My Favorite Fiction of 2019

Hey, look, it’s a blog post! I don’t want to call this a comeback to blogging because, honestly, I’m not sure what this year is going to bring. But it felt like a bummer not to get to the end of the year and do a couple of recaps of my favorite books!

In 2019, I finished 81 books, but I feel like I actually read a lot more than that. I previewed a lot of books to talk about on the nonfiction podcast I co-host for Book Riot, but didn’t end up completing many of them. So while 81 books feels like a relatively low number, I don’t think it quite captures all of my reading.

That all said, this year I actually finished more fiction (55 percent) than nonfiction (45 percent)! Again, I think that’s a result of podcast reading – I started far, far more nonfiction books, but wasn’t as consistent in finishing them. That might be something to look at changing for 2020.

With all that preamble out of the way, today I’ve got my top 10 fiction books of the year. It was such a great year of books!

Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes

What is there to even say about this book? It was easily my favorite of the year. One year before the book begins, Evvie Drake’s husband was killed in a car crash. Since then, she’s kept mostly to herself, out of both grief over the loss and guilt over a big secret she hasn’t told anyone. To make ends meet Evvie takes on a renter, a former Major League pitcher who was forced to retire early after inexplicably losing his ability to pitch. Dean and Evvie quickly fall into a friendly routine that, slowly, grows into something more… but of course they both have secrets and ambitions and a few broken pieces they need to mend first. I have a soft spot for books about widows, complicated grief, and finding yourself after being broken, and this one hits all those notes perfectly. Linda Holmes demonstrates a real sense of warmth towards every character, and every conflict that evolves feels genuine and sincere. It’s such a delightful and warm read.

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Emira Tucker is 25-years-old, about to lose her health insurance, and completely unsure of what she wants to do next with her life. Right now, she’s working as a nanny for Alix Chamberlain, a woman who has made a living getting what she wants through her lifestyle brand for young women. Late one evening, Alix calls and asks Emira to take their two-year-old daughter, Briar, out of the house for a few hours. At the grocery store near the Chamberlain’s home, Emira is confronted by a bystander and security guard who accuse the black woman of kidnapping the little girl. The incident – which is caught up tape and humiliates Emira – puts a ticking time bomb in the middle of Emira and Alix’s relationship. I loved everything about this book, but especially how the entire book is essentially a slow motion car crash that ends up landing in a way I didn’t expect at all. I snuck this book in right at the end of 2019, but I’m sure it’s going to be on many, many best of lists come 2020 since it was published on December 31. (Thanks to Libro.fm and the publisher for an audio review copy of this one.)

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo

Leigh Bardugo is one of my favorite writers, and this latest entry into her extended Grishverse is amazing. It focuses on Nikolai Lantsov and his efforts to rebuild Ravka after the events of both The Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows Duology. I won’t say too much more about it – I think you do need to read the previous books to appreciate this one – other than that I think it’s totally work out. Bardugo is getting better with every book she writes – a more assured grasp of her characters, more ambiguous and challenging conflicts, and more sophisticated conclusions. I can’t wait for the second book of this duology.

Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

I stayed up well past my bedtime tearing through this book. It’s a fun, charming, and deeply romantic story about the secret romance between the First Son of the United States and the Prince of Wales. As I was reading, I felt like the book was a mash-up of a bunch of different current events stories, but with an underlying feeling of hope that progress is still possible. Then in the acknowledgements, author Casey McQuiston said almost exactly that, describing the book as a “tongue-in-cheek parallel universe” that’s also “escapist, trauma-soothing, alternate-but-realistic reality… one still believably fucked up, just a little better, a little more optimistic.” It’s a really sweet book, perfect for reading in the summer when I picked it up.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim

This book literally opens with a bang, when an experimental medical treatment device known as the Miracle Submarine explodes while patients are inside, killing a young woman and an autistic boy. After setting the stage, the book is structured like a courtroom thriller, following the four-day trial of the boy’s mother, accused of deliberately setting the fire that caused the explosion in order to escape caring for her son. I love a good genre book like a thriller for the relentless plotting, but also appreciated how Angie Kim was able to deftly and thoughtfully take on more thorny issues like immigration, family, and parenting special needs kids without ever losing the thread of the story. The pacing of this book is also so great. Details about the events leading up to the explosion were doled out in perfect intervals, with a ton of secrets and cascading events that were both tightly-plotted and kept me guessing until the very end.

Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This may have been the most-hyped book of the year, and I was so glad it lived up to all those expectations! The book is structured as an oral history of a legendary 1970s rock band, chronicling how the came together, made an epic album, then split up without a public word after a concert at Chicago Stadium in 1972. It’s about rock and roll, creativity, family, gender, and so much more. Taylor Jenkins Reid writes so confidently, you can tell she knows exactly what this book is from the very first sentence of the “Author’s Note” that it opens with. The way she plays characters off one another via the oral history format is so fun, it just delighted me from beginning to end. I read this one in a couple of sittings, it was just so great.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

Over the Fourth of July long weekend I wanted something light and bubbly and charming to escape into, and this book provided exactly that experience. The story centers around Vivian Morris, an 89-year-old woman looking back on her early 20s as part of the exotic and glamorous world of the New York City theater in the 1940s. After being kicked out of Vassar College, Vivian goes to live with her eccentric, theater-owning Aunt Peg, who welcomes her into that world. But eventually Vivian makes a personal mistake that puts her career and the theater in jeopardy, a decision it takes her decades to understand. I loved the way this book explored love and sexuality, and the totally unapologetic way Vivian told her story. It was the perfect balance of smart and sparkly for a vacation read.

Still Life by Louise Penny

I read a lot of mysteries and literary thrillers this year, but this one was easily my favorite. It’s the first book in Louise Penny’s long-running Chief Inspector Gamache series, which all take place in the small Canadian town of Three Pines. In this one, an older woman named Jane Neal is found dead in the woods, killed by an arrow that may have been from a distracted hunter… or may have been murder. Neal was well-loved, but also a bit reclusive, and so her home and art may provide clues to whether someone wanted her dead. I loved meeting Gamache and his staff, and I’m excited to have a new series to look forward to reading.<

There, There by Tommy Orange

This book follows the stories of twelve characters from Native communities who are all on their way to the Big Oakdale Powwow for different reasons. They’re also all connected, although how those relationships and stories overlap managed to entirely surprise me. Through those different voices, Tommy Orange is able to illustrate what it’s like to be an urban Native American and how that connects to the broader history of Native people in the United States. This is a book I loved reading, but know that I didn’t totally understand or appreciate because there is so much smart stuff going on with every page. But don’t let that turn you off – it’s absolutely a page-turner where you can see a crash coming and have to know how you’re going to get there.

With the Fire on High by Elizabeth Acevedo

As a high school freshman, Emoni Santiago got pregnant and gave birth to a little girl. At the beginning of her senior year, Emoni is trying to do what she can to support her daughter and her abuela, all while trying to figure out what her future might hold. The place she feels most comfortable is the kitchen, and she quietly dreams of becoming a professional chef. When her high school finally offers a culinary arts class, Emoni signs up – a decision that will help shape what she decides to do next in all areas of her life. I loved so much about this book and watching Emoni find herself as a young woman with talent, drive, and heavy responsibilities. There is a romance in this book that’s very charming, but it’s a satisfying book because that relationship is never what defines Emoni or her story. It’s a book about a young woman finding her passion and finding a way to make decisions that define her own life, which resonated a lot with me. This was my very last read of 2019, and it was such a great story to end the year with.

For everything else that happened in 2019, it was a good year of reading. I’m hoping to have my favorite nonfiction of the year up soon.

What were some of your best reads of 2019? Let me know in the comments!