The 10+ Books We Read in January to kick off 2021

The last, longest, and best book I read in January. I haven’t read a pure high fantasy in a while, and I was absorbed in this book from beginning to end. It is long (over 800 pages), but it is fast-paced, fun, and exciting. There are four POVs, so if you don’t like that type of narrative jumping, it may be distracting, but I really liked all the characters. The world building is lush and excellent. The characters are well-developed. I found the story to be very feminist and progressive. There is LGBTQ representation and racial diversity which is generally uncommon in high fantasy. Overall this is a great read if you need some well-written escapist fantasy in quarantine.

I got this book from Becca Freeman’s December reading list on instagram. I had somehow never read an Elin Hildebrand book, though I believe there are about twenty of them (most set in Nantucket). The premise of this book hooked me because, as established earlier, I am a sucker for an angsty love story. Two people who only see each other once a year and carry out an affair while they both have children and live in different parts of the country? Sign me up! These two characters are kind of doomed from the beginning, but it’s a wild ride that touches politics, education, friendship, and city verus country (island) life. This would be a great beach read. But as a warning, I wouldn’t call it a happy book.

As a young woman working in tech, this book was highly relatable to me. It was educational and thought-provoking, providing insight into start-up culture and gender dynamics in tech. It made me think of San Francisco (a city I have never visited) as a sort of tech dystopia. I am pretty shocked this was an NYT top 10 book of the year. I liked it because it was so relevant to me—a woman working in tech, but I imagine most people wouldn’t relate to it as deeply. Listened to it on audiobook, but I would recommend reading. I didn’t love the narrator.

This was a fun book. I have seen it billed everywhere as Bridget Jones’s Diary meets Crazy Rich Asian and truthfully that is exactly what it is. It is a fast, escapist read that will make you laugh out loud. It’s written in diary format by an early-thirties M&A lawyer in Singapore dealing with her family’s insistence she gets married combined with career stress and just being a general wreck. It’s relatable emotionally, if not in lifestyle. Pretty predictable, but I do recommend. Especially nostalgic if you’ve ever been to Singapore (take me back!).

I enjoyed this book. It’s a romance with an unplanned pregnancy and a coworkers to lovers trope, but somehow it worked okay. To be honest, I was not that invested in the romance. A one-night stand is a tough start to any romance novel; it feels almost like love at first sight, which I don’t typically enoy. There was just not enough tension between Azere and Rafael for me. Far and away the most interesting part of it was the Nigerian culture, the immigrant experience, and the family dynamics. The concept of leaving behind your values and culture as an immigrant in order to survive is fascinating, and it made me consider how much compatibility factors into love.

Another YA. The premise: a young Caliph marries a new woman every night only to have her killed in the morning. I actually think this would have been better had it been a darker, adult book. As it stands, the romance is not super believable. The Caliph is not evil, but actually trying to save his kingdom (this is a spoiler but is so obviously apparent from the beginning I can’t bring myself to leave it out). The main character is a bit of Mary Sue who is beautiful and has no obvious faults and is also a better archer than all the soldiers in the castle. But you will read this one fast, and probably reach for the sequel at some point

I really enjoyed both Marie Lu’s Legend and The Young Elites series. She writes complicated, morally-gray YA characters very well. That being said, I did not like this book. I couldn’t really connect to any of the characters. The dystopian world felt familiar and wasn’t that exciting to me. The plot was kind of confusing and not paced very well. It was short, and I got through it fast, but I can’t say it was super exciting to me. With a series, I want to be compelled to pick up book two, and this one didn’t do it for me.

I really wanted to like this book. Again I was hooked by the premise: 1920s Shanghai Romeo and Juliet with Gangs. SOLD. Unfortunately, in addition to that brilliant tagline, the author decided to add in sci-fi sea monsters that were terrorizing the city, and it was too much for me. Gong is talented at setting a scene and creating vivid images, but the character and plot unfortunately didn’t do it for me. This book is set in such an interesting time of colonial upheaval in Shanghai in the 20s. I could have lived without the monster and instead had a more nuanced view of outsiders taking over the city and Roma and Juliette working together to keep them out.

Everyone and their mother got this book for Christmas; my family alone got 3 copies. I honestly felt obligated to read this and started it on January 1. The book, set during the Great Depression, follows four orphans running away from an abusive boarding school for Native Americans. They take a canoe down the Mississippi looking for their own place to call home. I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book; it’s well written and covers an interesting period of history, but the ending was a little chaotic and I felt like everything happened in the last 60 pages or so.

I love Elin Hilderbrand and I don’t care who knows it. I’ve read a bunch of her books, but this one was my favorite and steps a little outside of her typical “rich people doing things” summer beach read. It’s set on Nantucket in the summer of 1969, and follows the lives of the four Levin siblings through their summer while dealing with the changing environment in America. Ted Kennedy + the Chappaquiddick incident even makes an appearance. This is a great, fun book that has an unique historical perspective, and was especially interesting reading in 2020 and thinking about how influential 1969 was on American popular culture.

My roommate’s boyfriends lent me this book, and honestly, it took me several attempts to finish, which is not normal for me! I actually love Richard Russo—I really enjoyed Empire Falls and Bridge of Sighs, but found this book to be a departure from his typical stuff. Chances Are is about three college friends who reunite on Martha’s Vineyard before one of them sells their family’s house. While there, they reminisce about college, especially their friend Jacy who went missing during a weekend on Martha’s Vineyard after graduation. I was definitely intrigued by the mystery element but felt almost unnatural for Richard Russo to do that genre. It definitely picked up towards the end and had an unexpected element, which I definitely enjoyed!

The first book I read in 2021 was the LAST Tana French book! I am so sad that I’m out of Irish mysteries with grumpy detectives, but do feel a twisted sense of accomplishment for completely exhausting all of an author’s books. The Trespasser is the 6th installment of the Dublin Murder Squad series, and follows two dectectives (both of whom have appeared in previous books!) solving a case that looks very simple but ends up being incredibly complicated. This one did take a little while to get going, but ended up being great and really kept me on my toes.

E recommended this to me as a fun, quick read, and it definitely got me out of a reading rut. I tend to read a few books in one week and then nothing for two weeks- one of my 2021 goals is to be a more consistent reader, but I am clearly not doing a great job in the first month of the year- I finished this on January 31st! This is described as Bridget Jones’ Diary but set in Singapore, and that is accurate!  It’s really fun and filled with lots of escapism-esque fashion and travel references, but definitely follows the Bridget Jones Diary format pretty closely and I found myself predicting the plot at some points.