Of the 160 books I consumed this year, these rose to the top, somewhat in order and split between fiction and nonfiction. I want to know what you loved this year!

	Fiction
1	Just for the Summer	Abby Jimenez	Even better than a good Emily Henry story (and she is one of the best) is a new Abby Jimenez novel. Again, supposedly a romance (and in this case, a bold romance where they actually really like each other, without contrived plot twists) but really, this is about how to be a better human, recognizing brokenness, working both with repairing relationships and rejecting harmful one and putting yourself first sometimes. Best when read after Part of Your World.
2	Funny Story	Emily Henry	A reread, for the lovely social-emotional learning and insight and good romance story, dealing with trauma, assumptions, families.
3	The Women	Kristin Hannah	This made the list because I know little about the Vietnam War but, as is Hannah’s magic, I was immersed in this field nurse’s experience, both during and after her service. I didn’t relate much to this character, but I learned more about the Unites States in context of recent-ish history.
4	Not in Love	Ali Hazelwood	As Ali says in her intro, this is more erotic than romantic, but I love her complex (spectrum, likely, heroine) characters and how they bravely try to translate their feelings into communications skills.
5	Warrior Girl Unearthed	Angeline Boulley	Sequel to Firekeeper’s Daughter, loved it. I feel like this is a place I’ve visited now, a quality shared with Kristin Hannah, but Boulley has better, realistic characters.
6	The Secret Diary of Hendrik Groen, 83 1/4 Years Old	Hendrik Groen	Supposedly observations of an elderly man in an assisted living home in Amsterdam, but Hendrik comes to life and even becomes a model of how to get older and better. This is the first in a series that is thoughtful, mundane, funny, morose, bittersweet, and all the other reflections of a good human life. And I will be starting my own “Old But Not Dead Yet” club someday.
7	The Running Grave	Robert Galbraith	I love the Cormoran Strike series but hate some of the books. The latest brought our gumshoes into a UK cult, which paired well with my NF readings about fundamentalism in the US. Not only a good story, but an excellent continuation of the story arc. She is an excellent writer.
8	The Fragile Threads of Power	V.E. Schwab	Yes! The first book in a series that takes place 7 years after the Shades of Magic trilogy. Love the old characters and adore the new ones.
9	Plan A	Deb Caletti	Wow, what a heartbreaking story of a bright girl in small town, TX, who gets pregnant (neither by having sex or by consenting) and the difficulty of getting an abortion on this side of the overturning of Roe v Wade. I was fully immersed in the story, even when I had look away because the treatment this girl received was beyond my capacity to witness. I want all my kids to read this book. I will need to read more by this author.
10	A Ruse of Shadows (Charlotte Holmes, #8)	Sherry Thomas	Considering this was the 8th book, I was very surprised when I finished and immediately had to reread it to unravel the story once I knew the ending. Bravo, Sherry, bravo!
Bonus	Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone	Benjamin Stevenson	Picked it up for the title, stayed for the narrator’s voice. I’ll read more of him.
Bonus	A Line to Kill	Anthony Horowitz	This is the third Hawthorne book, and the clever narration still amuses me through the entire novel. And, no, I did not guess the ending before poor Horowitz had it unraveled for him.
	NonFiction
1	A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s plot to take over America, and the woman who stopped them.	Timothy Egan	A book that rattled me the most, which, considering #4-6 on this list, is quite a feat. The title says enough.
2	Revenge of the Tipping Point	Malcolm Gladwell	Possibly his best yet. Opioids & triplicate prescriptions; college admissions–race v. athletics; gay marriage and Will & Grace; Miami’s outrageous Medicaid fraud culture; how the Holocaust came to be remembered decades and decades after the end of WWII. Gladwell tackles all this, and suicide clusters in high achieving high schools and how this relates to cheetahs, this in his inimitable style. I want to listen a few more times to get a good grasp on his bigger ideas. Oh, and a tipping point, such as women in the board room, is about 1/3 to go from token to part of the community.
3	The Small and the Mighty	Sharon McMahon	Profiles-in-courage-esque, but really focusing on Americans overlooked in history, usually because of their gender, skin color, or religion. Even if the topic were dull (and it’s not!), McHahon is gripping in her storytelling. But she is very much an educator (history prof, actually), and describes events and remarkable people in the context that they should be appreciated. She really needs to write more books, or I need to start listening to podcasts.  This is the American History that we’re not taught in school.
4	A Well-Trained Wife	Tia Levings	Remembering scenes from this escaped-from-fundamentalist (ok, completely un-Christ-like) marriage still makes my stomach knot. But it gave me a chance to walk in shoes I would never willingly wear, and when the 2024 election cycle made voting differently than your husband an issue, I understood it better than I wanted to.
5	Baptistland	Christa Brown	“When Christa Brown first spoke out about the sexual abuse she endured in her Texas childhood church, she never imagined it would expose the ethical chasm at the core of the Southern Baptist male religious leaders so focused on institutional protection that they sacrifice the safety of children. A book about speaking out and speaking up, Baptistland weaves together Christa’s revealing story of hope amid Southern patriarchy and religious fundamentalism.”
6	Disobedient Women: How a small group of faithful women exposed abuse, brought down powerful pasters, and ignited an evangelical reckoning	Sarah Stankorb	More reason to hate fundamentalist Christianity, or any system deliberately made to benefit the powerful few and oppress women. This was a good summary of earlier reading I did by Christa Brown and Tia Levings. Yes, there was a theme to my reading this year.
7	Maybe You Should Talk to Someone	Lori Gottlieb	Full of, well, gentle truth bombs, as this therapist sees patients and is a patient.  I underlined many passages to continue to reflect on. She also writes an “Ask the Therapist” for The Atlantic.
8	Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma	Claire Dederer	Premise: What do you do about art you love when the artist (author, musician) is someone you abhor?  Is there a difference between ethical thoughts and moral feelings? The author delves in to genius and Lolita and Little House on the Prairie. and monstrousness as a stain that can’t easily be removed. And people aren’t just a product of their time–often they had the opportunity to know better but chose otherwise. “If male crime is rape, the female crime is failure to nurture” (abandoning children). “I wondered: wasn’t calling them monsters, writing about their monstrousness, enumerating their monster sins, just a way of keeping them at the center of the story?” (p 45). End thought: With so many options, we can avoid what we naturally dislike and as humans, justify what we do; however, how we consume art is not morally good or bad.
9	Shortest Way Home	Pete Buttigieg	Read by author— wow, I need to vote for this guy for Pres someday!  Excellently written memoir of his life into his 2nd term of mayor, with plenty of admitting of mistakes, learning from them, matter-of-fact thoughtfulness and intelligence.
10	The Salt Path	Raynor Winn	I did not think I’d like this as much as I did. She somehow did not get bogged down in the travelog nature, not dwelling on the best or worst of the hike itself but wove her tale together with social and political realism/commentary. They hiked because they were homeless and broke– and were treated differently depending upon what they’re fellow travelers knew about them.  She truly is an excellent, later-in-life writer.