Ariel's Top 10 Books for 2020
/Oh, 2020, how I wish to be rid of you. I could go on about how much this year was very much not anyone’s year (aside from Dua Lip who put out one of the best albums,) but I’ll spare you the complaints. I already sent them to the complaint department (what I like call my mother) and thus will say one of the few things that happened this year was I found the time to read. And by read, I mean read a helluva lot.
I not only met my Good Reads Reading Challenge Goal of fifty-five books but beat it by ten books at the time of writing this article. I spent lunch breaks devouring books, discovered the hidden treasure of NetGalley, and often stayed up to til 2 am to finish a book, where one even haunted me in my sleep. Let’s just say the character was not a good person and I desperately needed a detox of a romcom shortly after.
For books and me, it was a good year. NPR just released their best books of 2020 and here I am, giving you my top 10 books of 2020 in no particular order. Did you read any of them? What’d you think of them? Most importantly what should I read next?!
Daisy Jones & The Six
Taylor Jenkins Reid
You know when she had me? When I knew that song was fucking great? When she said, “When you think of me, I hope it ruins rock ’n’ roll.
One could speak multitudes about how incredible this book was. It had music, heartache, and addiction bleeding from its pages. Pure heart and rock n’ roll, you could practically hear the soundtrack as you read its pages.
Taking inspiration from Fleetwood Mac, Reid takes us through the epic rise and fall of Daisy Jones & the Six. Told through the perspective of the band, and practically everyone in the band’s orbit, the book takes on the quality of a tell-all of your favorite rock act that skyrocketed to fame. A quality tale of making music, battling your demons, and general drama that unfolds behind the scenes.
Milk and Honey
Rupi Kaur
He asks me what i do i tell him i work for a small company that makes packaging for— he stops me midsentence no not what you do to pay the bills what drives you crazy what keeps you up at night.
I don’t often seek out Poetry - it’s one of those things I placed on the back-burner with Medieval History. Then I read Kaur’s Milk and Honey. It felt honest, relatable, and struck a chord in me I hadn’t felt in a long time. I found myself snapping pictures of her pages, and sending them to friends. Shockingly short, Kaur’s collection of poems hits you like a train and haunts you after.
My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell
That’s how I described the difference back then—perfect. I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.
Much like Kaur’s book that haunts you with her heartbreaking poetry, Russell’s dramatic tale of a teenage girl embarking on a multi-year relationship with her teacher will haunt you in perhaps not the most pleasant way. The book oscillates between past and present where a movement similar to MeToo is happening. As an adult Vanessa reckons with her torrid history with the teacher she thought she loved, she comes to realize memories can hide trauma, and she can’t hide forever. This isn’t a book for everyone, but it was superbly written it had to make this list.
Then She Was Gone
Lisa Jewell
Neither of them were setting the world alight but then whose children did? All those hopes and dreams and talk of ballerinas and pop stars, concert pianists and boundary-breaking scientists. They all ended up in an office. All of them.
2020 was year of RomComs and Thrillers. Some not so great and some that dusted the others, Jewell’s book was one of them that blew most of them out of the water. A suspenseful drama about a mother reeling with her daughter’s sudden disappearance ten years later after meeting a child that looks shockingly like the one she lost years before. Jewell doesn’t hold back from telling you early of her daughter, Ellie’s fate, but the twists that follow leave you guessing until the very end.
White Rage
Carol Anderson
The trigger for white rage, inevitably, is black advancement. It is not the mere presence of black people that is the problem; rather, it is blackness with ambition, with drive, with purpose, with aspirations, and with demands for full and equal citizenship.
While not long in length this book packs a powerful punch. Anderson gives insight into ‘white rage’ and the obstacles the black community faces every day for decades, from hindering their ability to vote to attacking a family in their own home just because they moved to a white suburb. It’s awful, brutal and we all need to be reminded of our country’s history. Educate yourself.
The Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides
You know that joke, about why you can’t be a therapist and smoke? Because it means you’re still fucked up.
You know those books you so good you can only think of them and the only way to rid yourself of thinking about it constantly is to just read it in one go? That’s Michaelides psychological thriller about a criminal psychotherapist determined to find out why a famous artist killed her husband years before and refused to speak since the event. I don’t want to give too much away about this book, but just when you think you’ve seen all the twists, Michaelides continues to surprise you.
Well Met
Jen DeLuca
He kissed me like he had something to prove.
DeLuca’s Friends To Lovers romance set Renaissance Festival is pure cozy goodness. When Emily meets Simon, the organizer of his family’s Renaissance Faire, they butt heads immediately. As the Faire gets underway and they lean into their Festival alter-egos they find they have more in common and chemistry than they thought possible. Sometimes you need a fizzy romcom to remind you not everything sucks, and DeLuca does just that.
White Ivy
Susie Yang
Men always think they take the initiative but it’s women who make the first, often imperceptible move.
White Ivy was one of the first books I received from NetGalley, and after finishing it set the bar for all other ARCs for the year. Yang paints a vivid story of a young woman so unsure of herself she lies to everyone around her for fear of being found out. When Ivy comes across her childhood crush by sheer happenstance years later she thinks she’s finally getting her happily ever after. Little does the know the lengths she’ll go to protect the future she’s desperately sought out. Yang walks the fine line of coming of age, thriller, a touch of romance, and a cast of characters that exist in the grey area, you’re not sure who’re supposed to root for.
The Roommate
Rosie Danan
Look. I don’t have delusions of grandeur, but at this point in my life, I’ve made it my singular mission to help women get off more and better. Your existence as an outlier throws off the entire curve.
Another Romance that takes a fizzy can of soda to your heart in the best possible way. When uptight Clara moves across the country on a whim to live out her dream of falling in love with her childhood best friend, she gets a rude awakening when she finds he’s moving out and a handsome stranger named Josh is taking his place. Not long after moving in she discovers her new roomie is none other than adult film star Josh Darling. Don’t get distracted by the sweet cover, this book is sexy, romantic and feminist as hell.
Little Secrets
Jennifer Hillier
“I feel like I’m losing you.” “That’s factually impossible.” He spoke gently, leaning in. She saw the kiss coming, and could have turned her face away, but she didn’t. She wanted his lips on hers, wanted the connection. “Because you never had me.”
Another tale about a mother losing her child, but this one is miles different from Then She Was Gone. When Marin’s child was taken in broad daylight, her world was shattered. She became a shell of a woman, but never gave up hope. A year later the trail has gone cold, and her PI discovers her husband is cheating on her. Marin can’t lose another part of her life, and decides to do the unthinkable - hire someone to take out the woman coming between her and husband. Hillier’s thriller had me guessing until the very end.