I’m catching up on a little bit of my “Best of” content for last year, and this is probably my favorite recap post to write. It’s so much fun to look back at all the books I’ve read over the past year, and pick out the ones that really stuck out to me. When I choose my favorites, that’s pretty much the criteria that I go for – the ones that had such an emotional impact on me that I can’t stop thinking about them. I couldn’t quite limit myself to 10, so I went with 12. These aren’t in order of favorites – just in order of when I read them, from January through December.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

This book not only lived up to the hype, but way exceeded it. I could not have loved this book more. It’s a modern(ish) day take on David Copperfield set in Appalachia. I’ve actually never read David Copperfield, but was still completely able to enjoy and appreciate the book – maybe there were references that I missed, but it can definitely be read on its own. Be warned going into this that it’s a heavy, incredibly sad story at many times – Demon, the narrator, basically has everything that could go wrong go wrong in his life at one point of another. But he has such a unique voice, and manages to keep a sense of humor, somehow… it’s all just such a powerful, moving story! There’s a little bit near the end about the power of books and reading, and I always love that. Everyone should read this.

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I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

I picked this book up after seeing so many people talking about it online, and wow, it did not disappoint. It’s under 200 pages, but left such an impact on me that I will be thinking about it for a long, long time. It’s dystopian, and set somewhere undetermined, where 39 women are living together underground in a cage. They’re watched constantly by guards, and none of them have any idea how they got there. The rest of the women remember life before the cage, but our narrator is the youngest of the group, and life in the cage is all she knows. I don’t want to share more, because it will be too spoil-y, but this book is a fascinating look at life and humanity. It can be extremely hard to read at times, though, so be warned – but it’s definitely worth it, if you think you’re up to it. It’s also a story that will leave you with more questions than answers!

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The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

This would not typically be the kind of book I’d go for – “hunting” in the title is not a huge seller for me – but I’m so glad I read it. This story is told through three different points-of-view – a graduate student reading a journal of a Lutheran pastor, and in those journal entries, the Luthern pastor relaying a story told to him by a Blackfeet named Good Stab. Good Stab visits the pastor weekly, and slowly but surely relays a story to the pastor of his life, and how he came to be what he is. It all comes together so well, and even though you know where things are headed, it’s so satisfying when it happens. The very end was a bit disappointing for me, but everything else was excellent.

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One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune

At this point, Carley Fortune is an auto-buy author for me – I love everything she writes. One Golden Summer is a companion to her first book, Every Summer After, but centered around the older brother Charlie. Alice is taking a summer off to spend the summer at the lake at Barry’s Bay, staying there with her grandmother and helping her recover. Alice, who was shy as a teen, decides she wants to spend the summer doing all the things that 17-year-old her was too reserved to do. And Charlie, her neighbor across the lake, agrees to help her check items off her bucket list. I love the way Carley writes both settings and characters – so descriptive; I just want to live in the pages of her books!

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Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

This is so short, but so powerful – and somewhat disturbing, too, but intentionally. It pushes every boundary and stigma around disabled people, and really forces you to re-examine the biases you might not realize you have. Shaka lives in a care home (owned by her family) in Tokyo, where she uses a power wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. She spends her time being a perpetual student, writing smut online, and trolling on social media. One day, a care worker at the home tells her that he’s seen one of her trolling posts… and wants to take her up on it. What follows is a story of flipped power dynamics, and a story where the disabled woman isn’t the token “good girl.” I love the boundary pushing in this, and how provocative it is! I can’t stop thinking about it.

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A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping by Sangu Mandanna

I have been waiting for this to come out for over a year now, and it did not disappoint – I just love how she writes cozy fantasy. Sera was on track to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain, but made a choice to do a piece of magic that left her missing almost all of her powers and ostracized from her community. Now, she runs a magical inn with a ragtag group of found family, yearning for her missing magic… until she learns there might be a way to get it back. It’s such a beautiful story about identity and belonging, found family, and love, with really great Autistic representation. I just loved it.

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Isola by Allegra Goodman

This was so beautiful and moving, but also heavy and sad. It’s set in the 1500s and based on a real story. As a small child, Marguerite seems destined for a life of nobility, but when her parents die and she’s sent to live under the custody of her uncle, everything changes. When he forces her to accompany him to sail to New France, she does something to upset him while on the ship, and he punishes her by abandoning her on a deserted island. It’s a story of perseverance and survival, and of faith and love. It’s just a really incredible story, and I can’t get over the fact that it’s based on a real person.

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Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I was so excited for Katabasis, and it totally lived up to the hype for me! It’s a dark academia fantasy book set in Cambridge in the 1980s, where two students – Alice and Peter, once friends but now graduate student rivals – decide they must journey to Hell to bring back their Professor (and dissertation advisor). As someone who worked in academia for years, the misogyny that’s so inherent in academia rang extremely true! This definitely isn’t a light read – there’s a lot of philosophy – but I think it’s up to you how deeply you want to think about each of the proofs and/or paradoxes. You can still easily follow the story without going down any Wikipedia rabbit holes! I really loved this.

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Female Fantasy by Iman Hariri-Kia

I really, really loved this book. It’s a loving satire of (and love letter to!) romance/romantasy. Joonie is trying to find her real-life Prince Charming, but unfortunately, no one in real life measures up to Ryke, the love interest from her favorite fantasy series. When she realizes that he was based on a real person, she goes on an adventure to find him, and make him fall in love with her. The book is interspersed with chapters from the fantasy series itself, and manages to fit an impressive number of tropes in it, too. I didn’t want to stop reading this because it was just so much fun, and really appreciated how it was a defense of the genre, too. It was so, so clear that Iman Hariri-Kia is a lover of all things romance.

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Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

This book was such a standout for me – a truly incredible work of art. I’ve never wanted to discuss the ending of a book with anyone who has read it more than this one! I honestly don’t want to give away too much of the plot, because it feels like one of those books where the less you know going into it, the better! It follows Cyrus, a queer poet who has lost both his parents and is kind of floundering – he’s increasingly obsessed with deaths, and the concept of martyrdom. When he reads about an exhibit in New York, a trip there to meet the artist ends up unfolding in surprising and life-changing ways. Kaveh Akbar is a poet himself, and the story is interspersed with small clips of poems throughout. It’s so beautiful and unique – I just loved this, as did my whole book club. If you read this, message me so we can talk about it!!

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Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

The way this book and the TV show adaptation have completely consumed me (and so many of my friends) honestly should be studied. This story follows Shane and Ilya, rival professional hockey players, who basically have a ten year very secret and very hidden situationship. It’s adversaries-to-lovers, but the best part of the story is how it’s a tale of love, acceptance, and queer joy, which is so important to see on the page. It’s hard for me to explain how these characters have stuck with me and have such a piece of my heart now! They’re definitely smutty – sex is a big part of their communication, especially at first – so if that’s not your thing, probably stay away. Otherwise, I hope you read and join me in my obsession!

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Heart the Lover by Lily King

This was absolutely beautiful and devastating. Jordan is in her senior year of college, and meets two best friends who are living at a professor’s house while he’s on sabbatical. She feels a bit like she’s been let into a new, secret world, and falls for the boys one after the other. She and Yash, the second boy she falls for, seems like they are destined to be together, but when Yash breaks her heart she puts him, and that part of her life, behind her. Years later, when Jordan is married with kids, Yash reappears, and Jordan is thrown back into memories and recollections and choices made decades ago. I’m finding it really hard to describe this book, but wow I just loved it so much. The writing is beautiful and the story broke my heart in the best way.

Buy it on: Bookshop.org | Libro.fm | Amazon