My Year in Books

I read 71 books this year. Here's all of them and what I thought.

My Absolute Favorites

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ All Fours, Miranda July – She’s going to drive across the country but spontaneously ends up staying 20 minutes from home in a motel. She’s in perimenopause, she notices her ass doesn’t look like it once did, she falls in lust with a much younger, off-type stranger who’s married, and she takes it upon herself to create a cozy nest in a seedy roadside motel. An alternate ending. I can’t explain how absolutely gripped I was by this book. I already want to read it again. I highly recommend getting the audiobook so you can have July read this to you herself.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ North Woods, Daniel Mason – It all starts with an apple seed and then the past is present again.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt – Tova is widowed and her son mysteriously vanished, too, decades earlier. She takes the night shift cleaning the aquarium and befriends the perceptive octopus, Marcellus. Except he isn’t just an octopus. He’s special and he knows her. He has figured out the mystery of her missing son, but how does an octopus communicate with an old woman?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ LaserWriter II, Tamara Shopsin – Nostalgic! Travel back in time to NYC in the 90s where the internet is new. 19-year-old Claire works as a printer tech at a Mac repair shop. I loved this so much.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Wedding People, Alison Espach – Phoebe shows up at the inn with nothing other than the green formal dress and heels she’s wearing. This inn has been on her bucket list for years, and now she’s here for one very specific reason: her husband has left her and she doesn’t intend to go back home. The inn is the last stop. Except it isn’t. Because there’s a wedding and everyone is a guest aside from her. Lol. It’s funny but it’s also not.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Funny Story, Emily Henry – Daphne moves to a tiny town in Michigan for her evil ex. She knows no one outside his friend group, and the other scorned party: the ex-boyfriend of her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Does this improbable meet-cute deliver? Yes. What more could you possibly want?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett – Okay, shockingly this holds up. I was expecting charming nostalgia. I was not expecting the novel I was obsessed with as a little girl to read like a novel I would still pick up today.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Fountains of Silence, Ruta Sepetys – In 1957, Spain was under a fascist dictatorship there are dark secrets in Madrid. This book gave me a wild history lesson I did not know I needed. I was blown away by this story, specifically by the fact that I didn’t know it.

January

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A Winter in New York, Josie Silver

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things, Adam Grant

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Fury, Alex Michaelides

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emma of 83rd Street (For the Love of Austen #1), Audrey Bellezza

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Let Us Descend, Jesmyn Ward

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Daddy, Emma Cline

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

February

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Under the Influence, Noelle Crooks

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Ready or Not, Cara Bastone

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Death in Her Hands, Ottessa Moshfegh

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Fountains of Silence, Ruta Sepetys

March

⭐️⭐️ Kill for Me, Kill for You, Steve Cavanagh

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Yours Truly (Part of Your World #2), Abby Jimenez

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ One to Watch, Kate Stayman-London

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Girl on the Velvet Swing: Sex, Murder, and Madness at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, Simon Baetz

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ How to Keep House While Drowning, K.C. Davis

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ One of the Girls, Lucy Clarke

April

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Medea, Eilish Quin

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ North Woods, Daniel Mason

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Last Night at Chateau Marmont, Lauren Weisberger

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Big Time, Ben H. Winters

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ American Rose: A Nation Laid Bare-The Life and Times of Gypsie Rose Lee, Karen Abbott

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Just for the Summer, Abby Jimenez

May

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Part of Your World (Part of Your World #1), Abby Jimenez

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Immortalists, Chloe Benjamin

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma, Galit Atlas

June

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Paradise Problem, Christina Lauren

⭐️⭐️⭐️ How to End a Love Story, Yulin Kuang

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Gone at Midnight: The Tragic True Story Behind the Unsolved Internet Sensation, Jake Anderson

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom: A Story, Sylvia Plath

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Body Grammar, Jules Ohman

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Yerba Buena, Nina LaCour

July

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde #1), Heather Fawcett

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ College Girl, Missing: The True Story of How a Young Woman Disappeared in Plain Sight, Shawn Cohen

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Lion Women of Tehran, Marjan Kamali

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Deep Water, Patricia Highsmith

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson (re-read)

August

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Remarkably Bright Creatures, Shelby Van Pelt

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Happy Ever After Playlist (The Friend Zone #2), Abby Jimenez

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Long Bright River, Liz Moore

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The God of the Woods, Liz Moore

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ LaserWriter II, Tamara Shopsin

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This Summer Will Be Different, Carley Fortune

⭐️⭐️ Divorce Towers, Ellen Meister

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Paris Novel, Ruth Reichl

⭐️ (no rating) Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rovelli

September

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert (re-read)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Awakening, Kate Chopin (re-read)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Last Time I Lied, Riley Sager

⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Goodbye Process, Mary Jones

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Wedding People, Alison Espach

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath (re-read)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ None of This is True, Lisa Jewell

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Worst Wingman Ever (The Improbable Meet-Cute #2), Abby Jimenez

⭐️ (no rating) the rest of The Improbable Meet-Cute short story collection

October

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ All Fours, Miranda July (my #1 for the year)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Mrs. Dalloway, Virgina Woolf (re-read)

⭐️⭐️⭐️ An Age of Winters, Gemma Liviero

November

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Funny Story, Emily Henry

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lies and Weddings, Kevin Kwan

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Friend Zone (The Friend Zone #1), Abby Jimenez

December

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Beheld, TaraShea Nesbit

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Burn Book, Kara Swisher

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett (re-read)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, John Berendt

Currently Reading

Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, Tom O’Neill

Sisters of Fortune, Anna Lee Huber

Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show, Bethany Joy Lentz

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke