I read a lot this year, thanks to the Libby app and my very-abused Kindle. Some were library recommendations, lots came from Goodreads (boo) and Storygraph (yay). Some came from friends, some I just picked because there was a dog on the cover or the description mentioned Chicago or Nashville. I HAVE MY REASONS (by which I mean, there is no sound logic to my book choices, just vibes).
Anyway, here are my Top 5 reads this year:
- Light From Uncommon Stars Ryka Aoki
- The Broken Earth Trilogy N.K. Jemisin
- In The Lives of Puppets TJ Klune
- An Absolutely Remarkable Thing Hank Green
- 17776 Jon Bois, et al
And here are little mini-reviews of every book I read this year in chronological-ish order:
Small Gods
Terry Pratchett
I feel like starting this list by trashing a classic will make eight of the nine people who might look at this list leave immediately, but… I can’t count the amount of times Pratchett’s books have been recommended to me, and I finally decided to give one a shot. I picked Small Gods because I got it for free (inarguable reasoning). There are parts of this story that really, really stuck with me. But it felt really abstract and dragged in a way that didn’t jive with me. I’m just not sold on the genius of Pratchett. I’ll probably give another book of his a try before rendering a final verdict, if nothing else to delay my tarring and feathering by his fanbase.
CW: death, torture, violence(potential spoilers, hover to view)
Walking In Circles Before Lying Down
Merill Markoe
A cheeky, crass, and fun little novel that doesn’t take itself too seriously. If you love dogs and were a miserable, directionless piece of shit in your 20s like I was, you’ll probably enjoy this book, too.
CW: pet death
Bacchanal
Veronica G. Henry
A dark, fun, underdog hero story set in a traveling circus. Henry builds a gorgeous and disturbing world inside of American history. Some characters felt like they deserved a little more development (or motivation exploration), but overall an engaging adventure with some brilliant imagery.
CW: fantasy violence, gore, animal death
Monarch
Candice Wuehle
A wild and mind-fucky espionage adventure that starts with child beauty pageants. Borders on verbose at times, but it suits the character’s narrative. The story itself felt a little rushed, but the character development was great. I enjoyed this one a lot.
CW: abuse, graphic violence
Yerba Beuna
Nina LaCour
A warm romantic story tinged with darkness. Ultimately, though, the story has a positive tone in the face of tragedy, emphasizing emotional survival and delving deeply into full, lovable characters.
CW: drug use, sexual assault, loss
Nothing to See Here
Kevin Wilson
A fun concept with some witty prose (the main character becomes a nanny for children who spontaneously combust), but ultimately this one fell flat for me. The story is weak and the characters are weaker. It’s a shame, because I liked the author’s writing style.
Starter Villain
John Scalzi
This book was fun as fuck from start to finish. The borderline-unlikable main character becomes likable specifically because he’s self aware in that he’s borderline-unlikable. He inherits his uncle’s villain business in a narrative that reads like it belongs in the Kick Ass movie franchise. I laughed out loud several times while reading this (just ask everyone else in the tour van).
CW: violence
Salt Houses
Hala Alyan
I picked this up from a list of books by Palestinian authors and I’m very glad I did. The narrative jumps through time, sticking with the perspective of a single character (of many) per chapter. It spans several generations of a Palestinian family and focuses on their intimate bonds amidst the changing landscape of the Middle East over several decades. It is a tough read emotionally, but a beautifully written book.
CW: death, war, sexual assault
Legends & Lattes
Travis Balder
I fucking hated this book.
CW: it’s a bad book
In The Lives of Puppets
TJ Klune
I’m writing this in October and I’m solidly convinced that this will remain my favorite read of the year. It’s a stunning story that develops in the strangest ways. It’s somewhere between sci fi and fantasy, and it explores different kinds of love in ways that make you genuinely hopeful for the world. Klune’s prose is outstanding and his characters jump off the page. I cannot recommend this one enough and I refuse to tell you more about it because it’s just too much fun to go in blind.
CW: violence
Starling House
Alix E. Harrow
A romantic dark fantasy with fantastic world building. I did not expect to enjoy this one as much as I did. An adult orphan-turned-caretaker of her teenage brother becomes transfixed by and involved with her small town’s haunted mansion. The story is a well-paced dark fairytale on its surface, but it expertly weaves in threads of anticapitalism and civil rights to ground it in the present day.
CW: graphic fantasy violence
Redshirts
John Scalzi
As a Star Trek obsessive who loved Scalzi’s latest (Starter Villain, above), I picked this up while waiting on library holds to come through. It was disappointing. It just didn’t grab me at all. The sci fi references felt more like forced explanations of lukewarm fanfic concepts, and the characters never really got their footing.
Light From Uncommon Stars
Ryka Aoki
If any book on this year’s list were to challenge In The Lives of Puppets, it would be this one. It’s a story about a young trans woman trying to sort out her place in the world. What starts out as a music-focused coming-of-age novel quickly evolves into an elaborate universe with aliens and demons and doughnuts. Absolutely recommend.
CW: sexual assault, transphobia
Lo Fi
Liz Riggs
I also hated this book, but I’ll tell you why this time because this one had some redeeming qualities. The author’s writing style is poetic and engaging, and there are some “overheard conversation” passages peppered throughout the book that were really fun and added a lot the the environment. However, the main character is a spoiled, directionless 20-something who mixes benzos and binge drinking like there’s no tomorrow. She learns no lessons as she flits through life being handed opportunity after opportunity, and the story ends as she takes the tiniest little bitch step towards self reliance without any whim of atonement for her prior behavior. Predictability isn’t a deal breaker for me, but the absolute lack of growth as the character stumbled into exactly what I expected was taxing to read. I can handle an anti-hero, but this character was just a drag the whole way through. That said, I’d give something else from this author a shot solely because of her prose.
CW: drug abuse, alcohol abuse, animal death
Project Auden: The Roanoake Resistance
Mason Carlisle
I met this author via Tiktok and picked up her latest release. It’s a slowly unravelling post-apocalyptic political intrigue story, so right up my alley. The storytelling is great, and the worldbuilding is dark and ominous. It could use a little editing, but it’s still an engrossing start to what I’m sure will be a fun and twisted story arc when the other books are published.
CW: violence
Remote Control
Nnedi Okorafor
I read most of this while working merch for Genevieve at 3rd and Lindsley – it’s that short. Which effectively means you have no excuse not to read it. It’s an astoundingly well-told story for its length, following a young girl who seems to exist in a state that can touch both life and death. Okorafor’s storytelling disseminates information in a way that not only builds her environment with vivid imagery, but makes it feel as familiar as a fairy tale you’ve heard a thousand times. Read it.
CW: death, violence, pet death
The Woman In Me
Britney Spears
Given my birth year, I feel like I was contractually obligated to read this memoir. Spears’s life was darker and stranger than I had ever imagined, and at times it made me actively angry to keep reading. Whether or not you’re a fan of her music, this is a worthwhile time investment for anyone who is curious about the state of feminism, conservatorship, or pop music.
CW: abuse, forced abortion
Tell the Wolves I’m Home
Carol Rifka Brunt
This is another book I only picked up because I was between library holds, but I ended up absolutely adoring it. It’s another coming-of-age story set in the 1980s; a teen girl loses her beloved uncle at the height of the AIDS epidemic and learns to navigate that grief. It is peculiar and unexpected and tragic, but utterly engrossing. Nothing about the character or the plot had a personal relevance or resonance for me, but I could hardly put it down — a testament to the quality of the storytelling. I’m very excited to read more from this author.
CW: death, loss, AIDS
I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself
Marisa Crane
I’m a sucker for future-dystopian sci fi settings. The story centers around a young widow raising her late wife’s newborn in a surveillance state where criminals are tagged with an extra shadow to identify them, and thus treated as second-class citizens by single-shadowed civilians and enforcement officers. It’s equally funny and heartbreaking, and very Millennial-coded.
CW: violence
No One Is Talking About This
Patricia Lockwood
I don’t think I’m ‘online’ enough to have truly enjoyed this book, which baffles me because I spend every free moment staring at a glowing screen. The opening reads like satirical poetry; flowery readings of memes and references to Twitter prior to the Apartheid Clyde takeover. It’s amusing (and probably more amusing to folks who were deeper into the Twitterverse than I ever was), but the narrative itself is served up in bits and pieces and exceptionally difficult to follow until the halfway point. After that, though: whoa. It’s a hefty dose of emotion, tragedy, and reinventing one’s perspective. Lockwood’s writing is compelling, to say the least.
CW: child death
Marrying the Ketchups
Jennifer Close
I told my book club Discord friends that I feel like this book was written at me. I can’t even count the amount of niche settings, personality traits, career choices, and familial dynamics that resonated so deeply. It’s difficult to tell if I loved it so much because of its direct-to-me relatability, but it’s a really fun family drama regardless. It’s quirky and passionate and grounding. The characters are well established and the tension between them is so thoroughly outlined that you sometimes feel like you’re just eavesdropping on the booth next to yours at dinner. I will enthusiastically recommend it with the caveat that my opinion may be biased due to my cover-band-turned-restaurant career and my hometown.
CW: sexual assault
The Last Gifts of the Universe
Riley August
This is the kind of book I would hand to someone who says they don’t like scifi to trick them into liking scifi. It’s accessible, charming, and exciting while still being a poignant statement on humanity. A great cozy afternoon story when you’re looking for a comfort read that actually has some substance.
The Fifth Season / The Obelisk Gate / The Stone Sky
(Broken Earth Trilogy)
N.K. Jemisin
Preface: I am about a decade late to the party on this series and I am offended that no one recommended these books to me sooner. They were a Storygraph algorithm suggestion, which means I am disappointed in all of you and will remain so indefinitely.
The Broken Earth Trilogy is beautiful in a way that makes me hope no one ever options a movie, because no visuals will do justice to the world and characters Jemisin has constructed with her prose. It is a brutal and unforgiving universe, albeit with paths of hope and blind determination carved through it. Each book has its own distinct flavor and vibe, making the new hunk of story feel fresh even though you’re clamoring for a conclusion to the last one’s cliffhanger. If you dig dystopian scifi but have a soft spot for fantasy like I do, you will love these books.
CW: violence, sexual assault, child death
The House in the Cerulean Sea
TJ Klune
In The Lives of Puppets by Klune was one of my favorite books this year, so I was thrilled when the long-ass wait list at my library dropped this hold in my lap in early December. I don’t know whether my expectations were too high, or my aversion to children made it difficult to connect with, but it’s hard to believe these two books were written by the same author.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is charming, heartwarming, and all kinds of feel-good-y. It’s also very, very flat. There’s little depth to any of the characters and the story relies heavily on the perceived cuteness of most of those characters being children in order to endear them to the reader—which is just not a thing that works on me. There’s also a strange amount of repetition to the writing that (among other elements) made me wonder a few times whether I was reading a YA/middle grade book without realizing it.
It’s not a bad book. I’m a bad audience for it.
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing / A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor
(The Carls, books 1 & 2)
Hank Green
These books read like watching an action movie, but with a dorky, apocalyptic, tech-bro-teasing giant robot in the seat next to you. I didn’t expect to be so infatuated with this story! The Carls were an unofficial book club read between some friends that I invited myself to when I was just looking for something that wouldn’t let me down like Cerulean Sea or tear me apart like the Broken Earth books…And it ended up being one of my favorite reading experiences of the year. Somehow, Green’s story with an only semi-likable narrator stole my nerdy little heart. I love Carl. I FUCKING LOVE CARL.
CW: violence, but the books kinda warn you when it gets gross, and it’s not that gross
17776
Jon Bois, Tyson Whiting, Graham MacAree
This is story is a multimedia existential crisis, and it is 1000% worth the read. It’s ostensibly about football, but as someone whose knowledge of football ranges from “that’s too much green for how hung over I am” and “at least it’s funny when the Bears lose and my asshole friends get mad about nothing,” I still found it wholly engaging. It’s unexpectedly heartfelt, witty and base at the same time, and it made me feel a little better on a dark day.
Read it here, but only when you’re ready to strap in (seriously, don’t click on the link early): https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football
Kaiju Preservation Society
John Scalzi
This book was just plain fun, It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be: a refreshing little story to help the reader escape the doldrums of reality (despite basing a significant amount of its humor on unpleasant aspects of that reality). It’s short, the dialogue is punchy, there’s a healthy dose of explained-for-the-layman science, and the characters are charming and diverse (I don’t believe the first-person narrator is ever even gendered, which I thought was really cool).
CW: violence
Under The Whispering Door
TJ Klune
This book made me cry. This book is a jerk. It’s also a really lovely story about grief, loss, and finding oneself. A great read, a little predictable, a little deus ex machina, but ultimately just a super enjoyable character exploration with some fantastic imagery. It also made me want to drink tea. Like, a lot.
CW: death, loss, grief, suicide