Your spring guide to reading starts here.

Two Canadian authors are skyrocketing to the top of our to-read list.

Raziel Reid is reinventing the teen drama for the digital age.

THE ONLY THING that is, perhaps, more pleasurable than the drama of a compulsively watchable teen show (there’s a reason we were all obsessed with Riverdale for a moment) is the drama of an overthe-top reality show. Vancouverite Raziel Reid knows this. That’s why reading his latest novel, Followers— about a naive teen who suddenly becomes a key player in a messy Real

Housewives-esque series—is meant to feel like you’re scrolling through Insta while watching your fave Bravo show. “So many of our experiences now happen online,” says Reid. “I’m really interested in the duality of our existence. We’ve become masters of deception—we’re better at faking it and curating an image of who we are.” Each chapter of the novel opens with a series of the overly familiar, error-plagued comments we’re used to seeing splattered across celebrities’ social-media accounts before leading into the on- and off-camera action. It’s easy to wonder why Reid—who, at 24, became the youngest-ever writer to win the Governor General’s Award for his 2014 debut young-adult novel, When Everything Feels Like the Movies—

decided to keep the focus on teenage characters in Followers. After all, if the Kardashians have taught us anything, it’s that adulthood is full of petty, entertaining arguments. “I

love the possibility of youth,” he says. “As we get older, we become more contained. Young people aren’t as civilized. They’re establishing their own rules, and they do that by pushing boundaries.” But make no mistake: Followers isn’t some after-school special where everyone learns an important lesson at the end. “It’s pure escapism; this novel is what it would be like if Ronan Farrow wrote fiction,” Reid says with a laugh. “I want it to be how someone spends their Sunday afternoon.”

Robyn Harding has mastered the art of the thriller.

ROBYN HARDING IS not who you think she is. The Vancouver-based author, who has quickly become one of the most-buzzed-about writers in the domestic-thriller genre, says that when people read her books, “they think [she’s] a creepy, weird person.” But that’s not at all the case. “Trust me, I’ve tried to analyze why I’m drawn to [this genre],” she says. “I have a fascination with exploring these things from a safe space. For me, it’s about delving into an idea and figuring out how it can go wrong.” Her upcoming novel, The Swap, delivers on that promise. Set on an isolated island in the Pacific Northwest, it follows two couples, whose relationships take a turn after one of the women suggests swapping partners for the night, and a teen girl who’s a

little too obsessed with their secrets. The idea came to Harding when she noticed that more people in her extended circle were opening up about being in open or polyamorous relationships. Like The Swap, many of Harding’s books explore serious, real-world themes, including sexuality and identity. But for the Canadian writer, it’s important that her work exists in a safe space; when things go wrong, and they always do (“Nobody wants to read a thriller about a successful relationship”), it’s never because of how the characters identify. “We’re living in an extremely progressive time when we’re not necessarily tied into a binary or heteronormative point of view,” says Harding. “I deal with social norms and take them to a dark, terrible place, but it’s never from a judgmental place.”