Nymph was an eloquently stunning novel from the moment I picked it up until I (digitally) flipped the last page.

When reading this novel, I felt a feeling similar to what I experienced while reading Outline by Rachel Cusk several years ago. That was a feeling of lightness and warmth; I think this was largely due to Montrone’s atmospheric writing style. Her writing throughout Nymph is vibrant and full of colour, and it was easy to feel instantly transported to the picturesque (in its own way) Italian agriturismo. I found myself wanting to lie by the pool, visit the bar, and wander through the vacant rooms.

I also found that the two main characters, Leo and Dolores, were executed brilliantly (especially Leo’s outlook on Dolores) while the secondary characters were still well thought out and realistic. It definitely feels like one of those books where you discover something new each time you read it; whether that be the way a character reacts to something, a certain feeling or place they return to, their comfort level (or lack thereof) with something, etc.

Full disclosure, I don’t know if this was simply due to the time of year I read the book, but it truly felt like the perfect book to read as the seasons were changing. That said, I feel it is a great novel to read at any point in the year and think it may go down as one of my top books so far in 2026.

Nymph is set to come out in June 2026.

Book synopsis from Simon & Schuster Canada:

Call Me By Your Name meets Elena Ferrante in this debut coming-of-age novel about a young girl who spends summers working at her family’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, the tragedy that rends her life into “before” and “after,” and her romance with an American girl, which has unexpected consequences.

To ten-year-old Leo, life is a collection. She spends her mornings tidying the rooms of her Nonna Tina’s timeworn Italian agriturismo, carefully accumulating the curious bits of left-behind detritus from guests—a pearl earring, a lock of hair. Her nights are suffused with gathering the stories that flow from her father’s lips—liquor-spun tales of Odysseus and the Trojans in secret battle. But when an accident rips the gentle membrane of Leo’s childhood, she is left vulnerable to the pains and pleasures of growing up.

Years later, in a sultry summer not unlike the many that came before, the agriturismo is the only thing that remains the same. Nonna Tina has grown older, Leo’s brother Max is intractable and mercurial, and the curiosity Leo so loved to feed as a child has turned into something more confusing. When she meets Dolores, an American girl made brilliant by Leo’s perception of her, she can’t help but gather all the experiences first love promises, while shedding parts of the past she no longer fits into.

Embroidering the atmospheric yearning of Call Me By Your Name with the precise, elevated prose of Elena Ferrante, Sofia Montrone’s jaw-dropping debut revels in the exuberant highs and awkward lows of girlhood and captures the universal experiences of trying to hold on to what is elusive, to deny what cannot be faced, and to say what cannot be said.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster Canada for sending me a digital ARC of this novel.

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