5 Top Reads of 2020

I read some insanely great books this year, y’all. And if you know me at all, you know I’m totally That Girl who can’t shut up about books she loves. So for this year, here are my top 5 “Can’t Shut Up About Them” books:

5. BOYFRIEND MATERIAL by Alexis Hall – Any book that makes you laugh out loud in public not once, not twice, but countless times…yeah, in 2020, that is worth its weight in gold. Or toilet paper, depending on the scarce resource of the times. All Hall’s books are painfully endearing, with witty characters and always somebody who is irresistibly buttoned up and british and somebody else who is a hot mess you can’t help but adore.

3. LOVE LETTERING by Kate Clayborn – This book is about a woman who hand-letters fancy planners for a living. Which doesn’t at all explain why this love story is so stunning. I adored the buttoned-up love interest and lived for the scenes when they were together, but I really gloried in the moments when Clayborn used hand-lettering as a metaphor for the creative process, and how to get back into it when you’re blocked. She concludes it always has to be about fun and games and discovery. Even if you do it for work, it can’t BE work, or it won’t, well, work. Bonus points: this is a great book for lovers of NYC neighborhoods. Even more so in a year when that city has been through so much and has doubtless been changed by the process.

4. FEARLESS by Katie Golding – Golding writes romance so intense, it makes everything else feel watered down. If that wasn’t enough, the hero in this novel is unreasonably charming, with a kind of aw-shucks polite cowboy affect that belies the total single mindedness with which he pursues motorcycle racing…and winning back the love of his life, Taryn, a badass motorcycle racer. I loved all the scenes with Billy and his best friend who is (wait for it) his horse.

2. THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA by TJ Klune – This is a tale of an orphanage of peculiar, magical children, and the rotund, balding bureaucrat sent to write reports about them. It’s also another adorable love story between buttoned-up British guys, which I am clearly a sucker for. It just glows with hope, and love, and all things good and holy in the world. I wanted to savor every page like it was an absolutely perfect moment, which it was. This book was recommended to me by my local bookstore when I asked for an upmarket fiction with beautiful writing that didn’t make me want to cry myself to sleep. Check and check!

1. UNTAMED by Glennon Doyle – The only nonfic to make my top 5 list, this is truly exceptional. I read this in March, during the first wave of Covid quarantines and uncertainty, and I was blown away that the author had somehow written exactly what we’d all need to hear, but years before knowing why we’d need to hear it. I underlined so many sentences that the book is about a half pound heavier than it started, just on ink. I think every woman in America needs to read this book, and at least half the men.

Okay, okay, I can’t do it. I need a Top 12, not Top 5. So many great books this year!

Extended Edition, Top 12 Favorite Reads of 2020

LITTLE UNIVERSES by Heather Demetrios – physics and the meaning of life, all told through lady astronauts, opiate addiction, and delicious love stories.

CALL DOWN THE HAWK by Maggie Stiefvater – the prose. My good god, the PROSE. Also the art forgery metaphors, and the deliciously ruthless magical outlaw Ronan Lynch.

OONA OUT OF ORDER by Margarita Montimore – Best time travel book I’ve read, blows Time Traveler’s Wife out of the water. It’s about a woman who lives each year of her life, but not in the right order.

CATCH AND KILL by Ronan Farrow – This is the story of the reporter who took down Harvey Weinstein and all the crazy stuff he had to go through to get the truth out. Femme fetales, death threats, shady Israeli mercenaries, and so many layers of corruption amongst private citizens and companies you won’t even believe it. I basically believe Ronan Farrow deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, the Pulitzer, a mansion on a private island and a pony, for what he’s done for the #MeToo movement and the women of this country. (Wait, this just in: apparently he DID win the Pulitzer for this. One must hope the pony is next). The most page-turning nonfiction book I’ve ever read.

POET X by Elizabeth Acevedo – A book in verse that really *got* what I went through as a teen girl in terms of trying to balance the unwanted attention of men with my own growing sexuality. Also will be painfully true for anyone who has battled with their own crisis of faith and realizing how anti-feminist many churches can be. Powerful, spare language.

LEGENDS RISE: Venators 3 by Devri Walls – This is one of those books that you always see reviewed with buzzy phrases like “rich worldbuilding” and “heart-pounding action” and somehow, all the superlatives seem to slide by capturing the actual experience of reading it, which I would encapsulate succinctly as “Holy Sh*t”.

THE ROOMMATE by Rosie Danan – a porn star and his blue blooded roommate team up to bring down a sexist porn empire and start their own porn website dedicated to female pleasure. Josh, the completely adorable porn star, is reason alone to buy this book, but his Type A roommate (and her trusty laminator) are a close second.