Congratulations to the five finalists from British Columbia who made it onto the CBC Canada Reads 2026 longlist!
Now celebrating its 25th year, Canada Reads is the much-anticipated annual book debate where five Canadian celebrities each champion one book they believe all Canadians should read. Over four days, they debate and vote to eliminate one book per day until only one remains: the winner.
This year’s contenders from B.C. range from darkly funny thrillers about identity and fame, to sweeping wartime love stories, dystopian struggles for freedom, chilling tales of intergenerational trauma, and haunting explorations of family and belonging.
The debate will air April 13–16 on CBC TV, CBC Radio, CBC Listen, CBC Gem, and CBC Books. It will also stream on YouTube and be available as a podcast.
The five panellists and the books they chose were revealed on January 22, with two books from B.C. making it onto the shortlist. A Minor Chorus by Billy Ray Belcourt is championed by filmmaker and actor Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, while The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor is championed by musician and writer Tegan Quin.
Read on to discover the five books from B.C. that made the longlist.
A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt *Shortlisted
An unnamed narrator abandons his unfinished thesis and returns to northern Alberta in search of what eludes him: the shape of the novel he yearns to write, an autobiography of his rural hometown, the answers to existential questions about family, love, and happiness. What ensues is a series of conversations, connections, and disconnections that reveals the texture of life in a town literature has left unexplored, where the friction between possibility and constraint provides an insistent background score.
Populated by characters as alive and vast as the boreal forest, and culminating in a breathtaking crescendo, A Minor Chorus is a novel about how deeply entangled the sayable and unsayable can become—and about how ordinary life, when pressed, can produce hauntingly beautiful music.
Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
Julie Chan, a supermarket cashier barely scraping by, is thrust into the glamorous yet perilous world of her late twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, a popular influencer. Separated young, the identical twins were polar opposites and rarely spoke—except for one viral video Chloe initiated (Finding My Long-Lost Twin And Buying Her A House #EMOTIONAL).
When Julie discovers Chloe’s body, she doesn’t call the police. Instead, she slips into her sister’s meticulously curated life: luxury fashion, high-end skincare, and a devoted online following who never noticed they weren’t quite the same.
Darkly funny, fiercely paced, and full of sharp commentary on identity, fame, and the cost of visibility, Julie Chan Is Dead is a twisted thrill ride where fitting in could be fatal—and the people behind the posts are the real danger.
Slice The Water by PP Wong
Born on the lush island nation of Mahana, Fred lives under the tyrannical rule of a book-burning king. Mahanians are controlled by a military dictatorship, threatened with forced starvation, and people with disabilities are exiled. After Fred’s father disappears, he joins an underground movement and becomes an unwitting global icon for Mahanian freedom. Recruited by an organization that seems sympathetic, Fred relocates to a seemingly peaceful foreign nation—only to face a new, stranger struggle shaped by social media and technology.
A dystopian thriller, speculative fiction, and coming-of-age story, Slice the Water thrums with biting staccato-like prose as Fred unpeels layers of truth, exposing the optics of altruism and the illusion of choice. Wong unpacks the amplifying impacts of technology, addiction, and complacency.
The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor *Shortlisted
Born Kathleen to an immigrant Irish farming family in southern Ontario, Kit McNair has been a troublesome changeling since, at ten, they fell through river ice and drowned—only to be revived by their mother’s Celtic magic. A daredevil in boy’s clothes, Kit longs to escape farm life. When Rebekah Kromer, an elegant doctor’s daughter, arrives in April 1939, she knows exactly who 19-year-old Kit is. Soon she, Kit, and Kit’s brother Landon are drawn into a love triangle that will tear families apart and send each on separate paths to war.
Told in the vivid voices of Kit and Rebekah, The Cure for Drowning is a powerfully engrossing novel that imagines a history truer than true.
The Hunger We Pass Down by Jen Sookfong Lee
Single mother Alice Chow is drowning. With a booming online business, a resentful teenage daughter, a screen-obsessed son, and a secret boyfriend, she can never get everything done. So when she wakes to find chores mysteriously completed, Alice feels relief—until the strange pattern continues and unease sets in.
The extra time lets her connect with her children and her hard-edged mother, who begins sharing shocking family history, starting with her great-grandmother’s imprisonment as a comfort woman in Hong Kong during WWII. But the family’s demons—real and subconscious—are about to become impossible to ignore.
Set against contemporary Vancouver, The Hunger We Pass Down is a devastating, horror-tinged novel about intergenerational trauma and what it takes to break the cycle.
Learn more about Canada Reads and discover all five pannelists and books they selected.
