Can't-Wait Wednesday: School of Shards by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko & Flashlight by Susan Choi

  

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released!

School of Shards (Vita Nostra, #3) by Marina & Sergey Dyachenko, transl. Julia Meitov Hersey
Publication: June 17th, 2025
Harper Voyager
Paperback. 416 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"'The haunting final chapter of the modern classic Vita Nostra trilogy. The Dyachenkos’ magical dark academia novel brings the story of Sasha to a revelatory climax as she learns to take control of her powers and reshape the world...or destroy it forever. Beautifully translated from Russian by Julia Meitov Hersey.

The Institute of Special Technologies teaches students just one the magic that allows them to become parts of speech, and in doing so, transforming into a specific piece of grammar (a verb, or an adjective, or an article) so they will be able to shape the world around them. As the new provost, though, Sasha is facing an enormous the students in the world she just created, her “world without fear,” are unable to master the curriculum. Whether it’s the magic or the natural order of things, what they need to learn and become—Speech—is the basis of the material world.

And if she can’t teach it, Sasha knows that matter will soon cease to exist.

To protect the world, Sasha must collect fragments of her former reality. Only three people carry these fragments within her younger brother, Valya, and the Grigoriev twins, Arthur and Pashka, the sons of her former lover, Yaroslav Grigoriev. Sasha must lure these three to the Institute and make them learn—and understand—at any cost.

But she knows how difficult the path is, even more so from the other side of the teacher’s desk. Forced to act ever more ruthlessly, Sasha also notices the faster the world around the Institute changes. It is a vicious circle.

And one she must break.

To do so, she will have to shape reality again, one in which communication doesn’t break down and Speech once again needs to evolve and grow and flourish.

Sasha has already given up so much in pursuit of this dream—often her nightmare—and she might be asked to make one more sacrifice so that the world and Speech might live on."

I had no idea that they were finally translating the third book in this series, so I am beyond thrilled. I absolutely need to re-read the first two books before getting to this one. Vita Nostra remains a favorite of mine (and hopefully stays that way after my re-read, haha). (I don't know why the cover art direction has gone in this direction, either, especially when compared to Vita Nostra's cover, which is one of my favorites ever). I can't wait!

Flashlight by Susan Choi
Publication: June 3rd, 2025
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Hardcover. 464 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory, from the author of Trust Exercise.

One night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the beach. He’s carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later Louisa is found washed up by the tide, barely alive. Her father is gone, presumed drowned. She is ten years old.

In chapters that shift from one member to the next, turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Susan Choi's Flashlight chases the shockwaves of one family’s catastrophe. Louisa is an only child of parents who have severed themselves from the past. Her father, Serk, an ethnic Korean born and raised in Japan, lost touch with his family when they bought into the promises of postwar Pyongyang and relocated to the DPRK. Her American mother, Anne, is estranged from her family after a reckless sexual adventure in her youth. And then there is Tobias, Anne’s illegitimate son, whose reappearance in their lives will have astonishing consequences.

What really happened to Louisa’s father? Why did he take Louisa and her mother to Japan just before he disappeared? And how can we love, or make sense of our lives, when there’s so much we can’t see?"

I really enjoy a thoughtful, character driven literary fiction story, and this sounds like it should hit all of those notes--and of course provide an interesting story while doing so. Looking forward to this one!