I usually hate to crown my favorite reads of the year until the next year actually begins, just in case I happen to find a new fave in whatever I’m reading during the final hours of the New Year’s Eve countdown.
This year, I’m calling it a few hours early, mainly because I figure I can get a head start on my New Year’s resolution to resurrect this blog by writing out a few posts to put up over the next few days. I don’t know if people still really read blogs anymore, but I do, and I miss writing them, and I’m certainly not going to make a TikTok, so here we are.
These are my 10 favorite fiction reads of the year. The majority were published in 2023 or 2024; my list will probably be mostly older books next year since one of my other resolutions is to spend less time with my kindle and more time with my “back catalogue” (aka all the books bought from used bookstores that are weighing down every flat surface).
If you know me, you’ll also notice that one genre is conspicuously absent. I read so many good horror books this year that they’re getting their own post in the next few days.
So if you’re building your TBR for 2025, read on for some of my 2024 favorite that deserve a place on your list:
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (2024)
In my goodreads review of this novel, I wrote: “I don’t know if this is my favorite Sally Rooney novel, but I think it is her best.” A month later, I do know. This is my favorite Sally Rooney novel, and it is her best. The literary world’s most anticipated novel of the year, as well as the one I was personally most excited for, and for me it lived up to every expectation.
In Intermezzo, Rooney takes all of the hallmarks of her previous writing — sharp and revealing dialogue, exploration of romantic and platonic relationships, and beautiful depictions of the mundanities of life — and gives them a more creative, more mature element that elevates her writing beyond what she has done before.
In the way I often think of Normal People‘s Connell and Marianne as though they are old acquaintances I’d like to check in on and see how they’re doing, I know I will be thinking of Ivan, Peter, and the others (especially Margaret) in this novel the same way.
James by Percival Everett (2024)
Another 2024 novel that hardly needs an introduction from me. If you’ve been tuned in to literature at all this year, then you’ve heard about James. Percival Everett’s clever, satirical take on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been everywhere, and for good reason.
Retellings of books and stories are popular across genres, from contemporized versions of classic horror to feminist retellings of Greek myths, but sometimes these updates don’t offer enough to justify why they should be read in addition to the original tales.
James not only justifies it existence but also, I would argue, deserves to be read as a companion to Huck Finn by almost everyone who picks up Twain’s classic novel. Smart, well-crafted, and imbued with a satirical bent that offers an ideal dialogue with the original text, this is a masterful example of a retelling that will become a classic in its own right.
The White Book by Han Kang (2016)
I’ve been a fan of Han Kang’s since my former book club read The Vegetarian, and I was delighted when the South Korean author won the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. In addition to The Vegetarian, I’d already read Human Acts, but I hadn’t yet picked up this one of her translated works.
This is an extraordinarily beautiful novel (also huge credit to Han Kang’s translator Deborah Smith for her outstanding work in reflecting the artistry of the author’s Korean prose in English). In a series of prose-poetry vignettes, the unnamed narrator reflects on love and grief while on a writing retreat through meditations on the color white — as pale skin, clouds of breath on a winter’s day, and the blank page ready to be filled with words.
Foster by Claire Keegan (2010)
In general, I try to read a book before I see the film adapted from it, but in this case I only read Foster this year after seeing the magnificent adaptation, An Cailín Ciúin, a few years ago. It was after seeing another wonderful and heartwrenching adaptation of Keegan’s work, Small Things Like These, that I realized I had never read Foster and decided it was time to pick it up.
An Cailín Ciúin translates in English to “the quiet girl,” so imagine my surprise when I began the novel and discovered it was written in first person! This is a little gem, not even a hundred pages long, and every word of narration and dialogue holds so much meaning. Enchanting and heartwarming, a perfect story.
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy (2023)
If there’s one tradition I can manage to maintain on this blog, it’s reviewing the Women’s Prize shortlisted novels, and for 2024 two of the shortlisted books have also made it onto my favorites list (and the winner of the new Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, was a fave of last year, too). Although I did enjoy the eventual winner (Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganesthananthan), Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor would have been my personal pick. My review:
My one-word review of this novel is oof. The narrator is a new mother talking to her son about how she loves him so much she would kill and/or die for him, about her loneliness, about taking on unequal weight in her marriage, about looking forward to their years together as he grows up. The dramas in the book are mostly minor — losing track of him in IKEA for a few minutes, a small fever — but the writing is so raw. Heart-wrenching and often funny as well, I absolutely loved this one. If I was giving the prize it would be to this instant classic.
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (2023)
My other favorite from the Women’s Prize shortlist. I first encountered Hammad’s words in this excellent conversation with Sally Rooney. Her literary work is just as powerful. In Enter Ghost, a British-Palestinian woman goes back to her homeland after many years to visit her sister and gets roped in to a production of Hamlet. Fittingly, this one felt almost theatrical in a way; I could really picture everything so well, and the prose sometimes reverts to a script format during rehearsal scenes.
I also loved the protagonist. She’s quite prickly at times, but very complex and interesting. The various elements of the plot — the protagonist’s relationship with her family and identity, her life back in the UK versus her time in Palestine, the theatre production and the ongoing conflict it is staged in the midst of — weave together in such a satisfying and compelling way.
The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck (2024)
This was a last-minute browsing grab from the library when I was worried I wouldn’t have enough books for my trip back to the States, and it’s books like this that are the reason I don’t determine my year-end best-of until the last minute. The stories in The History of Sound, from the uplifting to the tragic, capture the perfect tone of bittersweet melancholy that is perfect for the season.
Not to be all Harry Styles “it feels like a real go to the theatre film movie” about it, but I love when a short story collection feels like a short story collection. The stories in this collection go together, interconnect, reference each other, and share space even in a world that spans three centuries and countless lives. They’re wistful and nostalgic, some full of what could be and some with what could have been, and although they feature such disparate concepts as a colonial-era tale and the transcript of a Radiolab episode, they weave together exquisitely.
Family Meal by Bryan Washington (2023)
I don’t know what it is about Family Meal. It didn’t stay with me the way some of the books on this list did, and yet when I was deciding which novels were my favorites of the year, this one immediately came to mind. And as soon as I started thinking about it, it did all come flooding back, this story of a young man set adrift by the death of his partner, who returns to his hometown to try to find some grounding.
I love how unapologetic this novel is. It’s full of the things pearl-clutchers in goodreads reviews love to complain about: swear words, explicit sex scenes, and no quotations marks. This novel doesn’t care if you like it, and you’ll love it all the same.
The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff (2023)
I read one of Lauren Groff’s novels ages ago and didn’t love it, so I didn’t pick up any more of her work until 2021’s Matrix. If that novel proved that I was wrong about her, and that she’s a killer writer, particularly of historical fiction, The Vaster Wilds definitely cemented it for me.
Visceral and at times grotesque, this colonial-set novel about a young woman who flees the Jamestown colony and is must try to sustain herself in the harsh wilderness is as thrilling as any survivalist tv show or documentary. Groff’s prose is intense and the imagery so rich that you feel as though you’re using every sense in experiencing the story.
The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard (2024)
This was one of a few speculative fiction novels that had serious mainstream popularity this year. While I’ve enjoyed some of the other heavy-hitters — Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time, which both my sci-fi and non-sci-fi loving friends raved about, and Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, which won the Booker and which I am actually reading right now — The Other Valley is the one that has really stuck with me through the year.
The premise of the novel seems so simple yet so unique: in one valley lies a town. The same town exists in each of the neighboring valleys, twenty years in the past on one side, twenty years to the future on the other. Similarly, the book is divided. In the first half, the teenage protagonist competes for a coveted job authorizing the rare and highly-regulated travel between the valleys. In the second half, she is an adult, living the butterfly effect-like consequences of an unexpected event and her actions as a result. This novel broaches a lot of philosophical themes and, although I read it early in 2024, I am still considering them now as the year draws to a close.
Check back later this week for my favorite non-fiction and horror books of the year, and let me know what’s on your TBR for 2025!
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