For anyone who isn't already familiar with my lists, I've been creating top 10 lists of books at year's end all the way back to 1999, long before I had a blog, and sharing them with my friends. These are books I read in a particular year, not necessarily books published that year, though this year I think all but one of the books was in fact published in 2019.
Here's my list for 2019, in alphabetical order by author's last name.
The Testaments - Margaret Atwood
Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center
One Night at the Lake - Bethany Chase
The Last Book Party - Karen Dukess
Evvie Drake Starts Over - Linda Holmes
Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid
The Grammarians - Cathleen Schine
The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradal
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman
Read on for more about these books!
The Testaments - Margaret Atwood - You've probably heard of this book, but if not, it is the sequel to Margaret Atwood's dystopian classic "The Handmaid's Tale." I don't think a sequel was necessary - Handmaid's Tale (which I also re-read this year) is an amazing book that truly stands on its own, as it has been doing in the 34 years since it was published. That being said, I'm happy to report that at least from my perspective, this sequel is excellent as well - moving, thought-provoking, and a real can't put it down book. It is not a direct sequel - it does not pick up where "The Handmaid's Tale" left off but rather a bunch of years later, along with earlier in flashbacks. And it is not told from Offred's perspective - to avoid spoilers I'll just say it alternates between 3 perspectives - a girl growing up in Gilead, a teenager who has grown up in Canada, and an Aunt. This time and perspective change, and also the fact that Atwood is a consulting producer on the TV adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale," also means it still works for viewers of the show, though the second two seasons of the show go past the ending of the original book. However, you could also for sure read this without having seen the show. I just think certain elements of the book will be more or less surprising to those who are readers only or readers and viewers. So, this book is quite different from the original, but I'm ultimately quite glad Margaret Atwood chose to write it, as it was a terrific read.
Things You Save in a Fire - Katherine Center - The main character of this novel, Cassie, is a female firefighter who reluctantly transfers from her firehouse in Texas to a small firehouse in Massachusetts that has never had a female firefighter before, to help her somewhat estranged mother through her health difficulties. For reasons that we find out as the book unfolds, when the book starts Cassie is very closed off emotionally, when it comes to family, love, friends, and more. It's not like the themes of family, love, work, and closed off characters learning to open up are things that have never been done before, but Katherine Center just handles them so beautifully. I cried sad tears, I cried happy tears, I even cried a few tears just at passages of writing that explored themes of forgiveness and love so beautifully. This book was one of my 5 star books this year - you can read my slightly longer review here.
One Night at the Lake - Bethany Chase - This book alternates between two different time places and viewpoints. In one, the narrator is Leah, and is set just before and during a week on a lake in upstate New York with Leah's boyfriend Ollie and Leah's best friend June. In the other, seven years later, June is now engaged to Ollie and about to go back up to Ollie's parents place at the lake where she hasn't been since 7 years ago, when all we know is that something bad happened. So, it's a bit of a departure from Bethany Chase's first two books, which were more of your standard contemporary women's fiction of the Emily Giffin mold. I wouldn't call this book a mystery or a thriller, but there is definitely a lot of suspense about what happened to Leah 7 years ago. What it shares with her previous books is a wonderful knack for bringing her characters to life. And of course, I finished the book in tears. This book was another of my 5 star books (though I feel like it stuck with me a little less than my other 5 star books this year) and my longer review is here.
The Last Book Party - Karen Dukess - The protagonist of this novel is a young woman named Eve who works in publishing and then becomes the assistant to a semi-famous writer, and it's set during one summer in 1987 in Manhattan and Cape Cod. The characters all felt like such real people, and there is a strong sense of time and place while at the same time the book feels very timeless, like the story could happen today too. There's also a lot of discussion of writing, reading, and books, which gives the book a pleasantly intellectual feel without being pretentious or heavy. So it's light enough to be a perfect summer book, while still just so smart. If you're a fan of smart insightful authors like Curtis Sittenfeld and Meg Wolitzer, I think you would like this too. And if you missed it, I did an interview with the author this summer. But that has no bearing on why I picked the book for my list, I just really loved it and it stuck with me after I read it!
Evvie Drake Starts Over - Linda Holmes - Set in a small town in Maine, this novel is about Evvie Drake, a young widow struggling with the fact that she was planning to leave her husband right when he died in a car accident, and what happens when a friend of a friend, former major league pitcher Dean who has spectacularly washed out of baseball, comes to rent the apartment attached to her house. Just one of those great books with quirky but very real characters, a perfect slice of contemporary women's fiction. I read much of the last quarter of the book with tears in my eyes, not because it was all sad but just because it gave me all the feels! I've been a fan of Linda Holmes all the way back to her recapping days for Television Without Pity, so I was excited to check out this debut novel of hers, and I wasn't disappointed.
Lilac Girls - Martha Hall Kelly - Excellent World War II historical fiction, switching between the viewpoints of 3 different characters - Caroline, a woman in New York working for the French consulate and working hard trying to help people; Kasia, a young Polish woman who starts working for the Polish underground; and Herda, a female doctor who ends up working at Ravensbruck, the all women concentration camp. The book was slightly slow to start, but once it got going it was great. It was also very interesting for a number of reasons - I liked that it actually continued beyond the end of World War II, it taught me more about Ravensbruck and the awful medical experimentation that happened there, and it was very interesting to learn in the afterword that many of the characters were actually real people. And while any Holocaust book is going to be sad, it did a good job of balancing it with the goodness of people and hopefulness as well. I was late to the party on this one, but glad I finally got around to reading it!
Daisy Jones & The Six - Taylor Jenkins Reid - I don't rank my top 10 lists because it's hard enough just to narrow down my picks to 10; ranking them might kill me. But if you are wondering, this was my number one favorite book of 2019, and you can read my longer review here. This book is a big departure from Taylor Jenkins Reid's previous books, but it is amazing! It's about a fictional singer and band in the late 1970s with lots of turmoil - think the movie "Almost Famous" crossed with Fleetwood Mac, though with plenty of original elements too. What makes this novel so different is that it is written in the format of an oral history - with an "author" having compiled interviews with all the key figures, and so the speaker changes every paragraph or two, maybe a page at most. At first I thought this was going to make it hard to get a feel for the characters, but it was in fact the opposite - before long, it was like I had forgotten I was even reading a novel and felt like they were all real people. Indeed, that's what this book shares with Taylor Jenkins Reid's other books - her knack for really bringing her characters to life. I couldn't put it down, and found myself very moved at the end - the kind of book where you cry a little when you finish it just because it's over.
The Grammarians - Cathleen Schine - This novel is about identical twin sisters, from their childhood through middle age, and as the title suggests, both of them are also always in love with language - from their own secret twin language to collecting vocabulary words to a passion for grammar. It's not really about the plot though, the book is more of a character study and an excellent one at that, as you really get a feel not just for the two sisters but even the more minor characters in their orbit. But even more, this is that rare kind of book where the writing is so good that just reading the way it is written is a sheer pleasure of its own.
The Lager Queen of Minnesota - J. Ryan Stradal - Quiet but absolutely lovely novel, and hard to describe - I guess you could call it a family saga but even though it concerns multiple generations, "saga" sounds too sweeping for such an intimate character book. The book is told from three different viewpoints - Edith and Helen, sisters who stop speaking to each other in their 20s, and Edith's granddaughter, Diana. The book shifts viewpoints but also skips around in time, covering about 60 years. Both Helen and Diana independently both get involved in brewing beer, which was actually super-interesting even though I'm not a beer drinker. I know many authors write from the perspectives of genders other than their own, but it's actually hard to believe J. Ryan Stradal is a man, he writes so sensitively and intuitively about female characters. Just a lovely book.
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill - Abbi Waxman - So cute and charming, I absolutely loved this book. Main character Nina is an introverted book lover forced to come out of her shell a bit when the biological father she never knew dies and she meets a big messy family of half-siblings, nieces and nephews, etc., plus she meets a guy she likes. Nina not only loves to read but works at a book store and so there are lots and lots of great book references plus other fun pop culture references too. But most of all Nina comes so vividly and charmingly to life. Unlike Abbi Waxman's first two books, which feature slightly older protagonists with kids and spouses, this one is about a younger single woman, but I still found her very relatable. And it was nice to see brief glimpses of the characters from those previous two novels as well.
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A few other notes on these books:Genres - This list has one dystopian novel (The Testaments), two historical novels (Daisy Jones & the Six and The Lilac Girls), and the rest probably fall somewhere on the spectrum of contemporary women's fiction.
Repeat authors - There were a lot of repeat authors on this list. This is Abbi Waxman's 3rd straight year on my list with her first three books, after 2017 and 2018. It's the 2nd appearance for Taylor Jenkins Reid following 2017, J. Ryan Stradal following 2016, Bethany Chase following 2015, and for Margaret Atwood who hasn't been on my list since all the way back in 2001!
Book club - I didn't read any of these with my larger book club, but 3 of the books were read with my friend Sarah with whom I have a book club of just the two of us - Daisy Jones & the Six, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.
Other random statistics - As I mentioned above, 9 of these 10 books were in fact published in 2019; the lone book which was not was Lilac Girls, which was published in 2016.
I actually received 6 of these books from Netgalley - though I promise getting them for free did not influence my opinion. The other 4 were all borrowed from the library.
The most read of these books on Goodreads is Lilac Girls with almost 171,000 ratings; the least read was One Night at the Lake with less than 900 ratings. Lilac Girls is also the highest rated on Goodreads with an average rating of 4.29, while the lowest rated is The Last Book Party with an average rating of 3.37.
The Testaments won the Booker Prize for 2019 and also won Goodreads Choice for best fiction of 2019; Daisy Jones & the Six won the Goodreads Choice for best historical fiction of 2019. Several of the others were also Goodreads Choice nominees.
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Note that I give all these posts the tag "Top 10," so you should be able to click on the label "Top 10" at the bottom of the post and see all my other Top 10 posts. And if you just want to see all my old Top 10 lists, you can also click through to my Goodreads profile - I have a separate shelf for each of my old lists.
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