Best of the Best | Favorite Books of 2021

Hey hi hello friends, and welcome back to my blog! 

Okay, I'm not gonna lie, I really don't feel like being all gushy today. My parents and I are all down with COVID and last night was especially rough (I won't go into detail, but I did pass out. So there's that). So you can see how I don't really want to talk about amazing books when I feel the exact opposite of amazing. 

But I gotta suck it up because it must be done, so here we are. 

This year was pretty great in terms of reading. If you've been here for a while and look at my monthly wrap-ups (thank you!) then you'll see I have quite a lot of five and four star reads. In fact, if you add up all the books I gave those high ratings to, I have 76 books, that's nearly half of my reading! I had 27 five-star reads, 18 four-and-a-half-star reads, and 31 four-star reads. That's completely insane! 

I won't be listing all 76 books today, that would take forever, and neither will I be listing all of the five-stars. I am going to talk about a few honorable mentions, and then do my top ten. Now, the top ten won't be ranked between them, because I actually have no idea which book is my all-time favorite of the year, because I read so many good ones it's impossible to choose. But I hope that doesn't deter you from enjoying this post, or from picking any of these books up! 

Alright, without any further ado, let's get into the best books I read this year! 

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Honorable Mentions

Tokyo Ever After by Emiko Jean

    This was a five-star prediction for this year and boy did this book knock that out of the park! This truly was everything I expected and more. This did the Princess Diaries story better than the actual Princess Diaries. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, Tokyo Dreaming, which comes out in 2022. 

You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson

    This was one of the best YA feel-good books that I've read in a long time. Not only is it a true feel-good book, but the main character is a Black, queer, teen girl. So many stories out there focusing on Black main characters only center around their pain, and it's so refreshing and beautiful to see a book like this out in the world. Like, people can actually pick this up and read it whenever they want! How incredible is that?

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern 

    Switching gears a little bit, I had to mention The Starless Sea in this section. It was the purest love-letter to books and reading that I've ever seen. Everything about this story was magical, it's pages felt like they were dripping with honey (which is a reference, sorry if you haven't read this book yet and don't get it). Erin Morgenstern has such a way with words. I will continue to wait for and buy anything else she writes.

Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan

    Ah, Rick Riordan. He never lets me down, does he? Technically, I wanted to mention both Daughter of the Deep, and its source material, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, but I had to pick one and I truly did love my time reading this middle-grade. Rick's writing style is like a warm hug, it fills me with nostalgia and happiness until I'm overflowing with love for his books and characters, and his newest release is no different. 

The Bear and the Nightingale (series) by Katherine Arden 

    For clarification, I read two of the three books in this series this year, The Girl in the Tower which is book two, and The Winter of the Witch, book three. But I had to mention this series because it's truly phenomenal. I'm sure you've heard of it by now, and I can confirm that you can truly feel the cold while reading. Like Erin Morgenstern, Katherine Arden's writing is so atmospheric and lyrical that you'll be hard-pressed to find another author who gives you the same feelings that she does.

My Top 10

The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd

    This was probably one of my most surprising five-star reads this year. I don't talk about it much on here anymore, but I am a Christian and so I wasn't sure how I would feel about reading a book set around a fictional wife of Jesus. However, I've never been more happy to be wrong in my life. Sue Monk Kidd very clearly did her research, interweaving history with biblical references and interpreting very little about the time and place. It felt like Anna was a real person, that she had been married to Jesus and had lived with his family, and had troubles and tribulations all her own. Yes, it's true that this book follows the wife of Jesus, but the fact that she is married to him is actually a tiny blip in her life and history. She is a rich character, full of life and promise, and I see myself returning to her very soon.

The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik

    Oh man, this book made me cry! One of the only books this year to do so. This is the sequel to Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education so if you haven't yet read that book, you really should because it's amazing. I normally don't like the kind of writing style this book series uses, that sort of stream-of-consciousness style that feels more like a diary than anything, but Novik does it so well. After the cliffhanger that was A Deadly Education, I picked this up as soon as I got my hands on it, and it nearly destroyed me. We got another, bigger cliffhanger, and I was screaming at my book the entire time I read the last chapter. I'm not sure if this will be a trilogy or a larger series, but the third book The Golden Enclaves will be published in 2022. 

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

    Yes, I know, this was on everyone's "2020 best books of the year" list, I'm sorry I couldn't get to it until now. I actually only recently finished this book, it was the last book of the year that I read, and can I just say, what a way to finish out the year, huh? This story is truly a warm hug in book form, with fuzzy socks and hot chocolate included. It's feel-good for the sake of feel-good, something I feel like is lacking in the publishing department as of late. I never would have imagined these two older men with a house full of adopted kids would have stolen my heart the way they did, but here we are. I will most definitely be picking up Under the Whispering Door as well as anything else in this vein that T.J. Klune writes.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

    Another five-star prediction, and another winner! I was so so excited for Andy Weir's latest sci-fi novel and I was not disappointed. Everything about this book is perfection: the characters, the plot, the science, and the math, which of course is why I love Andy Weir's books so much (he worked for NASA as a software engineer before switching to writing). Everything in his books might not be possible yet but they're probable, and that's my favorite thing in the world. Also, Rocky. Rocky stole my heart, as I'm sure he did everyone's. I can't go into more detail than that, because that would lead into spoiler territory, but please know I would do anything for Rocky. 

Shadow of the Fox (series) by Julie Kagawa

    I am so happy that I finally managed to read the Shadow of the Fox trilogy this year. I read all three books back-to-back: Shadow of the Fox, Soul of the Sword, and Night of the Dragon. I was truly hooked by the first couple chapters of book one, and my investment and love for these characters grew as I completed each book in the series. The third book had me crying and praying for my characters to stay safe. One of my favorite things about this series was, surprisingly, the action scenes. You can tell Julie Kagawa really took inspiration from anime, because every action scene feels like an epic anime fight. In fact, I would love to see this book series be turned into an anime. Can that happen ASAP, please?

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave 

    This is probably one of the books I read this year that hit the hardest for me. While I knew vaguely about the witch trials in Vardo, thanks to my dad, reading a book about them was a completely different experience, even if that book was fiction. In fact, I think because of its fictionality it hit harder. We see the atrocities this one man committed against this community of widows and orphans and brotherless women, and we seethe in anger beside his wife and her female lover. We feel the cold seep into our bones, and smell the salt in the air, and taste the terror of this village on our tongues. I felt so truly connected to these characters, it was like I was there with them. Really, a masterpiece of a novel.

The Tiger's Daughter (series) by K. Arsenault Rivera

    This series is like Shadow of the Fox on crack. Going into this series I had zero expectations, which is why I think it blew me away as much as it did. It's one of the few epic high fantasy stories I read this year, but I won't even complain because each book is about 600 pages and there was three of them. And really, I flew through these books. I couldn't wait to see what was going to happen next, if the two main characters were going to have a happy ending. It was touch-and-go there for a while. I will definitely have to go back and reread these at some point, because I have a feeling that I missed some important stuff during my first go-around. 

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

    This really was the year for feel-good stories, wasn't it? Above all, this novella exudes hope, something I'm sure we are all of short supply at the moment. Hope for ourselves, hope for the future, hope for the planet, it's all woven into this tiny little story. Becky Chambers is excellent at environmental sci-fi and this book is no exception. I was highlighting nearly every page in my kindle because there were so many wonderful lines. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, which comes out in 2022. I hope that this is a long series, because I never want to leave this world.

His Majesty's Dragon (series) by Naomi Novik

    Even though I didn't complete this series, I still felt the need to gush about it. I read three of the nine books in the Temeraire series: His Majesty's Dragon, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War. The next two didn't blow me away quite as much as the first book did, but I still loved my time reading them. I'm really in my dragon era right now (well, truth be told, I just never grew out of it) so to read an older fantasy series about dragons that still holds up well today was a true miracle. And now Del Ray Publishing is rebranding the Temeraire series and giving them all new covers? Um, yes please! It was like fate. I don't know if I'll be waiting until the next three books get published to read them, or if I'll get them from the library, but I will definitely be continuing on with this series.

Fifty Words for Rain by Asha Lemmie

    I either have feel-good contemporaries or hard-hitting historical fiction on this list, there is no in between. This is the book that made me cry the most this year, it's also one of the only books that I have consistently thought about since I finished it. Seriously, I read this pretty early on in the year, and I still can't get it out of my head. It's incredible that this was Asha Lemmie's debut novel. Noriko was such a fantastic main character, she had a depth to her I don't see in a lot of veteran author's characters. Plus she garnered so much sympathy from the reader that by the end of the novel, it feels like you've watched your child grow up. I wanted to protect her from every bad thing in her life. If I can convince you to read any book off of this list, please go and read this one. You won't regret it.

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Okay, there you have it! These were the best books I read this year. See any you recognize? Maybe we share one in common? Let me know in the comments or tweet at me @AllyEmReads.

Until next time!