Top reads of 2020

It’s hard to know what to say about 2020. I’m so tired of the vagueness of talk about ‘these extraordinary times’, but at a loss for how to describe them for myself.

I suppose I could talk about my 2020. In a nutshell: it sucked, but not as much as it might have. I made it through to the other end with a job (albeit with a 20% pay cut), a home – a new one. I finally escaped from my seven-person shared house into a much smaller, somewhat Covid-safer environment. My new landlady has a dog. I’m healthy. My loved ones are healthy too.

In the other hand, like so many, I can count the number of times I’ve seen my family this year on one hand – my brother is clinically vulnerable, so he and my mum have spent the year even more isolated than I have. My gran became very sick and died during the first lockdown in March – I couldn’t say goodbye or grieve with my family. My dog died right before lockdown started, too. My mental health has taken a massive hit. I don’t sleep well.

Within that: I read lots. There was a long period there were nothing brought me any comfort or enjoyment aside from books, and I clung to that. I feel closer to my friends than I ever have, even though I’ve barely seen most of them this year. I got really into cooking, and I’m getting pretty good at it. I did a lot of knitting, and I’m getting better at that too. I started a bookstagram account, and I’m really enjoying curating that space. It’s my little corner of the internet filled with the things that I love.

This is how I have existed in ‘these extraordinary times’. I built a Covid bunker out of books, filling my head with stories in a mostly fruitless effort to push the anxiety out. But it wasn’t all for nothing – yes, I’m still anxious, but the reading was excellent. Here are a few of my favourites…

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

One of my first pandemic reads, City of Girls lifted my heart at a time I desperately needed it. There’s an entire life in this book – one filled with fun, sex, adventure, self doubt, utter and complete failure and fuck up, destruction, rebuilding, loss and how you go about continuing life after it – there are even periods of contentment. As well as being an incredibley thrilling ride through the roaring twenties in the theatre world of New York City, something about this novel offers some much needed hopeful perspective on things. It’s a visceral reminder that a life is so much greater than the sum of its parts – that there is always, always something just around the corner. And not only that, but, whether you believe it or not – you’re ready to meet it.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This BOOK. Written like a series of transcribed interviews with one of the most iconic bands of the 1970s, Daisy Jones & The Six narrates the drug-fuelled, heartbreaking, exhilarating years of the eponymous band’s meteoric rise and explosive split, with singer-songwriter Daisy Jones and Billy Dunne at its addictive, star-crossed centre. A book about how people – and relationships – crumble under the weight of ego (and lots and lots of drugs), soul mates (the fucked up, destructive kind), the bitter cost of fame, and maybe, eventually, a little bit of healing. And music. Lots and lots of music.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

On the spectrum of responses to Normal People, I come down strongly on the side of love. It is a book about all of the small and big ways we can meet each other and fail each other over the course of a relationship. As close as we might think we are to somebody, we’re only ever parallel lines, and in that space between lie endless possibilities for connection – and, as Sally Rooney is far more interested in, misunderstanding. Connor and Marianne, the dual narrators of Normal People, fail and hurt each other in seemingly endless combinations throughout this often frustrating (or, depending on the type of person you are, uncomfortably confronting) book about figuring out how to love someone for their entire, complicated self – while bringing your entire, complicated self, open and vulnerable, to the table.

The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Daré

This book was one of my biggest surprises this year. We were sent a copy at work and it hung around the office for ages (that’s how long I’ve had it for – since back when I still went into the office!) before I eventually claimed it for myself – where it proceeded to get bumped off the top of the TBR for the next several months. Sometimes it goes that way. If you’re making the same mistake, I suggest you bump it up to your next read. This book is powerful, emotive and utterly addictive. The story of one young girl, Adunni, and her determination to get an education despite facing the devastating loss of her mother, forced marriage and other immense challenges that would take us into spoiler territory to name, once you start reading you won’t be able to put The Girl With The Louding Voice down until you find out how Adunni’s story ends. True to its title, it is the vibrance of the narrative voice that made this novel stand out. Adunni’s personality is huge and encompassing, and I fell completely in love with her faster and with greater force than I have with a protagonist in a long time. I read this book with a sort of desperation, rapidly flipping the pages, hoping against hope Adunni would get the ending she deserved. Daré is a powerful writer, and I am greatly looking forward to reading whatever she comes out with next.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

At this point it’s fair to say I am a fully paid up member of the cult of Bardugo. After Six of Crows I didn’t think it was possible for me to love her any more – then she goes and throws THIS into the mix. Like Veronica Mars meets Buffy by way of Gilmore Girls (the Yale years), this is a thrilling dual narrative split between Alex Stern (one-time drug dealer, natural ghost see-er of traumatic and mysterious origins) and Daniel Arlington ‘Darlington’, for all appearances the typical Yale rich kid (aside from the whole ‘I can see dead people’ (with the help of substances, anyway) thing) that centres on three key mysteries: what exactly are the origins of Alex Stern? Who is the murderer currently prowling the campus? And what the heck happened to Alex and Darlington that sees the book start with her bloodied and alone in her apartment and him, apparently, vanished?

Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

This sprawling, evocative and utterly unique book throws you into 12 vastly different lives. Told mostly from the perspective of Black, British women, this novel of interconnected but separate narratives spanning continents and centuries doesn’t spend much time with each of its characters, but completely immerses you in their lives. The 12 portraits are empathetic but sharp – they dig deep into challenging territory of racism, trauma and heartbreak, but very equally into the satirical, where no one is let off the hook. It gives these women such authenticity and complexity that you feel robbed when their stories end – even as you’re eager to meet the next.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

I can’t decide whether I want Jia Tolentino to be my best friend, or if I just want to live inside of her brain. I love a book of essays, but Trick Mirror took the form to a level of cut throat relevancy I have never experienced before. These works are so of the moment, so cutting and so minutely observed on all things pop culture, feminism, race and politics that I spent half the time shaking the book and aggressively nodding my approval and the other face palming and screaming (internally, obvs): HOW have I never thought of that?! Whether she’s skewering #GirlBoss feminism, the cult of athleisure or her own performance on a little known reality TV show, her perspective is revealing, thrilling and deeply cathartic. Please, just read it.

And there we have it! Well, plus Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Intimations by Zadie Smith, both of which I have read in the last week and fallen utterly in love with. We’ll talk about those more in 2021, I guess.

If you made it to the end of this post, first, thank you. Second, tell me, what are some of the books that got you through 2020?

Happy New Year friends. I don’t know what to expect from this coming year, but there will be good books, and there is comfort in that ❤

The Vanishing Stair

The Truly Devious case – an unsolved kidnapping and triple murder that rocked Ellingham Academy in 1936 – has consumed Stevie Bell for years. It’s the very reason she came to the academy. But then her classmate Hayes Major was murdered, and though she identified his killer, her parents quickly pull her out of school. For her safety, they say.

Stevie’s willing to do anything to get back to Ellingham, be with her friends, and solve the case. Even if it means making a deal with the despicable Senator Edward King. And when Stevie finally returns, she also returns to David: the guy she kissed, the guy who lied about his identity – Edward King’s son. But larger issues are at play. Was Hayes’s death really solved? Where did his murderer hide away to? What’s the meaning of the riddle Albert Ellingham left behind? And what, exactly, is at stake in the Truly Devious affair?

The Ellingham case isn’t just a piece of history – it’s a live wire into the present. The path to the truth has more twists and turns than Stevie can imagine, and moving forward involves hurting someone she cares for. In New York Times bestselling author Maureen Johnson’s second novel in the Truly Devious series, someone will pay for the truth with their life.


This review will contain at least a few spoilers for Truly Devious. Sorry about that.

When I started reading Maureen Johnson’s Truly Devious series I sort of assumed it’d be like the Shades of London books – each new release a fresh mystery to unravel. Not so. Truly Devious and the mystery of Albert Ellingham’s missing daughter is the overarching theme of the series, and for every question The Vanishing Stair answered it raised at least three more.

I loved it, obviously.

At the end of the last book we saw our favourite wannabe detective, Stevie Bell, yanked from Ellingham Academy by her parents following the revelation of Hayes’s murderer. She is not okay with the situation. The Ellingham case remains unsolved and the whole Hayes affair at least somewhat unfinished. So when the opportunity to return comes up in the shape of a dodgy offer from the worst sort of Republican Senator Edward King – boss to Stevie’s parents and (surprise) father to Stevie’s on-again-off-again love interest David – despite her misgivings she’s prepared to do whatever he wants.

That particular decision looms large over everything else that happens in The Vanishing Stair.

I flew through this book. Continuing the split narrative of Stevie’s present divided by snapshots of the unfolding mystery in 1936 – the one Stevie came to Ellingham in the first place to solve before all the Hayes business – Maureen builds ever more layers of complexity onto a mystery that has already confounded everyone who has tried to solve it in the 80-odd years since it began. New and intriguing figures enter into play, from the possibly murderous runaway Ellingham students of the past, Francis Crane and Edward Pierce Davenport, to Dr Irene Fenton, the probably alcoholic true crime professor as eager to solve the Ellingham case as Stevie herself.

David continues to do the most. I’ve read several reviews where readers aren’t so keen on Stevie and David’s dynamic – some going as far as to describe it as insta-lovey and thin. I couldn’t disagree more. David and Stevie are pulled towards each other in a way that read electric to me – though they both remain defensive weirdos they can’t help but keep circling, each one taking turns to pull back in the other when they pull away. They share a similar sort of darkness, I think. It may not be the healthiest basis for a relationship, but for reading purposes it is delicious. Don’t believe the rumours: Stevie and David are a pairing you ship hard, however unlikely their resolution turning out to be a happy one is at this point.

A lot of pieces clicked into place during The Vanishing Stair, but there are a lot of questions still to be answered in the Hand on the Wall, and I for one cannot wait to see where Maureen Johnson’s twisting mystery takes us next.