Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature/meme brought to you by the folks over at The Broke and the Bookish (the button also belongs to them). This week’s theme is the Top Ten Books I read in 2015.
I am a little late in posting this, but I LOVE doing these lists so I can look back on them. End of year posts are my favorites! Anyways, here’s my top 10 favorite books of the year…
1. Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith– I love love love this series and this was the best book of it so far. Strike and Robin are just the best and this book was so much about developing them as characters and exploring the dynamics of their relationship as they begin moving toward friendship… or more.
2. The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling– Yeah, yeah, J.K. Rowling makes the list twice. No surprise there. This was such a thoughtful and touching book, a study of real, flawed characters from different walks of life who are all struggling in their own ways. And more than that, it explores the social safety net and the motives/mindframes of those who wish to dismantle it and those who desperately need it in order to survive.
3. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien– This is a collection of beautifully-written interconnected short stories about the Vietnam War. I can’t believe it took me until this year to read this one.
4. Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson– See all those awards on the cover of this one? Yeah, they are well-deserved. This was beautiful and touching and a lovely memoir set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement.
5. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home Now by Claire LaZebnik– I read some really great chick lit this year and this was one of my favorites. There was subtle and smart character development, a sweet and easy romance, and the exploration of multiple relationships (family, friends, parent-child, romance).
6. Why Can’t I Be You by Allie Larkin– This has a bit of a Hollywood-style plot– Jenny is on a business trip and gets mistaken for her doppelganger, Jessie, and gets caught up pretending to be Jessie, mostly because Jessie has awesome friends and Jenny is kind of alone in her life. But somehow this crazy plot WORKS and has realistic consequences. Also, Allie Larkin writes love interests who love dogs. You can’t go wrong with that.
7. I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios– I read this book fast, finding it impossible to put down. I just loved the gritty realness of it, which is sort of rare for YA romance (though I might classify this as NA, which has its fair share of gritty romance).
8. Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid– This book tells the story of Hannah Martin in two different timelines, each based on a differing decision she makes one night at a bar. This was a really interesting twist on chick lit and Reid has a talent for telling stories in ways that just wouldn’t work for other authors.
9. Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center– This was a really insightful book about a woman who is trying to find happiness for herself after a whole lot of heartbreak in her life. She decides to do this through an intense, extreme wilderness survival course and learns a lot about herself and the nature of happiness along the way. It especially resonated with me because its main message is that in spite of the bad things in life, there are always little reasons to find to be happy and that is one of life’s lessons I need drilled into me time and again.
10. Kulti by Mariana Zapata– This is one of the best genre romances I’ve read in ages. I loved the hero, Kulti, because he’s that arrogant, brooding, sexy man with a dark past that I am always into. The heroine was a professional soccer player and that was interesting. There was a ton of chemistry and once the story got rolling, I could not put this book down.
What were your favorite books this year?
Don't Take My Books Away 