According to Goodreads, I've read 114 books this year, the most since I began doing their annual challenges back in 2016. I'm sure this is due to the pandemic! One look at that list and I can immediately see that I've been reading more romance and less crime - although I still have a soft spot for mysteries and cosy crime. (I've never understood why it is called 'cosy' crime!)
It was so hard to pick just ten and impossible to arrange them into any kind of order, so they're listed by publication date.
Will you find your next read amongst them?
The Queen of Nothing (Folk of the Air #3) by Holly Black
When Jude's human mother left her high-ranking faerie husband for a human blacksmith, her husband tracked her down, murdered her, and took Jude and her twin sister Taryn back to the faerie world. Since then, Taryn has spent her life keeping her head down and trying to fit in, whereas Jude has spent hers fighting back and trying to gain power. In this story, the last in the series, we find out if all Jude's sacrifices have been worth it.
Away with the Penguins by Hazel Prior
Veronica McCreedy is very wealthy, lives in a huge mansion in Scotland, is never seen without her ruby red lipstick and has a collection of very expensive handbags. She's also 85 years old.
Realising that she has no family or friends to leave her fortune to, she tracks down her long-lost grandson. The meeting is such a disaster, she decides to leave her money to the penguins. Or rather, the scientists who are studying them at a remote and poorly-funded research station in the Antarctica. And because Veronica is a sensible (stubborn, bloody-minded) kind of person, she pays the research centre a visit before agreeing to part with any cash. Much to the horror of the scientists. (via NetGalley)
Family for Beginners by Sarah Morgan
Flora was raised by an aunt who never really wanted her. As a result, she has always longed for a traditional family of her own. When Flora falls in love with widowed Jack, who has two daughters, it seems as if all her dreams are about to come true. But Jack's eldest, the teenage Izzy, makes it clear their family is doing just fine without Flora - and she'd quite like to keep it that way! And the more Flora learns about Jack's late wife, the saintly Becca, she begins to realise it will be impossible to compete... (via NetGalley)
Beach Read by Emily Henry
Beach Read is the story of two authors suffering from writers' block. January writes romance but no longer believes in happy endings; Gus writes literary fiction but has found himself in a rut. They end up in neighbouring beach houses over the summer, each with a deadline fast approaching. A flippant joke that maybe they should write their books in each other's genres spirals into reality. January takes Gus to the places she uses as settings for her stories, including a country and western bar for a line-dancing adventure, and Gus takes January on one of his research trips - to the burnt-out campus of a cult... (via NetGalley)
The Hidden Beach by Karen Swan
Bel Everhurst is working in Sweden as a nanny for the glamorous Mogert family: Max and Hanna, and their children Linus, Ellinor and Tilde. Out of the blue, Bel receives a phone call meant for Hanna, explaining that her husband has woken up. Bel is confused (She's just seen Max on his bicycle!) but when she passes on the message, Hanna collapses in shock. Hanna's first husband (Linus's father) fell into a coma seven years ago after a terrible accident. Now he's awake - and he wants his family back. (via NetGalley)
Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
Teenager Saffyre Maddox has been self-harming since a childhood trauma. Unable to confide in her therapist, Roan Fours, she becomes obsessed with him instead. She follows him around, learning where he lives and all about his life with his family, and he doesn't suspect a thing. She's become 'invisible'. Owen Pick lives in the house opposite Roan but feels as though no one ever really 'sees' him. He's drifting through life, feeling more out of step with the world every day, until he wakes up to find his face is splashed all over the newspapers and wishes he really was invisible. (via NetGalley)
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Four friends meet up once a month to discuss old murder cases to see if they can solve them. Except the four friends live in a retirement village and one day they find themselves with a real murder to investigate. They run rings around the police, who keep underestimating them, because each one of these friends has a particular skill, or a job they used to do in the past, that helps them work as a team to solve the murders. (via NetGalley)
The Postscript Murders (Harbinder Kaur #2) by Elly Griffiths
Peggy Smith was a 'murder consultant'. She advised crime writers on their plots and invented original ways for them to kill off their characters. When she died at the age of 90 in a retirement home, Detective Sergeant Harbinder Kaur doesn't believe there is anything suspicious about it. Until Peggy's carer is held up at gunpoint - for a book! (via NetGalley)
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
A prequel to Practical Magic and Rules of Magic, this tells the story of the Owens family matriarch, Maria Owens. Starting in 1664, when baby Maria is found abandoned in a snowy field and bearing the mark of a bloodline witch, it follows her adventures as she flees England via a Caribbean island to New York, before heading to a little town called Salem. And we all know what happened in Salem - or do we? (via NetGalley)Read the full review here.
Paris by Starlight by Robert Dinsdale
Every night on the long journey to Paris from their troubled homeland, Levon's grandmother reads to her family from The Nocturne - a book of fairy stories and heroic adventures of their people who chose to live by starlight, generations ago. With every story she tells, the desire to live as their ancestors did grows. And that is when the magic begins… (via NetGalley)
Have you read any of these? Which were your favourites?
You can see more of the books I've enjoyed reading this year over on Instagram and Goodreads.
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