The 20 Best Books of 2020

[image description: a stack of books with a cup of tea on top. The words “the 20 best books of 2020” are written across the image.]

I look forward to writing this post every year and at the same time, it stresses me out. There are SO many good books to choose from and I spend weeks trying to narrow down the list. But at least, here it is: The 20 Best Books of 2020.

Because I read a mix of new releases and backlist books, this list is of the best books I read in 2020, not necessarily books that were published in 2020. And because I read a bunch of different genres, you’ll find that reflected in the list as well.

As of this writing, I’ve read 168 books in 2020, falling short of my goal of 175. I probably won’t hit that before the year is out, but oh well. It’s been a good year of reading.

Let the countdown begin!

#20: Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

Synopsis from Goodreads:

How much can a family forgive?

A profoundly moving novel about two neighboring families in a suburban town, the bond between their children, a tragedy that reverberates over four decades, the daily intimacies of marriage, and the power of forgiveness.

Francis Gleeson and Brian Stanhope, two rookie cops in the NYPD, live next door to each other outside the city. What happens behind closed doors in both houses—the loneliness of Francis’s wife, Lena, and the instability of Brian’s wife, Anne—sets the stage for the explosive events to come.

Ask Again, Yes is a deeply affecting exploration of the lifelong friendship and love that blossoms between Francis and Lena’s daughter, Kate, and Brian and Anne’s son, Peter. Luminous, heartbreaking, and redemptive, Ask Again, Yes reveals the way childhood memories change when viewed from the distance of adulthood—villains lose their menace and those who appeared innocent seem less so. Kate and Peter’s love story, while tested by echoes from the past, is marked by tenderness, generosity, and grace.

What I like about this book is (without spoiling it for you) that it shows the radical power of forgiveness, acceptance and love. And how when you marry someone, you don’t just marry them––you marry their family too, for better or worse.

#19: The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite

Synopsis from Goodreads:

As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.

Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.

While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?

Fun fact: I LOVE Regency romances. I’m still fairly new to the romance genre, but after burning through Tessa Dare and Sarah MacLean’s novels, I was on the hunt for more. Happy day for me, a queer friend suggested I check out Olivia Waite and BOY HOWDY am I glad I did. It has all the class issues I love about Regencies combined with satisfying queer love. Not all queer romance has to be set in the past century and Olivia Waite did an excellent job of creating a beautifully written, authentic story.

#18: Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In the tradition of audacious and wryly funny novels like The Idiot and Convenience Store Woman comes the wildly original coming-of-age story of a pregnant pizza delivery girl who becomes obsessed with one of her customers.

Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl in suburban Los Angeles, our charmingly dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She's grieving the death of her father (who she has more in common with than she'd like to admit), avoiding her supportive mom and loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.

Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighborhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickled covered pizzas for her son's happiness. As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other towards middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.

Bold, tender, propulsive, and unexpected in countless ways, Jean Kyoung Frazier's Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.

I think everybody has had the experience of doing things that they feel compelled to do and honestly have no idea why. Like being attracted to someone it’s never going to work out with. Like the desire to destroy your life as you know it even though you don’t really know what you want and therefore would have a hell of a time building anew. I think humans go through self-destructive phases, some lasting longer than others, because sometimes they just can’t accept the reality they’ve found themselves in. It’s hard enough to even describe those feelings, much less write an entire novel about the experience, but Jean Kyoung Frazier does it so well! I was totally engrossed by this novel and have a hard time explaining why. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.

#17: The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters--James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna--join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women's movement into the witch's movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There's no such thing as witches. But there will be.

I love a good witch story, though sometimes I get exasperated because witches are such a common theme in fiction that it’s easy to cling to tired tropes. That’s why I love this novel––it was one surprise after another! And the explicit tie-in with early feminism and the suffragettes was really well done.

#16: These Ghosts Are Family by Maisy Card

Synopsis from Goodreads:

A transporting debut novel that reveals the ways in which a Jamaican family forms and fractures over generations, in the tradition of Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Stanford Solomon has a shocking, thirty-year-old secret. And it’s about to change the lives of everyone around him. Stanford Solomon is actually Abel Paisley, a man who faked his own death and stole the identity of his best friend.

And now, nearing the end of his life, Stanford is about to meet his firstborn daughter, Irene Paisley, a home health aide who has unwittingly shown up for her first day of work to tend to the father she thought was dead.

These Ghosts Are Family revolves around the consequences of Abel’s decision and tells the story of the Paisley family from colonial Jamaica to present-day Harlem. There is Vera, whose widowhood forced her into the role of a single mother. There are two daughters and a granddaughter who have never known they are related. And there are others, like the house boy who loved Vera, whose lives might have taken different courses if not for Abel Paisley’s actions.

These Ghosts Are Family explores the ways each character wrestles with their ghosts and struggles to forge independent identities outside of the family and their trauma. The result is an engrossing portrait of a family and individuals caught in the sweep of history, slavery, migration, and the more personal dramas of infidelity, lost love, and regret. This electric and luminous family saga announces the arrival of a new American talent.

I’ve been chasing the high of Homegoing ever since I read it a few years ago, so when I heard this novel was likened to Homegoing, I jumped on it. I was not disappointed! A sweeping family saga about the Jamaican diaspora, reckoning with the past and with the family you’ve got, this novel is hard-hitting in so many well-rendered ways. I recommend listening to it on audio so you can hear the story read by Jamaican voice actors. I did and was so captivated that I read it in like two days.

#15: Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson

Synopsis from Goodreads:

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for "A Room to Talk"), they discover it's safe to talk about what's bothering them—everything from Esteban's father's deportation and Haley's father's incarceration to Amari's fears of racial profiling and Ashton's adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

I’m always fascinated by how authors write difficult subjects for a young audience. How do you even begin to discuss racism, incarceration, deportation, class issues, white guilt, and death with kids? It seems overwhelming until you read books by authors like Jacqueline Woodson. There are people who say topics like these should be kept out of kids’ books and they’re wrong. Kids suffer from all the same societal forces as adults, they just don’t yet know as much about what to do about them and the only way they can learn is if the adults in their lives are brave enough to confront the issues head-on. Not only is this novel important for those reasons, it’s so gorgeously written. Whoever thinks YA can’t be “literary” is dead wrong.

#14: You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Leading Ladies do not end up on tabloid covers.

After a messy public breakup, soap opera darling Jasmine Lin Rodriguez finds her face splashed across the tabloids. When she returns to her hometown of New York City to film the starring role in a bilingual romantic comedy for the number one streaming service in the country, Jasmine figures her new “Leading Lady Plan” should be easy enough to follow—until a casting shake-up pairs her with telenovela hunk Ashton Suárez.

Leading Ladies don’t need a man to be happy.

After his last telenovela character was killed off, Ashton is worried his career is dead as well. Joining this new cast as a last-minute addition will give him the chance to show off his acting chops to American audiences and ping the radar of Hollywood casting agents. To make it work, he’ll need to generate smoking-hot on-screen chemistry with Jasmine. Easier said than done, especially when a disastrous first impression smothers the embers of whatever sexual heat they might have had.

Leading Ladies do not rebound with their new costars.

With their careers on the line, Jasmine and Ashton agree to rehearse in private. But rehearsal leads to kissing, and kissing leads to a behind-the-scenes romance worthy of a soap opera. While their on-screen performance improves, the media spotlight on Jasmine soon threatens to destroy her new image and expose Ashton’s most closely guarded secret.

I don’t want to spend too much of this post talking about how 2020 was a hard year and that impacted my reading decisions and ability to enjoy things, but I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the case. Depression has been a shadow lurking in the corner just over my shoulder, so I’ve had to ration the sadness I’ve had control over. As such, sometimes I just wanted a good, sexy romp through fiction to brighten my day (not that I or anyone needs an excuse to read romance) and this novel delivered! The characters are both complex and interesting, the sex scenes was incredibly well-written, and it was overall a delightful book.

#13: Paying the Land by Joe Sacco

Synopsis from Goodreads:

The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life.

In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to “remove the Indian from the child”; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture.

I loved this book so much I already wrote a review of it earlier this year. I’ve thought about it so often since reading it… Whose history isn’t taught? What history do textbook creators ignore because those in power are ashamed of their role in it? Whose history goes unknown because of neglect and/or purposeful eradication? Who do the powers that be want you to believe don’t exist and who benefits from that erasure? And who are those in power who perpetuate this erasure? As you’ll find in this book, it’s the Canadian government, the Catholic church, and wealthy capitalists who would like to see a people erased in order to extract resources from the land. There’s a LOT going on and Joe Sacco does an excellent job explaining these complex issues in accessible ways, both through words and art, and honoring the real human stories of the people being directly affected.

#12: The Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Here is a first novel like no other: a spellbinding tale that both creates its own fully realized world perspective and provides an incisive look at the ways that humans and animals resemble each other. A group of elegant monster dogs in top hats, tails, and bustle skirts become instant celebrities when they come to New York in 2008. Refugees from a town whose residents had been utterly isolated for a hundred years, the dogs retain the nineteenth-century Germanic culture of the humans who created them. They are wealthy and glamorous and seem to lead charmed lives - but they find adjusting to the modern world difficult, and when a young woman, Cleo Pira, befriends them, she discovers that a strange, incurable illness threatens them all with extinction. When the dogs construct their dream home, a fantastic castle on the Lower East Side, and barricade themselves inside, Cleo finds herself one of the few human witnesses to a mad, lavish party that may prove to be the final act in the drama of the lives of the monster dogs.

I read this in late summer and have thought about it often since. I still have trouble even describing the ways this novel broke my brain and glued the pieces back together in a different order. Though it’s obviously fiction, it had me thinking a lot about medical and scientific ethics, whether the ends of experimentation and discovery justify the means, and the pitfalls of journalists getting too close to their sources. Also how society has been known to treat race and culture as spectacle, combined with the default expectation of assimilation. It’s a wild book and I never wanted it to end.

#11: Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.

Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building.

Part coming-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.

Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.

Good god, I’ve never been so happy to not live in San Francisco and work in the tech industry as I was when I read this. I worked in customer service for a decade and know how upper management can treat customer-facing and product training folks like they’re doing bottom of the barrel jobs. Like they’d prefer not to have you on staff because you’re a waste, but the only thing they disdain more than you are the customers who are so stupid as to need you. All that is amplified a thousand times over when combined with the cutthroat startups of Silicon Valley and the sexist tech bros who run them. Whatever you’re imagining, it’s wilder and so much worse than you think.

#10": The Butterfly Effect by Rachel Mans McKenny

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Is there such a thing as an anti-social butterfly? If there were, Greta Oto would know about it—and totally relate. Greta far prefers the company of bugs to humans, and that’s okay because people don’t seem to like her all that much anyway, with the exception of her twin brother, Danny, though they've recently had a falling out. So when she lands a research gig in the rainforest, she leaves it all behind.

But when Greta learns that Danny has suffered an aneurysm and is now hospitalized, she abandons her research and hurries home to the middle of nowhere America to be there for her brother. But there's only so much she can do, and unfortunately, just like insects, humans don't stay cooped up in their hives either--they buzz about and... socialize. Coming home means confronting all that she left behind, including her lousy soon-to-be sister-in-law, her estranged mother, and her ex-boyfriend Brandon who has conveniently found a new non-lab-exclusive partner with shiny hair, perfect teeth, and can actually remember the names of the people she meets right away. Being that Brandon runs the only butterfly conservatory in town, and her dissertation is now in jeopardy, taking that job, being back home, it's all creating chaos in Greta's perfectly cataloged and compartmentalized world.

The Butterfly Effect is an honest tale of self-discovery, about the behavior of bugs (and people), how they can be altered by high-pressure climates, confused by breakdowns in communication, and most importantly, how they can rehabilitate themselves and each other.

This is another one I loved so much that I wrote a whole review on it. I’ve thought about it often because 1) the theme of “hurt people hurt people” has been SO real this year. 2) It’s such a perfect illustration of how being academically intelligent doesn’t mean you’re emotionally intelligent or have good sense in general. And 3) I bought a bunch of butterfly art and now have a wall in my bedroom that kind of looks like the book cover. If book lists were treated like pageants, this one would win Miss Congeniality because it’s overall fantastic and there’s something for everyone to love.

#9: We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Set in the coastal town of Danvers, Massachusetts (which in 1692 was Salem Village, site of the origins of the Salem Witch Trials), it follows the Danvers High field hockey team as they discover that the dark impulses of their Salem forebears may be the key to a winning season.

In this tour de female force, the 1989 Danvers Falcons are on an unaccountable winning streak. In chapters dense with '80s iconography--from Heathers to Big Hair--Quan Barry expertly weaves together the individual and collective journeys of this enchanted team as they storm their way to the state championship. Helmed by good-girl captain Abby Putnam (a descendant of the infamous Salem accuser Ann Putnam) and her co-captain Jen Fiorenza, whose bleached blond "Claw" sees and knows all, the DHS Falcons prove to be as wily and original as their North of Boston ancestors, flaunting society's stale notions of femininity in order to find their glorious true selves through the crucible of team sport.

You know how I said I love witch stories, but get tired of the same old tropes? This novel is anything but conventional! It might be the weirdest, wildest thing I’ve read in a long time and I mean that in the best way. Quan did an excellent job of balancing humor, 80s nostalgia, legit frightening witch stuff, and all of the dramas and interpersonal conflicts of the girls’ lives. If the book had been 5,000 pages I would’ve been happy living in their world for that long and longer.

#8: Sounds Like Titanic: A Memoir by Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Sounds Like Titanic tells the story of how Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman became a fake violinist. Raised in rural Appalachia and struggling to pay college tuition in the big city, Hindman joins her first a professional ensemble. But the job is a sham: when the group “performs,” the microphones are off while music blares from a hidden CD. On tour with this unique ensemble and its mysterious composer, Hindman “plays” for audiences genuinely moved by the performance but unable to distinguish real from fake. At once a coming-of-age memoir and an incisive articulation of modern anxieties of gender, class, and ambition, Sounds Like Titanic is “angry, merciless, empathetic . . . [and] hugely entertaining” (Tom Bissell).

I LOVE weird memoirs. The weirder the memoir, the more I’m going to enjoy it. Yet despite reading a ton of weird memoirs over the years, I was not prepared for this one. When I read the back of the book jacket I was like, “No way.” Which quickly turned into “what the fuck?!” If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought it was fiction. It’s stranger than fiction. It will never cease to fascinate me the lengths people will go to keep up an image and have a semblance of following their dream. And the thing is… by the end of the book, I didn’t blame them.

#7 Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In the midst of a family crisis one late evening, white blogger Alix Chamberlain calls her African American babysitter, Emira, asking her to take toddler Briar to the local market for distraction. There, the security guard accuses Emira of kidnapping Briar, and Alix's efforts to right the situation turn out to be good intentions selfishly mismanaged.

A lot of novels about racism are, well, black and white. White person does something they know is bad and it affects the Black characters in a myriad of negative ways. This novel is different in that it shows how good intentions, even when you’re actively trying not to be racist, can still have awful consequences for the Black people involved. It gets into white guilt, white saviorism, and how at the end of the day, you just have to shut up and listen to the Black people who are affected rather than trying to make decisions on their behalf, especially when you think you’re doing the right thing. This novel takes a complicated look at an everyday situation gone awry and fills the story with gorgeous prose.

#6: A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Noah Turner sees monsters.

His father saw them—and built a shrine to them with The Wandering Dark, an immersive horror experience that the whole family operates.

His practical mother has caught glimpses of terrors but refuses to believe—too focused on keeping the family from falling apart.

And his eldest sister, the dramatic and vulnerable Sydney, won’t admit to seeing anything but the beckoning glow of the spotlight . . . until it swallows her up.

Noah Turner sees monsters. But, unlike his family, Noah chooses to let them in.

I’m more fascinated by the people who run haunted houses than I am by the haunted houses themselves. What makes someone want to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars creating an attraction to frighten people? I don’t say that to imply that there’s anything wrong with being a haunted house owner, only that I’m curious to know why they chose that mode of entrepreneurship as opposed to a record store or a watch factory. This novel gave me some insight. It was just creepy enough to make my skin crawl while also being fascinating enough that I didn’t want to stop reading, even as my skin was crawling. If novels like this are the future of the horror genre, I’ll be reading a lot more of it.

#5: You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

Synopsis from Goodreads:

On a hot day in Bethlehem, a 12-year-old Palestinian-American girl is yelled at by a group of men outside the Church of the Nativity. She has exposed her legs in a biblical city, an act they deem forbidden, and their judgment will echo on through her adolescence. When our narrator finally admits to her mother that she is queer, her mother’s response only intensifies a sense of shame: “You exist too much,” she tells her daughter.

Told in vignettes that flash between the U.S. and the Middle East―from New York to Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine―Zaina Arafat’s debut novel traces her protagonist’s progress from blushing teen to sought-after DJ and aspiring writer. In Brooklyn, she moves into an apartment with her first serious girlfriend and tries to content herself with their comfortable relationship. But soon her longings, so closely hidden during her teenage years, explode out into reckless romantic encounters and obsessions with other people. Her desire to thwart her own destructive impulses will eventually lead her to The Ledge, an unconventional treatment center that identifies her affliction as “love addiction.” In this strange, enclosed society she will start to consider the unnerving similarities between her own internal traumas and divisions and those of the places that have formed her.

Opening up the fantasies and desires of one young woman caught between cultural, religious, and sexual identities, You Exist Too Much is a captivating story charting two of our most intense longings―for love, and a place to call home.

I’ve been collecting books by Palestinian authors this year since I’ve been building out my Palestinian library and I’m thrilled my quest led me to this novel. There is so much I relate to in the book that I could easily write a long-form essay on it. Suffice it to say, sometimes you find a novel that feels like it was written especially for you and this one is mine.

#4: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Synopsis from Goodreads:

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

I love gothic stories. Give me a creepy old house and a family where you just know something is off, and I’ll devour that novel in no time. Most of the gothic novels I’ve read are British or Southern, so I was thrilled to find Mexican Gothic. I was hooked from the beginning and couldn’t get enough of all the skin-crawly details. And I did NOT see the twist at the end coming! This novel is equal parts fun and scary and, once again, I must say that if novels like this are the future of horror, I’m all in.

#3: All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Intimacy has always eluded twenty-seven-year-old Maggie Krause—despite being brought up by married parents, models of domestic bliss—until, that is, Lucia came into her life. But when Maggie’s mom, Iris, dies in a car crash, Maggie returns home only to discover a withdrawn dad, an angry brother, and, along with Iris's will, five sealed envelopes, each addressed to a mysterious man she’s never heard of.

In an effort to run from her own grief and discover the truth about Iris—who made no secret of her discomfort with her daughter's sexuality—Maggie embarks on a road trip, determined to hand-deliver the letters and find out what these men meant to her mother. Maggie quickly discovers Iris’s second, hidden life, which shatters everything Maggie thought she knew about her parents’ perfect relationship. What is she supposed to tell her father and brother? And how can she deal with her own relationship when her whole world is in freefall?

Told over the course of a funeral and shiva, and written with enormous wit and warmth, All My Mother's Lovers is the exciting debut novel from fiction writer and book critic Ilana Masad. A unique meditation on the universality and particularity of family ties and grief, and a tender and biting portrait of sex, gender, and identity, All My Mother's Lovers challenges us to question the nature of fulfilling relationships.

There are so many ways to love and so many ways to be in a healthy, loving relationship. This novel presents a half dozen of them, rendered so beautifully. Between the stunning prose, the realness of the characters, and the road trip/adventure element, I was hooked. There’s nothing cliche about this novel, not in the sense of the romance element or the road trip element. The author constantly found new ways to make classic tropes and plotlines feel new and fresh. As such, I finished this novel in record time and have thought about it often since.

#2: An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Newlyweds, Celestial and Roy, are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive and she is artist on the brink of an exciting career. They are settling into the routine of their life together, when they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft and unmoored, taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend, and best man at their wedding. As Roy’s time in prison passes, she is unable to hold on to the love that has been her center. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward- with hope and pain- into the future.

I’m fortunate that no one in my family and no one I’m close to has been incarcerated, so I have the privilege of not being able to imagine what it’s like to have someone you love locked up for something they didn’t do and try to have a life in their absence. Although I know the gruesomest details of incarcerated life were omitted in order to focus on the couple’s relationship, the complications of their love and the strain that incarceration had on their relationship felt authentic. My heart hurt so much while reading this, but in a necessary way. It’s a quick read, but it’ll stay with you long after you’ve finished the novel.

And finally…

#1: Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden

Synopsis from Goodreads:

Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight.

As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls.

With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful.

I avoid calling a book perfect for the same reason cooking show hosts never say whatever they’re eating is THE best. Because if you know what you’re seeing is the best, why bother with anything that comes after? And yet… there are a handful of books that I really do believe are perfect and that my critical eye could not find any fault with. One is The Glass Eye by Jeannie Vanasco. One is the Saga comic series. And one is this book. Lyrical, yet accessible prose. A compelling life story worthy of a memoir. Unpacking trauma in a way that shows it’s clear she’s processed it and been to a shit ton of therapy. Wild family dynamics. Wilder friendships. A feral childhood and adolescence. I know T Kira Madden isn’t old, but she’s lived several lifetimes in her three-ish decades and I enjoyed reading every single word of this fucking fantastic memoir that’s too beautiful for words. If I can write 1/16th as well as she does, I’ll count myself lucky.

And for the folks who care about stats, of the 20 books above, they break down like this:

• I read 10 as audiobooks and 10 as print books

• 16 are fiction and 4 are nonfiction

• 18 are written by women and 2 are written by men

• 5 of the authors are Black

• 2 of the authors are Asian

• 2 of the authors are Latinx/Hispanic

• 1 of the authors is Arab/Middle Eastern

• 2 of the authors are queer

• 10 of the authors are white

• 1 was published by an indie press and 19 were from Big 5 publishers

What all this tells me is, 1) wow, my reading is not nearly as diverse as I thought it was. 2) I clearly tend to gravitate toward fiction when the world is falling apart. 3) I tend to get most of my books by indie presses from browsing indie bookstores and either being intrigued by something there or being sold on it by a bookseller I trust. So not being able to physically browse bookstores really hampered my indie press reading.

If you read any of these, let me know what you think in the comments!