Everybody I know is looking forward to 2021 with hope that it will bring better days– but I also know a lot of people who didn’t get as much reading done in 2020 as they’d have liked to, and will be looking back to try to catch up. If that’s you, I hope this list of four top picks from 2020 will help make your future as bright and worthwhile as possible– while only carrying from this year what will bring you joy.
Topping the list is Brit Bennett’s second novel, which came out in June. The Vanishing Half follows the lives and families of the Vignes twins from the 1940s to the 1990s. Stella and Desiree are identical, but their paths in live couldn’t be more different. While Desiree lives in their southern hometown as a single Black mother, Stella has taken on a white persona and lives as a white woman with her husband and daughter, who know nothing of her past. Their shared face and shared history bring them unexpectedly back together when their daughters’ paths cross. This Goodreads choice winner is told from multiple perspectives, with a nonlinear timeline that takes a while to coalesce but will stick with you for a long time. It is available (with a waiting list) in many formats: book, ebook on OverDrive/Libby, digital audiobook on OverDrive/Libby (read by Shayna Small over 11.5 hours), and mp3 playaway.
Next up is a closed room mystery– who doesn’t love those? In The Guest List by Lucy Foley, out in February, a reality TV star and a magazine publishing mogul have their wedding on a remote island off the coats of Ireland. Dark woods, limited cell phone reception– romantic, right? The bride receives an anonymous note telling her not to marry her fiancé. Then someone turns up dead. Are the bride or groom to blame, or are they victims too? Full of lies, secrets, twists and turns, you’ll make it to the very end to find out what’s going on in this one. It’s also filled with lush descriptions of the luxury wedding, which will appeal to fans of Sidney Sheldon’s high society crime novels. Get on the list for the book, large print book, audiobook CD (read by a full cast over ten hours), digital audiobook on OverDrive/Libby (same recording details as above), or ebook on OverDrive/Libby.
Fiction featuring new adult protagonists has been growing steadily in popularity and prestige over the last few years, and I’m excited to see Luster, newcomer Raven Leilani’s debut from August, join the list. Young Black woman Edie (23) enters a relationship with an older, married white man (46) and finds herself entangled (physically, emotionally, financially) in his entire family, including his wife and young daughter. The marriage is open (the wife knows and has okay’ed her husband having relationships outside the marriage) and the daughter is a Black girl adopted into a white suburban family. The sharp ugliness of life in one’s twenties is rendered with incredible insight and wit by Leilani, a comedic force whose narrator becomes an anthropologist studying the mating habits of the modern office worker, all while being terribly insecure and alone. Get in line for the book here.
Lastly, a nonfiction entry to kick-start your brain in the new year. Barnes and Noble chose World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, which came out in August, as its Book of the Year 2020, so you know it’s good. Award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil dabbles beautifully in a new genre with this, a book about finding strength and joy in nature. The words are lovely and the lessons entertaining, and to top it off they are accompanied by gorgeous illustrations by Fumi Nakamura. If you or anyone you know likes to think about animals, this is not one to miss. Read the book or ebook on Hoopla as soon as you can!
