Love Lies Earns a Top 3 Placement at the 2026 CANREADS Book Awards
Joelle Habbaki’s standalone romantic suspense was recognized among the Top 3 titles in the Romance category at the inaugural CANREADS Book Awards, celebrated at Storys Building in downtown Toronto.
Some milestones happen quietly. Others arrive in a room full of writers, readers, publishers, cameras, conversation—and the unmistakable feeling that a book has travelled beyond the private space where it was first imagined.
For Love Lies, that moment came in Toronto on May 28, 2026, when the novel by Lebanese-Canadian independent author Joelle Habbaki was recognized with a Top 3 placement in the Romance category at the inaugural CANREADS Book Awards. The distinction did not make Love Lies the category winner; it placed the book among the three finalists recognized at the event.
That context matters. CANREADS reported receiving more than 400 submissions from across Canada in its inaugural awards year. For a book published independently through Resilient Heart Press, being selected among the final Romance titles marked a meaningful point in its journey from manuscript to published novel to recognized work.
A book, a name, a place among the finalists.
For an author, an award announcement can begin as a line of text on a screen. A title appears. A category is named. The news is shared. But recognition changes character when it becomes physical: a room, a stage, an audience, a photograph, a moment that can be remembered rather than merely read.
Habbaki arrived at the CANREADS Awards as the author of Love Lies, a contemporary romantic suspense novel built around betrayal, attraction, legal pressure and the uneasy question of how much trust can survive when the stakes keep rising.
The Top 3 placement also sits within a larger creative path. Habbaki writes and publishes through Resilient Heart Press, developing stories designed to move between emotional intimacy and high-stakes tension. With Love Lies, that balance became part of the book’s identity—and part of what carried it into the 2026 Romance finalists.
Where the literary world stepped off the page.
The inaugural awards brought books into conversation with the people behind them. Authors, reviewers, publishers, industry professionals and readers gathered under one roof.
The setting was Storys Building at 11 Duncan Street in downtown Toronto. The venue in the heart of the Entertainment District, and its exposed brick, timber beams, windows and layered event spaces gave the evening a character that felt unusually well suited to a celebration of storytelling. It was not a neutral conference room. It felt like a place with a story of its own.
That atmosphere mattered. Awards are, by definition, about results, but the evening around the results creates a different kind of value: authors meeting authors, readers discovering books, conversations beginning before the ceremony and continuing after it. For a new Canadian literary event, the room itself became part of the memory.
