I’ve been reflecting on what I read in the past six months, and I want to spend a little more time talking about my favourite reads of the year so far and collecting those thoughts in one place. Some of these books have separate full reviews where I talk about my thoughts in a lot more detail than I will here so I might be repeating myself.
I will admit that I’ve had less notable favourites than I usually do at this point in the year, but there are still a few, so I will be holding out for the second half of the year to be five star read after five star read.
This list will be in no particular order, just vaguely chronological, so let’s begin!
Vesuvius by Cass Biehn
Vesuvius is a queer young adult fantasy set in ancient Pompeii, featuring a cunning thief, a temple attendant, and a burning city. After Felix seizes an opportunity to steal a helmet in Pompeii, he discovers that it is not only a priceless artefact but a relic of the god Mercury. Pieces of his forgotten past begin to simmer when he touches it. Loren is plagued by nightmares of Pompeii’s destruction which grow clearer as the danger grows closer, and he knows they have days to uncover Felix’s ties to the relic and his own dreams if they have any hope of saving the city from the fury of Mount Vesuvius. But the city is ruled by bloody politics and unstoppable destinies, with dangerous, desperate people lurking in every shadow. Felix and Loren have to piece together their fates—and their growing feelings for one another—to make it out of the burning city alive.
There’s something about retellings and re-imaginings that I’m immensely fond of—these stories inspired by mythology and folklore and fairytales that litter my bookshelves—and it’s the fact that I often know how they’ll end. I enjoy the comfort of structure and routine, and I am someone who reads every spoiler about a film that I can find before I watch it, so the thing it takes to impress me in these books is the writing being so enthralling that I forget I already know about the ending. As readers, we know that Vesuvius will erupt, but we don’t know about the final days leading up to that inevitable moment, and I want those days to sweep me away from the tragedy.
The Corruption of Hollis Brown by K. Ancrum
Hollis Brown is a queer romantic thriller featuring Hollis, a boy in search of meaning, and Walt, a spirit with unfinished business. Their lives collide when Walt takes possession of Hollis’s body…and maybe his heart. It’s a story about possession where the end goal is to fall in love with your possessor and protect your love rather than exorcise them, and it’s simultaneously a trauma-infused story about undoing a generational curse that turned their hometown from a place of hope to somewhere where dreams go to die. It’s a love letter to healing from trauma and to the importance of connection and empathy (as most Ancrum works are).
As usual, Ancrum’s sparse prose is the standout of her storytelling, an unconventionally small amount of words creating an immense impact, and I wish I had a physical copy to highlight every moment where a single phrase made me clutch at my hypothetical pearls. It’s beautifully written, and intimate, and poetic, and everything I want from such a vulnerable story. Ultimately, Hollis Brown is a book about falling in love with your demons and breaking generational curses, while still baking loaves of bread for your ‘food as a love language’ best friends along the way.
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful, kind princess who was betrothed to the prince of a faraway kingdom. When she set off for her new home, her mother gave her a maid for a companion on the journey. But instead of serving the princess, the wicked maid stole her place. For a year the true princess toiled away like a common goose girl, while the wicked maid lived high in the palace, fooling the kingdom. But the truth came out. The princess took back her name, her crown, and her husband, and the imposter died for her crimes. Then one day, the wicked maid told her own story.
I did not know what to expect from this book because 1) it’s a Goose Girl retelling, and I know nothing about The Goose Girl, and 2) the description truly says Nothing about what the plot actually unravels itself to be. But I fell in love with Vanja, the anti-heroine, immediately. She’s a bad person for the most part, and she constantly has conflicts thrown in her path, and they’re a whole lot of fun to read. Her story has a little bit of enemies-to-lovers romance sprinkled in, as well as reluctant friendships and a complex untangling of her feelings towards forgiveness and revenge.
The Clocktaur Duology by T. Kingfisher
When forger Slate is convicted of treason, she faces a death sentence. But her unique gift for sniffing out magic (literally) earns her a reprieve―of sorts. Along with a formerly demon-possessed paladin, her murderous ex-lover, and an irritating sexist scholar, Slate sets off on a mission to learn about the Clockwork Boys, deadly mechanical soldiers from a neighbouring kingdom who have been terrorising their lands. If they succeed, rewards and pardons await, but they must survive a long journey through enemy territory to reach Anuket City. But Slate and her crew aren’t the first to be sent on this mission. None of their predecessors have returned, and Slate can’t help but feel they’ve exchanged one death sentence for another.
I am counting both of these books as my favourite because I refuse to cave and pretend that what is very clearly one book split into two volumes is a real duology. However, I did prefer The Wonder Engine over Clockwork Boys, because Clockwork Boys cuts off right as the characters are about to enter the city and we hit what I find to be the selling point of the plot, and it’s just incredibly unsatisfying as it’s own novel.
But they are incredibly satisfying read back-to-back as one complete lengthy novel. I’ve read six T. Kingfisher books so far this year and loved all of them, just to make a point of how much I loved these ones to make them a favourite. I love her humour and wicked imagination and how many of her characters have this deep kindness and intense humanity that comes with uncompromising views of right and wrong. The joy in these books is the growing friendships that happen despite themselves—you wouldn’t think that a rogue accountant, a possessed knight, an assassin, and a religious fanatic setting off on a classic fantasy quest slash suicide mission would have friendships and found family adjacent vibes as the selling point, but here we are.
Born for This by Caitlin Devlin
Aspiring actress Harley Roth is desperate to be as famous as her aunt Rachael, a former global movie star who became a recluse after her high profile divorce. But even with Harley’s industry connections, she’s still stuck on the outside, waiting for her big break. So when Harley hears there may be a biopic in the works about her aunt, she jumps at the chance. After all, everyone has always told her she looks exactly like Rachael—so who better to play the part? To her surprise, Rachael welcomes Harley into her life, and agrees to talk for the first time about her marriage, and the mysteries surrounding it. But the movie industry is a world of ruthless ambition, underhand favours and twisted promises. After a lifetime of acting, can Harley trust that Rachael is telling her the truth? Because family ties don’t mean the same to everyone, and fame always comes at its own cost.
This is a book that I wasn’t expecting to make this list: it’s a genre that I don’t often lean towards, let alone enjoy this much. It’s about a nepo baby who decides to kickstart her career by playing her famous aunt in a biopic, presented in a dual timeline between Rachael in 90s Hollywood and Harley in present day London. It’s about rich people acting out and having affairs and keeping secrets, and both narrators are messy, complicated characters. It’s surprisingly wonderful. The author does a great job of getting under your skin with this book, especially with the messy characters, and covers a lot of ground thematically, exploring nepotism and toxic relationships, both romantic and not, and I was once again clutching my hypothetical pearls when I caught on to the moments where Harley’s timeline brought up something I had read a chapter before in Rachael’s timeline and there were…differences in the story being told.
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