Best Books of 2019
Last year I set my reading goal at 40 books, and somehow read over 100, so I thought I’d put together a list of some of my favorites plus a few that were highly-rated on Goodreads as well! There is everything from romance to horror, so you’re bound to find something you’ll love.
And if you’re interested, I also illustrated this list and turned it into a print, mug, and greeting cards too. You can find them here.
The Whisper Man
By: Alex North
Category: Thriller
Synopsis: In this dark, suspenseful thriller, Alex North weaves a multi-generational tale of a father and son caught in the crosshairs of an investigation to catch a serial killer preying on a small town.
The Most Fun We Ever Had
By: Claire Lombardo
Category: Literary Fiction
Synopsis: A dazzling, multigenerational novel in which the four adult daughters of a Chicago couple--still madly in love after forty years--recklessly ignite old rivalries until a long-buried secret threatens to shatter the lives they've built.
The Bookish Life of Nina Hill
By: Abbi Waxman
Category: Rom-Com
Synopsis: The only child of a single mother, Nina has her life just as she wants it: a job in a bookstore, a kick-butt trivia team, a world-class planner and a cat named Phil. If she sometimes suspects there might be more to life than reading, she just shrugs and picks up a new book. But life is about to get a whole lot more complicated!
Recursion
By: Blake Crouch
Category: Sci-Fi
Synopsis: Memory makes reality. That’s what New York City cop Barry Sutton is learning as he investigates the devastating phenomenon the media has dubbed False Memory Syndrome-a mysterious affliction that drives its victims mad with memories of a life they never lived.
The Silent Patient
By: Alex Michaelides
Category: Thriller
Synopsis: Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. A search for the truth threatens to consume...
The Unhoneymooners
By: Christina Lauren
Category: Rom-Com
Synopsis: Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). But then, the wedding, and the honeymoon go off the rails…
Ninth House
By: Leigh Bardugo
Category: Fantasy
Synopsis: Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
The Grace Year
By: Kim Liggett
Category: Sci-Fi, Thriller
Synopsis: No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden. In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.
Well Met
By: Jen DeLuca
Category: Rom-Com
Synopsis: Emily knew there would be strings attached when she relocated to the small town of Willow Creek, Maryland, for the summer to help her sister recover from an accident, but who could anticipate getting roped into volunteering for the local Renaissance Faire alongside her teenaged niece? Or that the irritating and inscrutable schoolteacher in charge of the volunteers would be so annoying that she finds it impossible to stop thinking about him?
The Testaments
By: Margaret Atwood
Category: Sci-Fi
Synopsis: When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead for her--freedom, prison or death. With The Testaments, the wait is over.
Red, White & Royal Blue
By: Casey McQuiston
Category: Rom-Com
Synopsis: A big-hearted romance in which the First Son Alex falls in love with Henry the Prince of Wales, after an incident of international proportions forces them to pretend to be friends…
The Dutch House
By: Ann Patchett
Category: Historical Fiction
Synopsis: At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The Institute
By: Stephen King
Category: Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Synopsis: In the middle of the night, in a house on a quiet street in suburban Minneapolis, intruders silently murder Luke Ellis's parents and load him into a black SUV. The operation takes less than two minutes. Luke will wake up at The Institute, in a room that looks just like his own, except there’s no window. And outside his door are other doors, behind which are other kids with special talents—telekinesis and telepathy—who got to this place the same way Luke did: Kalisha, Nick, George, Iris, and ten-year-old Avery Dixon. They are all in Front Half. Others, Luke learns, graduated to Back Half, “like the roach motel,” Kalisha says. “You check in, but you don’t check out.”
A Woman Is No Man
By: Etaf Rum
Category: Domestic Fiction
Synopsis: This debut novel by an Arab-American voice, takes us inside the lives of conservative Arab women living in America. In Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice.
Verity
By: Colleen Hoover
Category: Romance Thriller
Synopsis: Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish. Lowen arrives at the Crawford home, ready to sort through years of Verity's notes and outlines, hoping to find enough material to get her started. What Lowen doesn't expect to uncover in the chaotic office is an unfinished autobiography Verity never intended for anyone to read.
Daisy Jones & The Six
By: Taylor Jenkins Reid
Category: Historical Fiction
Synopsis: Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now.
