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Juliet Izon is a journalist and author who has written for publications including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CondeĢ Nast Traveler, Food & Wine, and Architectural Digest. She lives with her husband, daughter, and two Ragdoll cats, splitting her time between New York City and the Hudson Valley. The Encore (Union Square & Co., March 3, 2026), her debut novel, centers on the relationship between pianist and singer Anna Buckley and composer wunderkind Will Pendleton in a journey of love, sacrifice, and destiny.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
If you loved Daisy Jones & the Six, this story set in the music world, with plenty of family secrets and long-lost loves, is for you.
On your nightstand now:
I'm just about to finish T Kira Madden's Whidbey, the author's first novel. Talk about lush prose! This is a book you'll want to read with a pen in your hand: there are so many uniquely beautiful turns of phrases. And zooming out from just the line-level brilliance, this cast of characters is so carefully rendered. None are faultless, all are surprisingly sympathetic, and I'll be thinking about their complex web of connections for a long time.
While I never read more than one novel at a time, I do read across genres simultaneously. For article research right now, I'm reading Daniel J. Levitin's I Heard There Was a Secret Chord, which is a fascinating deep-dive into music's therapeutic powers, as written by someone who is both a neuroscientist and a musician. (And fun fact, this book and mine have the same cover designer, Patrick Sullivan, although I didn't know this until after I'd started reading!)
Favorite book when you were a child:
I could give you a smart-kid answer like C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, but the truth is that the book I read most obsessively as a child was a paperback called Good-bye, Best Friend by Cherie Bennett. It was about a girl with cystic fibrosis who lives at a hospice; I carried it around so much the cover disintegrated. If you ask any of my close friends, they'll tell you this absolutely tracks for my personality, but I'm not quite sure what that says about me on a larger scale....
Your top five authors:
I'm gonna try not to overthink this: Sally Rooney, Ian McEwan, Donna Tartt, Ann Patchett, and Maggie O'Farrell. I think if I were left with only their works on a desert island, I'd be happy.
Book you've faked reading:
The Bible during Sunday school. Eventually, I did read a generous portion of it during various Western Civ classes in college. While it'll never be a favorite read, it did have an impact on so many books that came after it that I think at least a passing familiarity with it can inform reading of many other texts.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Like many of us, I cannot stop talking about Lily King's Heart the Lover. How does she say so much with so little?! How do I know these characters so intimately from just the first few chapters? It's one of the few books I want to read again to dissect purely from a craft perspective.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. There was something about the interplay of those Hokusai waves with the retro, rainbow computer font that instantly intrigued me. And, of course, that's a novel that certainly lives up to its epic cover. Easily one of my favorite books I've read in the last decade.
Book you hid from your parents:
I am very lucky that I never needed to do this! I'm the daughter of two English majors and they welcomed any book into our home, from highbrow to lowbrow.
Book that changed your life:
I thought about this question for a long time. Is it a favorite book? A genre I read for the first time? But I think the answer is a lot simpler than that: it's the first book I ever read, of course. There's nothing that changes your life more fundamentally, as a reader. For me, that book was my mom's tattered copy of Fun with Dick and Jane, which she patiently read alongside me.
Favorite line from a book:
I've never been the sort of person who remembers favorite lines from books, unfortunately. I've spent the past few hours combing my memory for favorite scenes to see if I can remember anything verbatim, but that's just not how my brain works, alas. But I will say my favorite opening line of any book is that famed sentence from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." It sounds so dry at first read. But then as you begin the book, Austen's wit sparkles almost immediately, and you realize she's poking fun at the whole establishment. It makes me chuckle every time.
Five books you'll never part with:
This seriously depends on the day, right? But if I HAD to pick right now:
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Normal People by Sally Rooney
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
There is definitely more than one way to interpret this question, depending on what part of reading delights you the most. Is it the craft of writing? So, encountering exquisitely rendered sentences for the first time? Or is it plot, when a book's narrative is so absorbing you lose track of the world around you for hours. For me, it's the latter, and it's hard to think of a world that felt as (literally) magical to sink into than that of Harry Potter. Of course today, it's tricky to recommend anything connected to J.K. Rowling, but even so many years later, I don't think I've ever been as entranced in a first read as I was during Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.