The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

Wow, did this book just suck me in. First for its wit and humor, but then for its thoughtful and sentimental depth.  I loved the characters, I loved the structure.  The ending threw me for a loop.  Very emotional. I highly recommend this book!
Excerpt from the NY Times review (they like the book but not as much as I did!)

"...at the novel’s heart lies a profound philosophical question about the nature of the self, as Daphne and Laurel struggle to figure out who they are on their own and in relation to each other. Who gets to be the subject of their story and who is the object? Where does one person end and the other begin? When the sisters were babies, their mother worried that they were, perhaps too much, “each other.” Their father disagreed: “They were alike, two peas in a pod, but each had its own circumference. Daphne followed Laurel, a tiny acolyte. He wondered if Daphne would ever turn around and walk away. He wondered if Laurel would follow.” Their parents fear the girls will never evolve independently and also worry that they inevitably will."

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

His second Pulitzer! What a powerful book. Different in its power from The Underground Railroad, I thought. Much more spare in its detail. The detail was between the lines. I can't quite explain that, but I felt it strongly.  He said a lot with few words. The atrocities were alluded to but not described in detail. And the reader was glad!
Definitely worth reading and a real twist in the end.
Highly recommended.  Read this right at the time of the George Floyd shooting which made it even more powerful

Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler

What a fast read, but delightful. I really enjoyed it!
Here's what Kirkus says:

Micah’s existence is entirely organized to his liking. Each morning he goes for a run at 7:15; starts his work as a freelance tech consultant around 10; and in the afternoons deals with tasks in the apartment building where he is the live-in super. He’s the kind of person, brother-in-law Dave mockingly notes, who has an assigned chore for each day: “vacuuming day…dusting day….Your kitchen has a day all its own” (Thursday). Dave’s comments are uttered at a hilarious, chaotic family get-together that demonstrates the origins of Micah’s persnickety behavior and offers a welcome note of comedy in what is otherwise quite a sad tale. Micah thinks of himself as a good guy with a good life. It’s something of a shock when the son of his college girlfriend turns up wondering if Micah might be his father (not possible, it’s quickly established), and it’s really a shock when his casual agreement to let 18-year-old Brink crash in his apartment for a night leads Micah’s “woman friend,” Cass, to break up with him. “There I was, on the verge of losing my apartment,” she says. “What did you do? Quickly invite the nearest stranger into your spare room.” Indignant at first, Micah slowly begins to see the pattern that has kept him warily distant from other people, particularly the girlfriends who were only briefly good enough for him. (They were always the ones who left, once they figured it out.) The title flags a lovely metaphor for Micah’s lifelong ability to delude himself about the nature of his relationships. Once he realizes it, agonizing examples of the human connections he has unconsciously avoided are everywhere visible, his loneliness palpable. These chapters are painfully poignant—thank goodness Tyler is too warmhearted an artist not to give her sad-sack hero at least the possibility of a happy ending.
Suffused with feeling and very moving.

Real Live by Brandon Taylor

I read about this book when my Univ of Wisconsin magazine came. It was reviewed as a new novel by an alumnus.  It sounded interesting and then I also saw it listed on Emma Straub's "best list" on her bookstore website. So I checked for it on Libby and it was available.
At first I was not sure I was going to get through it. At the start it is all about Wallace's life in the Bio Lab at his school (never mentioned, but obviously UW Madison!). There is a lot of technical science stuff that turned me off, but I continued with the book, being drawn in by Wallace's character and the theme of racism (so in the news right now!)
It's a first novel for the author, who truly DID go to UW Madison for a PhD in biochemistry.  He then pursued his interest in writing and got into the esteemed Iowa Writers' Program. I liked the book a lot even though there were passages that I wanted to skip over (the science stuff.) I kept waiting for that to mean something more in the novel - metaphor or symbolism or something, But I never got that.  The book resonated most because of when I read it, I think. Right in the middle of the protests and rallies surrounding racism in the US, after the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis.  And Madison and Minneapolis are not far apart - not just geographically, it seems. 

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

This book has gotten so much press, of course, in the #MeToo era.  Interesting that it took the author 18 years to write it!  As I ponder that, it makes me believe that there is a lot of autobiography in this book. Russell helps the reader understand sexual abuse from the point of view of the victim who does NOT want to come forward. This is appalling at first but the author helps us understand why Vanessa wants to hold onto the belief that it was romantic love, not abuse, that was going on for those years.
Although it was a difficult book to read, and at times it seemed gratuitous, in the end I have only the highest respect for this author. From the NPR review:

Pearl-clutchers, take note: When it comes to sexuality and complex power dynamics, Russell pulls no punches. What you get is a raw, unflinching look at the ways we hold young girls responsible for the criminal actions of grown men and, even worse, how victims come to blame themselves.