reading Under Story in that window didn’t make me a convert to release-day reading, and I doubt I’ll be refreshing publisher calendars every month from now on. But I understand the pull now, and I’m glad I let myself follow it once. I still plan to stay the picky, unhurried reader I’ve always been. I just know now that every so often, a book will find me at exactly the right moment to be read new.