I love the depth multiple POV novels offer. Multiple perspectives allow us to see characters from different angles, complicating our idea of who they really are. While I appreciate a voicey first-person narrator, and know they’re a popular trend (I don’t have stats to back this up, but I’m sure a high percentage of contemporary novels are written in first-person), multiple POVs can widen the scope of the narrative, allowing the reader to know information one character has that another doesn’t, which adds delicious story tension. And multiple perspectives can bring extra richness, texture, and nuance to stories.
I’ll make another claim I can’t back up with hard data: multiple POV novels can be more difficult to query and sell. That was the case for my debut, How We See the Gray, which includes nine (yes, nine) perspectives. So for the querying writers out there—or just anyone hungry for beautiful, nuanced stories—I put together a list of some of my favorite multiple POV novels from the past few years… and they all happen to be debuts!
Work to Do by Jules Wernersbach
Jules Wernersbach’s debut just came out this spring and I’m already sure it’ll be one of my favorite novels of the year. The story begins during a hurricane and is about an Austin, Texas food co-op largely run by a senior manager whose girlfriend is sleeping with another employee who is leading efforts to unionize. We get the perspective of the senior manager, the employee with whom her girlfriend is cheating on her, and the owner. Work to Do is delightfully queer, tender, funny, and empathetic. I’d also categorize it as a social novel because it speaks to not only organizing, but about power structures. For a fairly slim novel, it really packs a punch.
If the Dead Belong Here by Carson Faust
Carson Faust’s gorgeous debut deals with the disappearance of a six-year-old girl, and how her family navigates the aftermath of her loss. Moving through time and varying family members’ perspectives, the novel is a stunning meditation on grief. The novel includes appearances by those the living characters are grieving: yes, as ghosts. But despite the ghosts (or perhaps because of them) I’d describe If the Dead Belong Here as a family saga. While it deals with the preternatural, exploring what it means to be haunted, at its core, it’s a story of the love and legacy of family—including chosen family. Carson Faust is one of those rare fiction writers who is a spellbinding storyteller and also delivers poetic and ornate prose.
Another wonderfully nuanced and well-told family saga that came out last year is Aram Mrjoian’s debut. The novel follows an Armenian American family after one family member, a young woman, dies by suicide in Lake Michigan. The story is deftly layered, making space for the way the Armenian genocide still lingers over this family. The novel explores trauma, both generational and current, and is not only about grief, but perseverance. Waterline is a truly beautiful story that’s moving, heartfelt, and reflective, marking Aram Mrjoian as a notable fiction writer worth watching.
When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris
Yet another deeply reflective novel that deals with family and trauma is Denne Michele Norris’s beautiful debut. When the Harvest Comes is a tender meditation about the complications of family, love, trauma, and forgiveness. The story opens the night before a Black violinist estranged from his reverend father will marry a white man from a close-knit family. And the novel weaves through time and multiple perspectives, with gorgeous prose, and is ultimately about how being seen and loved for who you are—and the courage that can take. An absolutely stunning novel that I’m still thinking about, many months later.
The El by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
The El is a very Chicago novel (in fact, it won the 2025 CHIRBy Award for Fiction) and it’s also very good. Set on one August day in 1979, The El follows a street gang. With a vibrant cast of characters, a vivid setting, and poetic prose, this novel is immersive and rhythmic. It’s a story of people trying to find their place in a world that doesn’t want them. It reads like a love letter to a city, and a time that I hadn’t seen portrayed in fiction. It’s another slim novel that’s compulsively readable and really leaves a mark on the reader.
Martyr! was a personal favorite of 2024. A few years later, when I think back on reading the book, it’s the main character that immediately comes to my mind. But what also sticks out about the novel is its scope and ability to examine things from different angles. That main protagonist is a queer poet in the Midwest working through addiction, trauma, and familial inheritance of violence and loss—but the story travels through time and perspectives. It’s an impressive novel, one so complex it doesn’t feel like a debut. It examines martyrdom, yes, but also displacement, belonging, and grace with both humor and insight, and somehow manages to be super entertaining yet profound.
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote
Coleman Hill is an inventive interwoven story of two African American families spanning seven decades. Told in first, second, and third person POVs, and illustrated with photographs, this multiple perspective novel has a rich tapestry effect that’s kaleidoscopic. The voice is incredibly strong and assured throughout, and the depth and insight for characters, situations, and the past is astonishing. Coleman Foote’s talent and dexterity as a fiction writer is evident, and I can’t wait for her second novel, Salt Water Sister (out next year).
Calling for a Blanket Dance by Oscar Hokeah
I wasn’t sure if 2022 was too far back to go with this list, but there were a few very notable multiple POV novels published that year. Oscar Hokeah’s PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction-winning novel was the first. It’s narrated by a dozen different characters all connected through familial bonds, yet manages to be about how the central character finds his way home. (That in itself is such a feat—to have twelve POVs, yet to also have such a strong narrative thread for a single character.) Calling for a Blanket Dance is an intimate story of how intergenerational trauma shapes a community and the innate strength the central character must have to save himself and the generations that come after him.
Another notable 2022 debut is Namrata Poddar’s Border Less, which doesn’t have the kind of traditional narrative structure that lends itself to a quick synopsis. Yet there’s much to admire about this multiple POV novel: the bold risks it takes with narration and structure, its carefully constructed layers, the depth of character revealed in a tight space, and its examination of what it means, and costs, to belong. But perhaps its most impressive virtue is its staunch rejection of the measurements the white Western canon uses to judge literature and its confident demand to be read on its own terms. Border Less as an elegant meditation on not only race, class, gender, and migration, but also storytelling itself. It challenges, even confronts, the white, Western standard of what a novel is and should do, and is a book worth studying.
Lech by Sara Lippmann
Lech is a Jewish gothic-esque novel that explores our predatory nature and asks how we break free of the things that hold us back. Set over a summer in the Catskills, the novel follows five characters all trying to move on. The characters are linked by location, so some are neighbors, friends, or strangers to one another. Written with Lippmann’s trademark wit and razor sharp prose, Lech is smart, funny, and poignant. If you’ve never read Lippmann’s work, you’re in for a treat because she is a singular voice and anything she writes is worth reading. (And oh hey, her second novel is out this month—not a debut or multiple POV novel, but I’ll end this list with a plug for Hidden River, anyway.)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: RACHEL LEÓN has worked in the foster care system for nearly two decades. She serves as managing director for the Chicago Review of Books and fiction director for Arcturus. Her work has appeared in Catapult, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Foglifter, Publishers Weekly, and elsewhere. She hails from Rockford, Illinois, and is the editor of The Rockford Anthology.