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Missed Connections, by Brian Francis (McClelland & Stewart)

The subtitle of this is “A Memoir in Letters Never Sent.” In the early 1990s, when he was 21 years old, Francis put an ad in the personals section of the newspaper. He received, he writes, 25 responses; he replied to all but 13 of them. Those last 13 letters he kept until, one day, he decided to write replies. Francis, who is also a playwright, wove the letters and his responses together as a play titled “Box 4901” that ran at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre — going to see it was one of my last nights out before the pandemic shut us down in mid-March 2020. In this book version, inspired by the play, we see the original letters — like the one signed “Snuggles,” which says “I don’t normally resort to answering ads like this, but like you I’m tired of being alone” — and the responses like the one to “Dear Snuggles,” in which Francis contemplates the “rigid binaries of masculine and feminine,” his own childhood, boys playing with dolls. Thoughtful, funny, poignant, insightful and honest.

The Snow Line, by Tessa McWatt (Random House Canada)

Born in Guyana, raised in Canada and now living in the U.K., McWatt traverses a wide range of physical and emotional territory in her writing. Her last book was a memoir, “Shame On Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging,” and explored the question “What are you?”; sparked when one of her teachers couldn’t easily pinpoint her ancestry, her place in the world (she is Scottish, English, French, Portuguese, Indian, Indigenous Guyanese, African and Chinese). In McWatt’s new book, “The Snow Line,” she has returned to the novel form. Set in northern India in 2009, at a wedding where four of the guests have travelled from Canada, England and the U.S., McWatt explores intergenerational and intercultural relationships in economic and evocative prose.

The View Was Exhausting, by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta (Grand Central Publishing)

One of two final beach reads for the season, this debut novel has been garnering raves. Notable for a couple of reasons: the authors are a married couple who live in Berlin. And while the novel is set in Hollywood and features jet-setting movie star Win and her playboy beau Leo, who are in an on-again, off-again romance, it is really about power, who wields it, the rules imposed on women and women of colour. It’s also about, well, love.

Fishnets & Fantasies, by Jane Doucet (Vagrant Press)

This second of the two final summer beach read recos will, on the surface, appeal to a slightly different demographic: it proves old(er) people have sex. It also proves prolific journalist Jane Doucet can write a very funny novel.

Set in Lunenburg, N.S., the main character, Wendy, decides that when her husband retires from his job as a fisherman she’ll pursue her own dream: open a sex shop. Peopled with believable characters (including Megan, a virgin, who jumps at the chance of working there; she’d read a lot about sex, after all), hilarious plot points and fun storytelling, it’s meant to transport you not to a sunny California beach, but a wild Atlantic shore.

Deborah Dundas is the Star’s Books editor. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: @debdundas