Can’t Wait Wednesday: The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings to share upcoming book releases that we’re excited about! This meme is based on Waiting on Wednesday, which was created and hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine.

The Listeners is Maggie Stiefvater’s first foray into adult fiction and I am SO excited to check it out! This follows June, the manager of a luxury hotel called the Avallon, and is set during WWII. Rather than the usual wealthy guests, the Avallon is being used to hold captured Axis diplomats which as one might imagine, causes some tension amongst the people working at the hotel because they have family and friends fighting on the frontlines. The Listeners is tagged as a fantasy or magical realism book on Goodreads, but the synopsis certainly makes this sounds more like historical fiction. I suppose I’ll find out what genre it truly is when it’s released on June 3, 2025!

#1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater dazzles in this mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.

JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles.

June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. Now, though, the Gilfoyle family heir has made a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats. June must convince her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the frontlines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

She also must reckon with Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent whose coal tattoo hints at their shared past in the mountains, and whose search for the diplomats’ secrets disrupts the peace June is fighting so hard to maintain. Hers is a balancing act with dangerous consequences; the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal, and only June can manage the springs.

As dark alliances and an elusive spy crack the polished veneer of the Avallon, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.