Hello, lovelies! Today, I’m going to talk about some of the best books I read last year. 2020 was honestly a lukewarm reading year up until the end, so a bunch of these books are from the last few months. It’s probably not in the correct order, but these are all books I would recommend. I hope you enjoy!
Previous Installments:
10.//Other Words For Home by Jasmine Warga
GoodReads Synopsis
I am learning how to be
sad
and happy
at the same time.
Jude never thought she’d be leaving her beloved older brother and father behind, all the way across the ocean in Syria. But when things in her hometown start becoming volatile, Jude and her mother are sent to live in Cincinnati with relatives.
At first, everything in America seems too fast and too loud. The American movies that Jude has always loved haven’t quite prepared her for starting school in the US—and her new label of “Middle Eastern,” an identity she’s never known before. But this life also brings unexpected surprises—there are new friends, a whole new family, and a school musical that Jude might just try out for. Maybe America, too, is a place where Jude can be seen as she really is.
My Review
This is a middle-grade book about a Syrian refugee. What I loved about this books is that it included so many happy moments amidst the difficulty of the main character’s situation. Diversity in contemporary books has only been prevalent in the last five years, and many of them show a monolith experience of what being a person of color is like (i.e. Asian kids have strict parents, LGBTQ+ books are coming out stories and romance, black or Hispanic students live in poor areas, POC female characters get white boyfriends as they “get their freedom from parents,” etc.). Unfortunately, many authors and screenwriters have had to emphasize on the tRAumAs of being marginalized in order to get their work published and on screen, and now they’re finally able to move away from that.
This book struck a good balance of showing the racism Jude went through as a Muslim girl. It was never overdramatic. It was the minor comments and microaggressions she received that resonated because that’s what it’s actually like in real life. The beginning of the book takes place in Syria, and we get to see the beauty of it through her young eyes and what the war had done to her family and people. The book also added an element with her cousin in America who was “whitewashed.” It’s a great book and an easy read since it’s middle-grade.
9.//Captain America & Black Widow by Cullen Bunn (Writer), Francesco Francavilla (Illustrator)
GoodReads Synopsis
Captain America and the Black Widow are on a deadly collision course, as Kashmir Venemma and her multiversal corporation have sent them on a wild goose chase through countless worlds. Chased by a superpowered kill squad, Cap and Widow jaunt through the multiverse, battle corporate-sponsored alien war machines and face…Lizard-Ock!? But as the two Avengers battle ever closer to their goal, the stage is set for a final assault against Venemma Multiversal! Guest-starring Hawkeye, Iron Man, and…Dr. Doom?
My Review
I read eleven comics and graphic novels last year, and this one was by far my favorite. It was just so fun! It had a great villain, the fight scenes were awesome, there were two Black Widows because Captain America and Black Widow were sent to another dimension in the multiverse. The synopsis itself shows how goofy and convoluted the plot was, but it worked because it was a comic book. This was just really fun read with an interesting plot and world.
8.//The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
GoodReads Synopsis
She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.
From the Grimm’s fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she could become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own.
My Review
My favorite part about this book was that it surprised me. I love fairytale retellings, but they are (obviously) predictable. This one wasn’t. I remember reading the first chapter assuming what would happen in the rest of the book, but then an obstacle came out of left field and I wondered what would happen next. This happened repeatedly where I thought I knew where the story was going then it completely changed course. It was a cute middle grade fantasy with many adult themes (It contained a surprising number of murders), and the characters were unique and memorable. It did enough to subvert the children’s fantasy fairytale genre without losing the whimsy.
7.//Dune by Frank Herbert
GoodReads Synopsis
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice” melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for…
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.
My Review
This took me a long time to finish because it was a 20+ hour audiobook and I don’t listen to them as often as I used to pre-quarantine, but I was engrossed in the world every time I listened. I finished the second half of the book within a few days. You all have probably heard of Dune, especially since the new movie is coming out this year. It’s a classic science fiction novel that invented many of the concepts that are still written in science fiction today. It had a great cast of characters, cool world-building, a complex political system, etc. I haven’t had enough time to ruminate on it, so it probably would be higher on this list if I hadn’t read it so recently.
6.//Sadie by Courtney Summers
GoodReads Synopsis
A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she’s left behind. And an ending you won’t be able to stop talking about.
Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.
But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.
When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.
Courtney Summers has written the breakout book of her career. Sadie is propulsive and harrowing and will keep you riveted until the last page.
My Review
Sadie a contemporary mystery thriller. The book alternates between the points of view of a missing girl, Sadie, and a true crime podcast. Sadie’s point of view is her searching for her sister’s murderer and getting revenge. The true crime podcast takes place a few months later of a man searching for her, plus we hear interviews from her family and people Sadie encountered or tricked in order to find who she was looking for. There are many other elements to the book that add to the plot like the people Sadie meets along the way, her difficult childhood and relationship with her mother, a little bit about the detective who is making the podcast, Sadie’s stutter and how that impacts the way she interacts with or cons other people in order to get from point A to point B, etc.
(Trigger warning: sexual abuse)
5.//City of Saints & Thieves by Natalie C. Anderson
GoodReads Synopsis
In the shadows of Sangui City, there lives a girl who doesn’t exist. After fleeing the Congo as refugees, Tina and her mother arrived in Kenya looking for the chance to build a new life and home. Her mother quickly found work as a maid for a prominent family, headed by Roland Greyhill, one of the city’s most respected business leaders. But Tina soon learns that the Greyhill fortune was made from a life of corruption and crime. So when her mother is found shot to death in Mr. Greyhill’s personal study, she knows exactly who’s behind it.
With revenge always on her mind, Tina spends the next four years surviving on the streets alone, working as a master thief for the Goondas, Sangui City’s local gang. It’s a job for the Goondas that finally brings Tina back to the Greyhill estate, giving her the chance for vengeance she’s been waiting for. But as soon as she steps inside the lavish home, she’s overtaken by the pain of old wounds and the pull of past friendships, setting into motion a dangerous cascade of events that could, at any moment, cost Tina her life. But finally uncovering the incredible truth about who killed her mother—and why—keeps her holding on in this fast-paced nail-biting thriller.
My Review
I’ve had this book on my shelf for years. One of my friends let me borrow it, and I just never gave it back (She said I could keep it because she forgets that she let me borrow it until I remind her). This was just a fun contemporary thriller about a Congolese refugee in Kenya getting revenge on her mother’s murderer by unearthing his illegal escapades exploiting her people. I kind of predicted the ending, but the journey was thrilling to read about.
4.//The Raven Cycle Series by Maggie Stiefvater
GoodReads Synopsis
“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.
His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.
But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.
For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
My Review
This was the only series I finished in 2020. I read the first books to a few last year, but I didn’t enjoy them enough to continue. I read the first book, The Raven Boys years ago and thought it was a stand-alone (the other books weren’t out yet), so I never finished the series. One of my cousins told me these were her favorite books of all time, which convinced me to pick them up again (I had been meaning to for awhile, but that was the catalyst for it). You’ve already read the synopsis for the first book, so I won’t reiterate too much. There are a lot of characters in this series, so it took me a little bit to get attached to all of them outside of the main few. Blue is a non-psychic in a family of psychics. She befriends some Raven Boys, boys who go to a rich private school nearby, and join them on their quest to find the secret to a magic system that’s too complicated to explain here.
This is an urban fantasy, but the magic system is very light, particularly in the beginning. I found everything with Blue’s family and the information about tarot reading really cool, but my favorite part about the series was the friendships. I loved their group dynamic and the conversations they had with each other. In my opinion, the series was more about their friendship and the adventures they went on than the romance. Many book series go downhill as the series go on, but all four books were consistently good.
3.//The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
GoodReads Synopsis
With undertones of vampires, Frankenstein, dragons’ hoards, and killing fields, Matt’s story turns out to be an inspiring tale of friendship, survival, hope, and transcendence. A must-read for teenage fantasy fans.
At his coming-of-age party, Matteo Alacrán asks El Patrón’s bodyguard, “How old am I?…I know I don’t have a birthday like humans, but I was born.”
“You were harvested,” Tam Lin reminds him. “You were grown in that poor cow for nine months and then you were cut out of her.”
To most people around him, Matt is not a boy, but a beast. A room full of chicken litter with roaches for friends and old chicken bones for toys is considered good enough for him. But for El Patrón, lord of a country called Opium—a strip of poppy fields lying between the U.S. and what was once called Mexico—Matt is a guarantee of eternal life. El Patrón loves Matt as he loves himself for Matt is himself. They share identical DNA.
My Review
This novel is about the clone of a Mexican drug lord. It’s middle-grade science fiction, so it’s very easy to read, but it dives into a lot of heavy concepts. I wouldn’t consider this a plot heavy book. It focuses mostly on worldbuilding. The first chapter is literally how Matt got cloned, and the book progresses from age 0-14, where we see how he was treated by the family that owned him. Through his eyes, we learn about what opioid did to the world, what went on between the U.S. and Mexico and how the continent got to that point. I don’t think they mentioned what year this takes place. Clearly it’s dystopia in the future, but I don’t know how far in. Matt is very isolated in the first half of the book, so everything we learn is through what he hears from the people in power around him.
I’m really bad at descriptions and I don’t want to spoil too much. It was different from other dystopian I’ve read and didn’t follow many of the tropes because it’s written for a younger audience. Most of the novel is us experiencing the world through Matt’s eyes and slowly peeling back the layers of what is going on. My biggest complaint is that things resolved too quickly at the end. The second half of the book is very fast paced but ends kind of abruptly. This was originally written as a stand-alone, but I thought there would be an open ending with more to dive into later. I then realized part of the reason it felt so abrupt is that we only see Matt’s point of view, and instead of the love-interest and parental figures doing nothing waiting to be saved, they actually did something productive. So I forgave the abrupt ending. Aside from that, I loved this book. Despite the slow-moving plot, I was on the edge of my seat. I highly recommend it. It’s a great beginner’s sci-fi book that I think anyone could read if they’re just getting into the genre.
2.//Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
GoodReads Synopsis
A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity…until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
My Review
I read this book last summer for the Reading Rush and became obsessed with it. Even though I read it in two days, I thought about it for months afterward. It was so good. I didn’t buy many books last year, but my love for it was good enough for me to buy a physical copy on eBay even though I own the audiobook.
This is a pretty popular book. One of the reasons I picked it up was that Reid’s the previous book was my favorite in 2019, and this book is also told in an interview form (in a completely different format). This book follows the members of a very popular band from the 1970’s. We get to hear about how they all came together, how they wrote their songs, going on tour, drug addiction, feuds, performances, etc. I became so immersed in the characters’ lives. They felt like real people. And Reid had a way of describing the music to where I craved hearing it. I wanted to look up the album cover and find the SNL performances on YouTube because she described everything in such a compelling way.
Also, I finished this book the night Folklore dropped, so every time I listen to Cardigan, this book pops into my head (both because of the date and some similar themes). Needless to say, I love this author. I’m sure her next book, which comes out this summer, will be on my top books of 2021. I highly recommend it and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
1.//My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
GoodReads Synopsis
Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer.
2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
My Review
This book is very tough to read, but it did a really good job discussing this topic. It alternates between Vanessa at age 15 and age 32. When she was young, she saw what her teacher did to as a love story. The book never romanticized the grooming. The prose made it that we the reader could see that Vanessa was being abused, but in her 15-year-old mind, that’s not what was happening. In between the past point of view, we fast forward to Vanessa as an adult confronting what happened to her in hindsight and her denial.
The novel pissed me off in the best way. In my friend’s words, it was too real. The way everyone reacted to Vanessa being abused by her teacher was awful. The administration, her parents, other survivors, and reporters reacted in a realistically unhelpful way. It was infuriating. And I hated the teacher. He deserved a worse ending.
Vanessa was definitely a well-developed character. Her at age 15 and age 32 had very distinct voices, but were clearly the same person. The author did a great job capturing her naivete as a teen. I’ll reiterate that this is a difficult book to read. There are rape scenes (I refuse to call what they did sex because it was abuse). The older point of view took place in 2017 when the Me Too movement was gaining traction, which was a good backdrop juxtaposing Vanessa’s denial. The ending is not satisfying but realistic.
Well, that’s it for now. This is a pretty well-rounded list of books. The order is probably off, but I’m okay with that. Hopefully 2021 will be a better reading year so that the majority of my favorites won’t be packed into the end. I hope y’all are doing well. Until next time!
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What was your favorite book of 2020?