We are back with our 5(ish) favorite reads (and games) of 2024!
We try very hard to keep it to five, but it’s simply not always possible. So, per staff member there may be more or less than five titles, but there can also be an A and a B list, memorable reads or just plain marvelous books.
We’re presenting our lists in bite-size chunks to make them more digestible, as there are more than 150 titles for you to sink your teeth into.
We hope to inspire you to try some of them in the new year.
Happy reading (and playing)!
Letters of Enchantment duology (Divine Rivals & Ruthless Vows) by Rebecca Ross
When reading a book about two authors falling in love, I expected the writing to be absolutely excellent. Lucky for me, it was! The prose was beautiful and lyrical and sucked me right into the story. The story itself was also amazing: the rivals-to-lovers relationship between Iris and Roman was really well developed (and had me grinning most of the time). I loved that they fell in love through writing letters, but that their relationship also evolved gradually outside of that. The magic system is pretty unique and explored thoroughly, which makes it all the more frustrating that war is waged because one man/god couldn’t handle rejection. There are some excellent plot twists in here, and it’s a very emotional and heartfelt duology.
The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year by Ally Carter
This was described to me as “Knives Out with kissing”, and honestly – yeah. If you’re looking for a book that reads like a movie, this is the one. Set around Christmas in a remote castle in the English countryside, mystery writers Maggie and Ethan (who supposedly hate each other), must solve the mystery of their host’s disappearance. It’s a locked-room cozy mystery, where we not only try to figure out what happened between Maggie and Ethan, but we also must solve the mystery of how someone managed to vanish from a locked office. Is it all an elaborate test, or is someone actually trying to kill them? I had so much fun while reading! This book is a perfect holiday romantic mystery that reads like a breeze.
Ready or Not by Cara Bastone
First of all, I want to point out how gorgeous this cover is! It is so vibrant and gives off “New York romcom” vibes. I’m normally not a fan of the unexpected pregnancy trope, but since it’s right there in the blurb, the pregnancy is only unexpected to the main character, Eve. She has no family to support her, so her best friends’ brother, Shep, steps in. The plot is relatively straight-forward, but this book stands out because of its characters. They are incredibly well-developed and realistic and the slow-burn romance is delightful. Eve is such a wonderful person with a humorous voice. Because of her, the book feels like a safe zone. She has such compassion for the people in her life, there is never any judgement and endless support. Shep is the kind of friend who feels like a warm hug, and don’t we all need that sometimes? This book was all about showing up. Showing up for yourself, for those who love you, and those who you’ve never even met but already love more than you ever thought possible.
The Innkeeper Chronicles: Clean Sweep the graphic Novel vol. 1 by Ilona Andrews and Chrossxxxrodes
I have now consumed the Innkeeper Chronicles series in all its formats: I reread the books yearly, I listened to the graphic audiobooks (which are excellent) and most recently I picked up the graphic novel. The series is so comforting to me and I’m very happy there are so many different formats of the story. Dina is an innkeeper on Earth, which is a stopping point for many alien travelers. She has to run her inn (a sentient being itself) and take care of her guests and all their (sometimes bizarre) requests. It sounds very mundane, but somehow excitement seems to follow Dina around. The cast of characters is just great, and the staff is made up of a lovely found family. The art in the graphic novel is beautiful and it was great fun to experience a familiar story in a different way.
An honorable mention for the smuttiest book I read this year: A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor by Kathryn Moon
I’ve surprised myself with sticking to 5(ish) books this year!
It’s been a bit of a challenging reading year, for various reasons, but thankfully a lot of beautiful and thought-provoking books managed to find their way to me anyway.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
I’ve never read a fantasy book quite like this. The first 100-150 pages just blew me away and kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time.
The book is told through 3 interconnecting narrative strands: a 2nd-person POV listening to her grandmother’s stories, that same POV watching a theater performance, and the ‘regular’ 3rd-person fantasy about the Moon Throne – and somehow Simon Jimenez never once had me confused about where I was in the story. In fact, moving so seamlessly back and forth through these layers drew me deeper into the book, Inception-style.
As for the story, it’s a timeless tale of corrupted power, godlike royals, the Moon and the Water, survival, war, and deep, yearning, devoted Love. It ebbs and flows. The characters are whole and broken, and I will remember and honor them.
But it’s the way that it’s told that lifts this fantasy above all else for me this year. I’m impressed the story kept being able to build itself back up after each climactic event, and there are several, even though it wasn’t quite able to sustain the tension of that incredible first section. Simon Jimenez is a born storyteller, and I can’t wait to see what he writes next.
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
This is a dystopian sci-fi centered around Kyr, star pupil of the military academy of the remnant of human civilization living on a space station. She is an unpleasant character, hell-bent on seeking revenge for the destruction of humanity. And then… things shift, as her life’s path turns into something she was not expecting, and she has to deal with it. I absolutely scarfed up this book in one day (and it had been a long time since I’d done that). I loved the world-building, the themes, the characters (awful though some of them were), the very real choices Kyr had to make at every turn, and a lot more. Something that started out as straight-up military sci-fi turned into a something else a whole lot more thought-provoking.
The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel
Long ago, The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich made my annual ABC Top 5. I loved it, having grown-up with Western-oriented art and museums all my life, seeing how one masterpiece flowed into another and why. And yet… There’s only 1 woman in that book: Kathe Kollwitz. Where was Frida Kahlo? Georgia O’Keeffe? Tracy Emin? Yayoi Kusama? Judith Leyster? Marina Abramovic?
Well, thank goodness for Katy Hessel, art historian and The Great Women Artists podcast host. Her The Story of Art Without Men highlights all these women – and so many more – beginning roughly in the middle ages and going right up to the 2020s. I loved getting to know this side of art history. I loved how she included art disciplines traditionally not considered High Art (i.e. quilting, performance art) and showing the exquisite difficulty and beauty and skill needed to make them. Hessel is passionate about her subject and it shines through in everything.
I do hope the next edition showcases even more women from around the globe (and not just Europe and the US), but as I’ve been following her on her Instagram adventures I think I needn’t worry on that account. And I also hope the next edition has an image of every art piece mentioned (Gombrich’s book does, after all…).
Those Beyond the Wall by Micaiah Johnson
I really enjoyed Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, a dystopian Mad Max-y parallel worlds action-packed science fiction story (she makes it work, believe me). And this follow-up is just as good; a different, more focused, raging beast of a book. Johnson wrote this book in the aftermath of her participation in the 2020 Nashville sit-ins against institutionalized racism, and her rage at injustice is palpable everywhere.
The good news is that you don’t need to have read The Space Between Worlds to make any sense of Those Beyond the Wall, although your enjoyment will be significantly larger if you have, because the same characters make appearances. The story is mostly set in Ashtown, full of outcasts whose rough lives have formed a patchwork community living in prickly peace in a harsh environment. Not too far away is Wiley City, a walled enclave, climate-controlled, money-rich, entitled. (Subtle this book is not.) When both communities are threatened by unexplained deaths, they must find ways to protect themselves, but how to do that with so many walls, physical and emotional, between them?
I really enjoyed how Johnson resolved this conflict, and I also really enjoyed her rough-and-tumble characters and setting.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka
Simultaneously magical realist literary fiction, murder mystery, and philosophical treatise on life and how to possibly live it, this hit a lot of the feels; I cried, I laughed, and I was very often aghast. It reminded me a lot of A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James, also a Booker Prize winner, incidentally (and with “seven” in the title). A worthy award winner, in other words, and a great read to pick up if you’re in the mood for serious fiction that shines a light on a difficult time in history (the civil war in Sri Lanka), and does so with bounteous imagination and wit.
Honorable mentions:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk – Fascinating insight into how trauma affects the physical body
The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson- Sprawling and complex story about material gods, interstellar war, and atoning for mistakes.
Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie – Short stories by one of my favorite, auto-buy authors
Geometries of Belonging by R.B. Lemberg – Short stories set in the wondrous, queer, lyrical Birdverse, where I may want to live
Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood – Absolute porn, but with amazing, well-realized, interesting characters
Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett – My last unread Discworld novel, saved for a special occasion
Orbital by Samantha Harvey – An ode to our beautiful Earth in every way
Dutch-language book Aleksandra by Lisa Weeda – Dreamlike fictionalized memoir about the author’s roots in the Donbas region of Ukraine
and let’s finish where I started with The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez – Debut sci-fi novel by the author of my nr. 1 pick this year, a story about lonely souls and finding connections in a sprawling setting, told from various points of view
There are so many interesting books to read and listen to that I always have difficulty in choosing just 5. So I have more than that, but all worth mentioning. So worth mentioning I have written book reviews for some of them! I hope you can find something interesting among my choices.
Under the Oak Tree by Suji Kim – both the book and the graphic novel
A South Korean Reddit success a few years back, it was transformed into a webcomic on Manta and became a gigantic success worldwide.
I found out about it through Manta and for some reason, I really liked the story, even if it seems a bit backward. It seems, but it is not. It’s about two emotionally broken people who through love and perseverance grow up to understand their value and how important it is to listen to each other.
The whole story was first published in English as 11 different ebooks, but I’m delighted it got a better translation and a beautiful book edition as a hard copy. The story is not finished in this volume, and I hope the publisher will have the whole story brought out in as many books as necessary in the coming years. I can’t wait.
Days at the Morisaki Bookshop and More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
I read Days at the Morisaki Bookshop because I wanted to understand the hype around this book. And I did. This is such a gentle read! It made me think about our busy lives and how we do not pay attention to each other. And how we can heal from wounds of the mind through books and friends. If you’d like to read more about it, I have written a book review.
And if you read Days at the Morisaki Bookshop, you have to read More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop as well.
The Wolf Girl series by Leia Stone
Wolf Girl, Lost Girl, Alpha Girl and Mated Girl
I love to listen to books almost as much as I love to read them. But I cannot read a book while sewing, so I looked for ways to still “read” a book while making clothes and booksleeves and found about audiobooks.
The Wolf Girl series is one I listened to and really enjoyed the story.
It starts as the usual girl-meets-boy story, there’s attraction, he’s the prince of the wolves and she’s a nobody. But is she? Through the series the story develops in a surprising way, and things don’t always end well. She’ll have to go through many obstacles in order to attain her HEA (happily ever after).
Ascendant by Michael R. Miller
I found out about this one when I was watching one of our last Staff Picks, where colleague Maria paid its praise in such simple and endearing terms that it just made me want to read it. Enough to say that after I read this one, I immediately wanted to read the rest of this saga. Only the first in the series is available in hard copy, and hopefully the rest will be published shortly as well. It’s indeed a nice read.
The Gay Best Friend by Nicolas DiDomizio
What do you do when you’re best friends with the bride and the groom, and they both want you to keep their secrets? And what happens to you when your heart gets involved with someone who does not want to let the world know you’re involved? This is a story about discovering your own acceptance limits and setting boundaries.
I wrote more about it in this book review.
Abroad in Japan by Chris Broad
I love all things about Japan and was rather curious about this book. I had no idea that Chris Broad is actually a known Youtuber and was more interested in his experience in Japan. Really nice read. If you want to know more about my opinions, you can read my book review here.
A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall
This was such a wonderful read!
I love romance and was immediately captivated by this story because of a book review written by colleague Naomi.
Viola is a beautiful character, and her relationship with Justin develops gracefully and naturally.
And as Naomi says: “Well, worry not, because the book really is that good.”
At First Spite by Olivia Dade
At First Spite is a beautifully written love story about real people with real problems and, most importantly, mature people. There are too few romance novels with more mature characters, and Olivia Dade always does them justice.
I liked this book so much I have written a book review and you can read it here.
Memorable mentions:
The Weight of It All by N.R. Walker – I loved what colleague Jilles said about this book and got inspired. Lovely gay romance.
Wolfsong by TJ Klune – Was on my TBR list for quite some time, but I finally took the plunge and have no regrets!
