The Top Ten Books of the Second Half of 2024
Honorable Mention--
To be honest, I didn’t love the book. It was a little slow, but it makes the list simply because it was a little terrifying in how it displayed the human condition. I feel it really did demonstrate where our world is in terms of how we interact with culture and each other. The premise is a reality television show shot on a cruise ship. When the group of protagonists are invited to participate, they whole heartedly accept – and how many people would turn down a free cruise? I would have a hard time saying no. After the completion of the first night at sea, a group of five passengers awakes to an empty ship. Finding each other in the dark aboard a completely empty ship, they realize they are completely adrift with no amenities. No food. No electricity. No communication with the outside world. No communication until a mysterious disembodied voice begins to direct them in the true rules of the game on the ship. They will be competing until there is only one of them that is still standing. As the reasons that each person was chosen for their specific challenge were decided in advance. It is then that the true reality of the show emerges, the group show their inner character until the very last secret is revealed.
The Plus One By S.C. Laili
There seems to be a plethora of books about fancy weddings with people who have far too much money (Who are these people, and do they want to be my friend?). This extravagant event is at the center of the The Plus One. I was assuming that it would be a fluffy murder and suspense tale like so many I had read already this year. What I appreciated about this book was the transition of the protagonist from what we thought she was to her true profession. Shaylie is a journalist who focuses on economics and is particularly interested in the disparity between those who have millions, or billions, and their employees who toil to earn the companies their wealth. She is dating the best friend of the son and heir of an Indian hotel magnate who is worth billions of dollars. His fiancé? An influencer and sister of a beauty entrepreneur of a privately held company worth billions of dollars as well. When the happy couple are murdered at their traditional, but elaborate, Indian wedding in Cabo there are quite literally a billion reasons why it could have happened. As Shaylie begins to dig into the shady dealings of both families and companies, she finds more than just mistreatment of workers. She finds mistreatment of the bonds of family.
The Top 10 Finalists
#10--Slow Dance by Rainbow Rowell
It was the year of the authors I love releasing books and this one did not let me down nearly as much as many of the releases. Rainbow Rowell writes young adult romance books and is known for her Simon Snow books. A PG-13 take on the Harry Potter saga, Simon and the fan fiction inspired by it was popular amongst older kids who had grown up with Harry Potter. Slow Dance returns Rowell to her romantic roots. However, this time she is tackling it in adulthood. The main character, Shiloh, is recently divorced and has split custody of her two children with her ex-husband. She has moved back into her childhood home as she adjusts to the new lifestyle. She isn’t the only one revisiting the past. While attending the second wedding of her friend from high school, she runs into the slow burn romantic partner that never happened in high school, Carey. There was chemistry, but there was never the relationship. They spend the whole night talking and return to her mother’s house together. Enter real life. The magic of that high school flashback is over, and their current lives enter back into play. As the two try and forge a relationship in their new roles in life there are hits and misses. As a divorced woman, it was a beautiful look at the hurt each person carries from past decisions and the hope that is still available in the choices ahead.
#9-- The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
Kate Quinn’s books are always good for two reasons. One, she does her research, and she does it well. Two, she creates characters that have depth. The Briar Club felt like a direct switch from The Huntress, which depicts a sharpshooter who is a loner. The center of the The Club is a women’s boarding house in Washington D.C. during the 1950s. Reading the author’s note, she said what drew her to this story was the countering of the stereotype of the 1950’s war boom in the suburbs. That wasn’t the reality for many, and for each of the women in the boarding house that is the reality. Quinn switches narrators in each chapter, giving each woman the opportunity to unfurl in their own way. From women who saw power in the United States while the men were away being stripped of the power to the plight of the lesbian’s, war widows, and immigrants from war torn Europe each character has a chance to share their journey with the reader. Yet each chapter brings them together at Thursday night dinners where they share their cultural dish, the weekly progression of each of the members and the escalation of the Cold War at The Briar Club.
#8--The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
I have to admit that when I picked up this book, I wasn’t terribly excited about it. I was looking for a book to fill my time until Riley Sager’s next book was released. But it was a really fascinating read in the end, even if slightly predictable in many ways. It begins with that mythical trope of the relative who mysteriously has property in some exotic location and after they pass it is left to their next of kin. In this case, Sara Marsala, the next of kin, is flailing in her adult life as her marriage has ended, and her touted Chef’s career has been curtailed due to the costs of operating a restaurant. In reality, she is a butcher and the concept of the restaurant with a butcher chef folded in the wake of 2020. Sara goes to Sicily to take care of selling her deceased aunt’s property and hopes to return home quickly to her daughter. If you have ever been to Italy, they do not pride themselves on being quick. When I was running one morning on the streets of Rome a man called after me, “What is the rush?” True story. The red tape and questions surrounding the true ownership of the property by a woman postpones Sara’s return to the states. During her stay she discovers the true story behind how her aunt came into the possession of the home, obviously meets a handsome Italian man who just happens to own a restaurant on the beach, and she also exposes herself to the Mafias’ true dominance in Sicily. It was filled with cliches that were dotted with a historic peek into the fine line between Italian law and organized crime, including a retrospective at the end about the role women play in the crime family. An enlightening book, in that respect, it has stuck with me as I prepare for my own trip abroad to Italy this summer.
#7 --The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
Art. Bone fragments. Tidal islands. They come together in the latest of Paula Hawkins’ twisty psychological tales. Upon the secluded tidal island is a large home once inhabited by a quirky sculptor. After her death, her executor has failed to uphold many of the business dealings around the bequest of the collection of art. This brings together the cast of characters who seem simultaneously modern and Victorian Gothic all at once. As the requesting museum collection prods deeper into the presence of a human bone in one of their displays, the truth of the tidal island begins to emerge. Woven throughout the tale are the journal entries of Vanessa, the artist in question, regarding her husband. There is an almost certainty that the early death that beheld him was not an accident but another artistic expression of the Vanessa’s take on the world. A more literary attempt at her psychological genre, Paula Hawkins embodies the art of gothic horror in addition to the genre. For a Paula Hawkins novel, I was a little disappointed. It was slow in unwinding and the reveal at the end wasn’t terribly shocking. It was more like inevitable.
by Liz Moore
Summer camp. Whether you were a month-long camper or a weeklong camper as a child, or simply dreamed of attending an overnight camp, nostalgia is automatically triggered at the mention of the word. My own first experience was less than enjoyable for me, less canoeing and more team games at a Leadership Camp. Bible camp provided more of the outdoorsy experience I wanted. In Liz Moore’s The God of the Woods, we find this type of woodsy idyll in a typical east coast type summer camp. However, the dreamy pall of camp has been disturbed in the opening summer of the narrative with the disappearance of a young camper. Not just any camper, either. The daughter of the camp’s owner. On top of that? Her younger brother, whom she never met, went missing before she was born. The enclave of rich New Yorkers who have descended to the adjoining summer residence of the owner and the flashbacks of the girl’s counselor are investigated by a woman who is constantly undermined by her own department due to her gender. What unravels are intricate relationships that have covered up lies and past transgressions for years culminating in a revelation you won’t see coming.
#5 -- Such Charming Liars by Karen M. McManus
This book was just fun. The premise is farfetched, and sometimes a little silly, but I enjoyed every minute. Kat is a teen who is trying to live her life to the most with her friends as she is finishing her high school career. However, she has to balance this with her mother’s under-employment and often childish and erratic behavior. Case and point? For forty-eight hours when Kat was young her mother ran off and married a man in Vegas, leaving Kat alone in the hotel room with her new stepbrother Liam. On top of that, her mother’s maid’s work doubles as a front for robbing the rich for her boss. Her mom has sworn to get out of the business and go straight, but she has to accomplish one last jewel heist at an elegant 80th birthday party. In a sneaky turn of events, Kat ends up accompanying her mother to the wedding and when Jamie, her mother, gets violently ill upon arrival, Kat takes her place. Meanwhile, in attendance at the party is Liam. His father is dating one of the daughters of the birthday boy, billionaire Ross Sutherland. Chaos ensues and when a murder makes its way to the celebration the plot gets more fun and secrets are revealed neither Kat, nor I, saw coming.
#4 -- Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
Riley Sager is hands down one of my favorite authors. He is a suspense and horror writer, which isn’t always the genre I love. I mean, I love suspense, but he is considered more as a horror writer. But his brand is more the horror within the unknown rather than ghosts and supernatural, a la directors M. Night Shymalan and Jordan Peele. Out of all of his books, this one was the most M. Night Shymalan, with an ending I didn’t see coming. It tells the story of a man, Ethan, who has moved back to his childhood home to manage the sale of the property upon a separation from his wife and his parents’ move to a condo in Florida. The house in the cul-de-sac seems to exist in a state of the past, with the children he grew up with living in their own childhood homes around the circle. The group of adult children is haunted by the disappearance of Billy, a neighborhood boy, when they were growing up. Ethan especially feels the ghost’s presence as he stands in his backyard and receives the code message that he and Billy had shared as friends—a baseball is thrown over the hedge of the house next door. What unfolds are renewed relationships, investigations into the mysterious think tank of an asylum through the woods and the truth about what happened the night Billy disappeared. It didn’t unfold the way I thought it would—but Riley Sager’s books rarely do.
#3-- The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Lie by Frieda McFadden
Guilty. Guilty. Guilty. I am guilty of loving the twisty psychological thriller genre. Frieda McFadden is no stranger to the genre with her best-selling books like The Boyfriend and The Housemaid and the series that follow. However, The Widow’s Husband’s Secret Lie is a novella she wrote to take every trope of the genre and spoof it…and I loved it. It was meta and over the top and hilarious. No spoilers here, but if you have ever read a psychological thriller old and rolled your eyes at the neatly inserted plot twist, this will make you laugh out loud. It was a fun, short read perfect for a quick laugh.
#2 -- A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston
I am a hater of Hallmark movies and proud of it. I am sorry all of you who paid to take the themed cruise and who wait all year for the Christmas movies. I just don’t see romance as a solid plot line. I guess romance is different to me than love. That being said, I kept seeing this book on lists and because it was about an English professor who loves books, I decided I would give it a try. I was not expecting to really enjoy it as much as I did. There were the obligatory sex scenes I hate, but I could ignore those. This story is magical realism, which is what made it palatable to me as a romance. A woman who is at a place in her life where she feels stuck (relatable) is abandoned by her book club devoted solely to romance on their annual summer escape. She vows to go alone and in the style of Schmigadoon! she crosses a bridge, and her car breaks down in the small town where her favorite book series is set. Her “meet cute” is almost hitting man standing in the street in the rain, a character she doesn’t recognize from the books. But as characters that she knows intimately on the page come to life, her romance becomes the center of the plot.
#1 --The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
I have never vibed with the insights of a narrator as much as I vibed with those of the protagonist of The Life Impossible. At a point in my life where I am transitioning to a new lifestyle, the author’s quirky life observations are perfectly stated revelations of my own inner angst. It’s another mysterious case where a person is given a house in Europe. Any Hoolihans, Houlihans, Houlahans in Ireland who happen to have a home they want to leave to family, I will gladly accept. Grace Winters, who is a retired math teacher and recent widow, makes her way to Ibiza where she has been left a home by a woman she taught with in her first year working. She was not particularly friends with the woman and had indeed lost touch many years before. However, she had offered to spend Christmas with her one year so she would not be alone. Grace has nothing else to do (I am jealous of the freedom) and she makes her uncomfortable way to Ibiza. She feels out of place and she has made a mistake until she notices a mysterious olive jar of water that is always filled after she dumps it out. From this single point she begins to investigate what actually happened to her friend and she discovers a cast of Spanish character foils to her own personality and discovers the impossible and regains her life.
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