I may be getting married now so wedding content is taking up most of my time but I haven't forgotten my roots and I figured I'd pop back on with a new reading recap - I haven't been reading a ton lately but in honour of National Book Lovers Day here are a few that I've particularly enjoyed lately (in the last year or so).
Last year when I did my full wrap-up of all the books I read I had read 23 books but this year I practically doubled my reading total to 43 so I figured that may be a little TOO many but then I thought, no actually let's do this! I'm not sure if you signed up for a quick-fire guide through my 2024 reading but strap in anyway.
(I also read Notes on Love by Lauren Windle but it's not included in this ranking because it felt weird ranking it along with the rest of my fiction reads.)
As you start it may appear that I don't like anything but as you go on you'll find out that I genuinely did enjoy a vast majority of the books I read this year. My average rating was 3.85 so in general a fairly positive year.
I use Storygraph to put this list together. I'm a stats girl so I love knowing all the breakdowns of genre and ratings. Not an ad I just love Storygraph! My top genres were Literary Fiction, Romance and Contemporary a far cry from my usual Fantasy and Historical comfort zone but as I clearly had quite a successful year maybe this is testament to stepping outside your reading comfort zone every so often, you might discover something new.
Trisha and Ethan are newly-weds looking to buy a house and they think they've found the perfect one however it turns out to be the house of world-renowned psychologist Dr Adrienne Hale who mysteriously disappeared a few years ago. They find themselves stuck in a snowstorm and end up taking refuge at the house where Trisha discovers tapes of all of Adrienne's clients and as she listens slowly uncovers the mystery of what happened to her on the day she disappeared.
Now, let me start off by saying that I don't usually read a lot of thrillers so this was already a little bit out of my comfort zone but even at that, this is actively one of the worst books I've ever read. I don't want to say too much without giving spoilers because that's the point of a mystery/thriller but I felt myself actively losing brain cells with every minute that I listened to the audiobook. The big twist that everyone raves about was so left field it wasn't even a plot twist it was a completely new plot. I actually had a great time hating this book though but effectively I gave it one star.
While on an expedition to the Amazon rainforest, three American explorers stumble across the country of Herland, a nation composed of only women, not a man in sight. How has this nation come to exist and how is it thriving in ways that seem inconceivable to the Western mind.
This just read a little too instructional manual academia for me. I didn't care about the plot and it bordered a little on feminist preachy for my personal tastes.
Alice moves from her comfortable English hometown when she meets and marries the handsome Bennet Van Cleeve and finds herself in Kentucky. After a difficult first few months of marriage and struggle to assimilate with American culture she finds herself working for the library, delivering books to people living in the remote areas of rural Kentucky by horseback.
Again, maybe I'm the problem because every time I read a book that is marketed as feminist literature I just don't like it. This book specifically painted every woman as a saint while almost all the men were terrible when it just isn't that black and white. I hated the depiction of asexuality as villainous and wrong. I know I'm in the minority here because everyone else in my book club really liked it.
Three generations of women all suffering abuse at the hands of men harness the power of the natural world to overcome adversity and societal norms. Altha in 1619 on trial for witchcraft and murder, Violet in 1942 trapped in her family's estate, and Kate in 2019, pregnant and fleeing her partner all finding themselves one way or another at Weyward Cottage.
If you know me, you know that I typically love a historical fantasy so the blend of witchcraft with entwining generations and historical periods should have been right up my street. However this one didn't hit for me, I felt it bordered on trauma porn (stay tuned for more of that) where it was just a case of how many terrible things can the author make happen to one person before it's excessive. This can maybe get away with it because it's a dark story but the fantastical elements ended up embellishing trauma rather than adding anything to the story.
After a traumatic experience, Meredith hasn't left her house in three years. She has a job, she has friends, she has a cat. Yet as new people come into her life she finds the appeal of outside more and more tempting.
In a similar vein to the last one, it verged too close to trauma porn that I just didn't have a nice time reading it. It was just a backstory of terrible thing after terrible thing. It's marketed as uplifting but I just found it depressing and unrealistic, unfortunately. Again the book club girls all seemed to enjoy it so maybe I am the problem but just not my cup of tea.
It's New York CIty in the year 2000, a city thriving with life and opportunity. Done with life the unnamed narrator attempts to hibernate for a year to escape life and just exist.
This is the holy grail of weird lit and I fear it was a little too weird for me. Don't get me wrong I had an interesting time with it and it's one I think about a lot (and the ending shocked me) but I don't actually think I enjoyed it.
Irina is a photographer who specialises in erotica and specifically subverts gender expectations to take compromising photos of average-looking men. She is offered the chance to exhibit her work at a high-end gallery in London but what should be kickstarting her career leads to a self-destructive tailspin which doesn't only affect her.
I also read Penance by Eliza Clark this year (stay tuned to see where it placed) so I was eager to read some more of her work and ended up reading this one for a book club. There was a big divide between people who loved and people who hated but I probably fall somewhere in the middle. I typically enjoy weird lit. Something about Eliza Clark books make me feel like I have never had an original experience yet this is so far from my life. Interesting that the differences between you and the worst person alive are so minuscule.
Our narrator finds herself in a cage with thirty other women who are guarded morning, noon, and night by a series of guards until one day when an alarm goes off and all of the guards disappear and the cage is left open and they escape to discover what the world has to offer but what they find is not the world they remember.
This is a book I've been planning on reading for the longest time, I have it on Kindle, I have it on Audible yet I finally read it in a physical copy I picked up from the airport on my way to Paris. I think because this one was so anticipated for me I just wanted and expected a little more from it than what it actually was.
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I listened to this one on audiobook while I was working one day. So I kind of have no overwhelming feelings either way. I think I enjoyed the lore within the story more than I can remember the actual story.
Robin Swift is adopted from his native Canton by a mysterious professor from Oxford University who trains him in the art of translation in preparation to study at the prestigious Babel Institute. Within the walls of Babel they use translation to enchant silver, and enchanted silver is fuelling the British Empire.
This book was my Mount Everest. I've attempted to read it three years in a row now and this year was finally the time I got it finished and I couldn't even tell you if it was worth it.
One day Gregor Samsa awakes to find that he's been transformed into a giant insect which impacts his own abilities as well as the lives of those around him.
I only read this because I was going to see a production of it and wanted to familiarise myself with the story. A really great surrealist interpretation of the struggles of overwork, stress, and anxiety eating away at your person.
As the First World War escalates two young British students sign up for the army as they witness the horrors that they and their classmates are facing, they write. An epic tale about the devastating effects of war and the relationships that bloom despite it.
I have conflicting feelings on this. The prose was stunning which can cover a multitude of sins for me. I think I expected to like it more because I'd heard so many people rave about it.
Ove is a curmudgeonly old man who is fed up with life yet the arrival of a new family into the block they reinstate a lease of life into him as he lets them into his life. Which will change one cranky old man and a local residents' association to their very foundations.
Hear me out, I know this is a beloved book that all the people love but it just didn't hit for me. I think the first thing for me was that Ove is depicted as this old man but he's literally younger than my dad and I just don't think he's old enough to be acting like this. I also feel like the backstory didn't explain why he was cranky, I understand why but I don't think there was any real development he was just always like that. I notoriously also have issues with enigmatic characters, of which Ove is the opposite but fulfills the same role. I've heard that it's better in audio so maybe that was the problem.
After the death of their father, sisters Isla, Irene, and Agnes reunite in their grief in this speculative and sapphic King Lear retelling set against the backdrop of a drowning world.
One thing about me I will eat up a Shakespeare retelling and this one had so much promise and started out so well but I just felt it lost its way a little as the story progressed.
After becoming overworked at her job that results in her trying to join a convent and running headfirst into a wall, Sasha takes a break at the seaside resort she adored growing up in a bid to unplug and ends up at a dilapidated hotel with a host of interesting characters propping it up. There she meets Finn who is also fleeing from overwork and stress and the two bond as they trade childhood stories
I had low expectations going into this one but I ended up having a great time with it. It's very funny, which for a rom-com is essential and the characters are all lovable which helps. I had a few problems with aspects of the plot but in general just a much better time than I was anticipating - trust me everyone in book club was shocked that I liked it.
After a virus wipes out the animal population the government allow legal consumption of human meat. We follow Marcos, a butcher, who is tasked with slaughtering the 'specimens' for consumption he ends up a guardian of a female, one he cannot seem to kill.
This book is harrowing, far-fetched but all too plausible. So much left me feeling so uncomfortable but painted with hope only to tear it away again. Why did I decide that reading dystopians while the world is already bleak enough was a good idea!
When Lauren comes home one night and discovers a mysterious man in her flat claiming to be her husband she realises that her attic had begun generating a stream of Husbands. But when you can change husband as easily as you can change a light bulb how do you know when you've found the right one
This was so fun! Such an interesting concept I'm such a sucker for mild sci-fi/fantasy elements so naturally this was right up my street (I've also had a ridiculous amount of fun with the husband generator like top-tier book promotion right there!!!) I loved imagining how I would have reacted in Lauren's situation and what traits I would be looking for in my mysterious husbands. It actually ended in a different direction than I was anticipating which was nice actually because I always like being a little surprised - especially for a premise that could verge on repetitive.
When Miri's wife Leah returns from a deep sea mission, she returns different. What was originally a short mission only meant to last a few days, turned into months. As they both come to terms with what their new reality brings Miri reflects on their relationship and Leah remembers the sea.
I listened to this one on audiobook which I think added to the eerieness and the vibes. It's very introspective with not a huge amount of plot but the pacing and dual narrative keeps you interested and the vibes are immaculate.
A collection of misfits meet every night in the local cemetery to smoke together when one night they discover a new grave. They go their separate ways they trail the gravedigger they discover that he's the key to a string of strange happenings around town that have made headlines for the last few weeks—and that they may be closer to the mystery than they thought.
This feels too high for this because it was essentially a plotless novella but I had a good time with it. Sometimes I think it can be easier to rate novellas well because there's less time for something to annoy you.
The unnamed narrator of this novel works for the Ministry of Time where she becomes a bridge for Victorian explorer Commander Graham Gore as he becomes an expat to the modern world and helps him acclimate to 21st-century London. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be, at best, a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper.
I had a great time with this one. I think this is a case where I maybe may have enjoyed it more if I read it physically rather than on audiobook. Such a fun concept and executed really well. It's an amalgamation of a few different genres which also added to the fun.
A short story collection focused around women's bodies swinging from topics like bodily autonomy and eating disorders to the infamous Law and Order SVU fanfiction. Eight stories showing the realities of women's lives and the violence visited upon their bodies.
I fell down a little horror rabbit hole this year! It's hard to sum up a short story collection but some of these worked better for me than others but in general I was a big fan!
Effie is the only female architecture student at the University of Llyr and when she wins a commission to design the house of her favourite author but when she arrives she uncovers that the house is hiding secrets, the truth behind her favourite book may not be as she always thought, and the mysterious Fairy King isn't just a tale from her stories.
This wasn't what I was expecting, and not necessarily in a bad way. I love the way Ava Reid weaves her own folklore so intrinsically within a plot I believe it. The romance subplot carried this for me though. This is a YA book and it read a little too YA for me to fully immerse myself in and I found Effy very annoying at times with her indecision.
In a war between Gods, there are two sides and as the war escalates Iris and Roman find themselves separated, the only thing connecting them is their typewriters, mysteriously linked and able to send each other letters.
It's always hard to describe sequels without ruining the plot of the first book for anyone who hasn't read it yet. If you, like me, are a letter fan, you will eat this duology up. I preferred Divine Rivals a bit more, mainly because there was more letters and more pining while this one was more politics and war (but the letters and pining we did get... Oh boy).
When Laura Iven receives word that her brother Freddie has been killed in action but no records of his death are found she's sure that something is amiss so she heads of the the front to serve as a nurse to see if anyone knows what happened to her brother. Meanwhile, a mysterious violin-playing man has been spotted near the trenches who possibly has something to do with her brother's disappearance.
Arguably the prettiest book I own. I think I ultimately wanted to feel a bit more from it because it has of the elements that should have made it a perfect fit for me. I loved the stuff with Freddie a lot more than the rest and I would have read a whole book from his perspective. Big Hozier vibes though if you love Unreal/Unearth you'll eat this up.
Icarus is the son of an art restorer but recently he's not been restoring art, he's been forging it. Tasked with stealing the originals and replacing them with the forgeries Icarus is an expert at getting himself in and out of places without being noticed, that is until, on one mission, he meets a boy called Helios.
This made me sob, on the surface it's a contemporary greek myth retelling heist story but underneath it's such a poignant story about the importance of friendship and looking after each other and it's just so sweet and tender and I highly recommend.
Stella owns a Christmas tree farm and in a bid to make it a romantic hot spot she enlists the help of best friend Luka to pretend to be her boyfriend for a week but the lines between reality and fiction start to blur as nine years of friendship starts to develop into something more.
All realms of literary criticism go out the window when I'm reading a swoony steamy romance that makes me giggle and kick my little feet what can I say. This was my fun little festive read for book club and oh boy what a joyous festive time was had. Absolutely not a piece of groundbreaking literature but genuinely enjoyable which I've actually struggled to say for many books this year.
When Josie and Alix meet by chance at a restaurant they discover that they are birthday twins. Alix is a podcaster, famous for interviewing successful women and Josie decides that she should be her next project. The two women spend lots of time together getting to know each other and recording Josie's story but Josie is hiding secrets and maybe she's not quite who she says she is but Alix is already in too deep to get out now.
This was a book club book that I definitely wouldn't have picked up if not for that because as I've mentioned, I'm not big on thrillers, but I actually really enjoyed this one. I'm a big fan of mixed media so giving me morsels of podcast to feed on worked wonders. I imagine this one would work great in audio too.
Riley spends a summer in New York with childhood best friend Tom where they complete a to-do list of sorts, everything Riley wanted to do in New York City in just one summer. They and their ragtag group of friends spend all their time trying to complete this list while falling in love with New York and maybe with each other.
I love an Emma Lord friends-to-lovers romance, it's just engrained in my DNA. Begin Again was one of my favourite books I read last year so naturally I'm going to pick up anything she writes. This was such a cute summer adventure, found family story.
After a faerie attempts to steal Theodora Ettings as a child she has been left with only half a soul. A chance run in with the Lord Sorcier they work together to try and regain Dora's other half from the faerie realm while also navigating the obligations of the London season with meddlesome marriage-minded mothers involved.
This was such a romp, so fast-paced and easy to read and also so swoony. I devoured it in pretty much one sitting. I've mentioned before that I love a historical fantasy and that usually doesn't come in the form of faeries but it's actually quite a minor aspect of the plot that I think it worked for me. If you enjoyed the Once Upon a Broken Heart series I think you would eat this up.
Signa Farrow has been haunted by death for her entire life, everywhere she goes death seems to follow. Guardian after guardian struck down by some mysterious ailment leaving her to fight on her own. When her distant relatives the Hawthornes invite her to stay at their house she is adamant that this time death will not follow in her wake. Yet she arrives in the aftermath of her aunt's death and her cousin is already on the edge and making an alliance with death could be the only thing that can save her.
Another regency-era fantasy romance, do I have a type? I think I liked this one a little more than half a soul because it was a little darker and had a bit more depth. Also very interested in picking up the sequels. I also read this one while I was in Madrid and a girl took a candid photo of me reading it in Retiro Park so it holds happy memories.
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Big Daddy Pollitt, owner of the largest cotton plantation in the Mississippi Delta, is celebrating his 65th birthday. His two sons Gooper and Brick return. As the hot summer evening unfolds, the veneer of happy family life and Southern gentility gradually slips away as unpleasant truths emerge and greed, lies, jealousy and suppressed sexuality threaten to reach boiling point.
As I didn't study English Literature for A Level I was unfamiliar with the works of Tennessee Williams, I knew of them but I'd never read them, that changed this year and evidently, you will see that he has so quickly become one of my favourite writers of all time. I cried reading the lighting directions for this play. I find myself reading every line, every nuance of the stage direction because the setting is as important as the prose and what's not said is as important as what is said My copy also opened with his essay "Person to Person" and it was such an inspired choice. I immediately went to Personality Database and looked up his MBTI because I just knew it would be the same as mine!
Following the death of their father siblings Peter and Ivan find themselves in an interim period and are channelling their grief in different ways. Peter a lawyer is succesful but struggling to manage his sleep and torn between his affections for two women, childhood sweetheart Sylvia and college student Naomi. Meanwhile his younger brother, chess prodigy Ivan, is running away to Wicklow every weekend to spend it with an older woman he met while participating in a chess event there. As life moves on in their father's absence how will it affect them and those around them?
I've actually never read a Sally Rooney book before (I know) but I think this was the perfect one to start with for me. There's something so unique and specific about the Irish tone of voice that even if you didn’t know Sally Rooney was Irish, you would know from reading her prose and I think that as an Irish reader, there’s something warm and comforting about that, kind of like home.
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At an elite Shakespeare conservatory the students find their lives blending with the lives of the characters in the plays they know so well. When one of their classmates is found dead it's up to them to convince the police, the rest of their student body and even themselves that they are blameless.
I'm notoriously not really a dark academia girly which may seem surprising if you know me but this one was in fact right up my street. I lived and breathed Shakespeare as a child, his stories and his prose and so much of this story is told through the words of Shakespeare. An entertaining and intriguing plot that will keep you guessing.
When a teenage girl is horrifically murdered in a seaside town and the culprits are also teenage girls it's a surefire hit with true crime afficionados and a decade later in an attempt to revive his career, journalist Alec Z Carelli is setting out to publish the definitive account of the murder, from the mouths of those closest to the case, even from the killers themselves. But how much of it is really true and ethically can it be trusted?
As someone who notoriously doesn’t generally enjoy crime fiction and doesn’t consume true crime, it’s maybe odd how much I enjoyed this. I think part of it is that I can picture the exact moment that this book is set because I lived in this era - I was a teenager with a Tumblr blog at this exact moment in time. So much of this was my lived experience yet so much was also not. Gave me A LOT to think about (hence why I'm not a true crime girly let's be real).
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Alive in the afterlife the unnamed heroine of this novel traverses the world in search of meaning and longing. She can't remember her name but she remembers that there was a place she felt home and how even when everything else is dying - love remains.
Can a zombie book be beautiful? Yes, it can as evidenced here. Prose Prose Prose. Short but packs such a punch and contains so much hope and light in such a desolate world. Again I was clearly vibing with the short books this year.
A collection of short horror stories about the female form, mostly during apocalypses of different kinds grouped into the categories of Eyes (beauty), Guts (food), Throat (speech) and Bones (bodies).
I devoured these pretty much in one sitting. Each story was so unique and I was equally captivated by almost all of them. The first story 'What Would You Do For A Treat Like Me" was such a strong opener it consumed my thoughts and really made me want to read on to see what else this author could come up with and it was just hit after hit after hit. Again maybe it's just the resonance of the Irish tone of voice that I find comforting but I just found this whole collection so cosy even if it was a little unsettling at times.
Blanche du Bois is a southern belle running from her past and finds herself in New Orleans with her sister Stella and her husband Stanley. While staying with them the past she's running from is unlocked and her mental health steadily deteriorates into madness.
Oh look, more Tennessee Williams! I had such a visceral reaction to this play after I finished reading it that I immediately screamed at the group chat and anyone who would listen that I felt cheated that I hadn't picked this up sooner and that nobody had taken me to the side and said "Alice, read this". Actually in writing this post it's climbed its way all the way to these lofty heights because now that I'm looking back on things, I can't stop thinking about it again.
Daphne and Peter were the perfect couple, that is until they break up after Peter realises that he's in love with his childhood best friend Petra. With nowhere else to go Daphne moves in with Miles Nowak who just so happens to be Petra's ex. When their invites to the wedding arrive they decide the only logical thing to do is to fake date each other to make their exes jealous but as their summer of adventure escalates so do their feelings for each other.
Miss Emily Henry never misses. This is possibly my favourite of hers yet. I felt very seen in Daphne as the main character and Miles was such a fun love interest. Genuinely just had such a good time with this one. I was a little disappointed with Happy Place when I read it last year and I'm so glad that this one has returned to its rightful place atop my ranking.
In this gothic retelling of The Juniper Tree, Marlinchen lives with her two older sisters and her father in a dilapidated house on the edge of the kingdom where her father, the last remaining magician in the country, solicits business from the locals who require his help and each of his three daughters with different skills assist him in his business. One night the girls sneak out and Marlinchen discovers a whole new world outside the confines of their ancestral home including a certain dancer from the new ballet theatre who captures her heart. But the threat of her father's wrath and the pull of this new life could tear her in two as she discovers that her family are harbouring more secrets than she could imagine.
I loved everything about this, the twists, the trysts, the folklore, the steady thrum of dread that laced its pages. It even inspired me to go watch a production of The Juniper Tree at the local opera. Be wary of trigger warnings for this one though because it's very graphic and very heavy on the gothic horror side of fantasy fiction but at the same time so beautiful.
Andy is the boss's son and Nick is a rambunctious reporter eager to make a mark on society but when Andy's relationship breaks down he moves into Nick's Brooklyn apartment to get a new lease on life and perhaps discover some new things about himself along the way, including his true feelings towards Nick.
I was truly giggling and kicking my little feet the entire way through this book. I listened to it on audiobook and I love it when a book is so good that all you want to do is continue to listen to it, to spend a little more time in that world. I felt so seen in the character of Andy in so many ways and this is a stunning and poignant portrayal of taking risks and learning to live and love. OBSESSED.
As someone who didn't overly enjoy Six of Crows, I was going into this one wary but excited but ultimately there has never been a book as fundamentally 'for me' as this one. This actually has very mixed reviews and I know a lot of people didn't particularly vibe with it but that's the fun about literature being subjective and different people enjoying different things. It's possibly my lack of loyalty to the Grishaverse that made this such a hit for me because I didn't have preconceived notions of what a Leigh Bardugo book should look like.
As Amanda Whigfield reflects on her youth at Blue Mountain and the string of gentleman callers she recieved, her son Tom dreams of running away. He's tired of the mundane life of the factory he works in to provide for his family. His father has moved away so he's left to provide for his mother and sister Laura. Laura is anxious and reclusive and suffered ill-health as a child. In order for her to have a semblance of a life, she'll need to marry so to earn his freedom Tom is tasked with setting up a visit from a gentleman caller to look after Laura.
It may strike as odd that this one should be my favourite, but it was my first, and I think there's an element of love of discovery at play. This is the play that made me enamoured by Tennessee William's words. I also saw a production of this play this year, which absolutely floored me, and I didn't stop thinking about it for days. Tennessee Williams wrote in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof "some mystery should always be left in the revelation of a character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one's own character to himself." I think there's something so special about finding yourself in words that someone wrote 80 years ago that resonate so clearly today.
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Phew... that seemed like a good idea at the time! What was your favourite book you read this year and what's top of your TBR for next year? You can also follow me on Goodreads, Storygraph and Fable to keep up to date with what I'm reading during the year.
I mentioned in my last post that I didn't read as much this year as in some other years. Also since I haven't posted on here in over a year, you're also unaware of what I did read since I last told you about The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley which I read back in August 2022!
I thought in order to rectify that I would do a whistlestop tour through the 24 books that I read in 2023 ranked in order of my least favourite to my favourite. Who knows, maybe you'll find something to pick up this year. I also reread The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by VE Schwab this year for a book club which is one of my all-time favourite books but I didn't want to include it in this list but just know that she's still perched nicely at the top.
I used The Storygraph to help me with this list - it's my favourite way to keep track of the books I read each year (you can follow me here).
I've been reading for a long time and only recently have I realised that my favourite genre is Historical Urban Fantasy. If you're unfamiliar with the genre it's generally just a piece of historical fiction with a few fantastical elements thrown in to add some spice. It is the perfect genre for this season as we enter the colder months. These are especially great if you're not a big fantasy reader but want something a little magical. That's why I've created this list with some of my absolute favourites. Some of these also happen to be my favourite novels of all time but I would honestly recommend any of them.
