Inside: In case you’re looking for a new read (or a great gift for someone), here are the books I loved this year.
This was a weird year for books because I started and stopped at least a dozen. Too dark. Too fluffy. Too sad. Too scary. Too many fairies and talking wolves. (Yes, I discovered that fantasy romance is not my genre.)
But I finished and loved these nine novels. Maybe you’ll enjoy them too.
Sandwich
by Catherine Newman
From Amazon: “This year’s vacation, with Rocky sandwiched between her half-grown kids and fully aging parents, promises to be just as delightful as summers past—except, perhaps, for Rocky’s hormonal bouts of rage and melancholy. (Hello, menopause!) Her body is changing—her life is, too. And then a chain of events sends Rocky into the past, reliving both the tenderness and sorrow of a handful of long-ago summers.”
Conversations With Friends
by Sally Rooney
From Amazon: “Written with gemlike precision and marked by a sly sense of humor, Conversations with Friends is wonderfully alive to the pleasures and dangers of youth, and the messy edges of female friendship.”
Sorrow And Bliss
by Meg Mason
From Amazon “There’s something wrong with Martha. There has been since a little bomb went off in her brain, at seventeen, leaving her changed in a way no doctor or drug could fix then and no one, even now, can explain…Maybe there is a different story to be written, if Martha can work out where to begin.”
We All Want Impossible Things
by Catherine Newman
From Amazon: “Edith and Ashley have been best friends for over forty-two years. But now the unthinkable has happened. Edi is dying of ovarian cancer and spending her last days at a hospice near Ash…For anyone who’s ever lost a friend or had one. Get ready to laugh through your tears.”
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
From Amazon: “Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival.”
Normal People
by Sally Rooney
From Amazon: “Normal People is the story of mutual fascination, friendship, and love. It takes us from that first conversation to the years beyond, in the company of two people who try to stay apart but find that they can’t.”
SATURDAY NIGHT AT THE LAKESIDE SUPPER CLUB
by Ryan Stradal
From Amazon: “In this vanishing world of relish trays and brandy old-fashioneds, New York Times bestselling author J. Ryan Stradal has given us a story full of his signature winning, honest yet fallible Midwestern characters as they grapple with love and tragedy, hardship and hope—and what their legacy will be when they are gone.”
After I Do
By Taylor Jenkins Reid
From Amazon: “This is a love story about what happens when the love fades. It’s about staying in love, seizing love, forsaking love, and committing to love with everything you’ve got. And above all, After I Do is the story of a couple caught up in an old game—and searching for a new road to happily ever after.”
Notes On An Execution
by Danya Kukafka
From Amazon: “Blending breathtaking suspense with astonishing empathy, Notes on an Execution presents a chilling portrait of womanhood as it simultaneously unravels the familiar narrative of the American serial killer, interrogating our system of justice and our cultural obsession with crime stories, asking readers to consider the false promise of looking for meaning in the psyches of violent men.”
My past book lists
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