Calling all bookworms! What’s the best novel you’ve read this year?

[LabradorsInThePond]

Apologies for calling OP’s privilege and naming six:

New books:
Sorrow and Bliss ( Meg Mason)
Still Life ( Sarah Winman)
Small Things Like These (Claire Keegan)

Old friends:
The Witches of Eastwick (John Updike)
Ottoline ( Neil Gaiman, with my DS10 who loved it too)
I Feel Bad About my Neck ( Norah Ephron, not even a novel)

I am always looking for new ideas. So please post you’re top 1, or 6.

I really enjoyed Great Circle by Maggie
Shipstead , about a woman in the 1930s
circumnavigating the world by plane.

Also Young Mungo by Douglas
Stewart. The follow up to Shuggie Bain and so moving.

Third recommendation for American Dirt. Utterly gripping, finished it in a day!

Loved Sorrow and Bliss and Still Life

Tin Man by Sarah Winman is really good. Read that recently.

Rivers of London series is excellent.

Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss.

The Wonder. Emma Donoghue.

To the River. Olivia Liang.

Mrs Everything. Jennifer Weiner.

After the end Claire Macintosh
Six Days Dani Aitkins
It ends with us Colleen Hoover

Second once upon a river as a bewitching read.

I would also recommend silence of the girls by Pat Barker. The Greek and Trojan war told from the women & girls perspective, a gripping tale and interesting characters like Achilles and Helen of Troy but brought to life.

I've just read JUDAS-62 by Charles Cummings (I think). It was an impulse buy with my holiday Tesco shop, and so modern in a post-covid/ Russia spying world. I've realised it is the second book in a series and will be hunting out book 1

Anything by Sarah Waters

Piranesi:)

Lessons in Chemistry
Great Circle
unsettled Ground
Free (autobiog about growing up in Albania)

The Paris Apartment, Lucy Foley

Her precious book The Hunting Party was amazing too.

I just finished Sorrow and Bliss, was about to say that and then saw it was first on your list! Loved it.

The Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St.Aubyn:

Never Mind, Bad News,Some Hope, Mother's Milk and At Last. Definitely to be read in order. Superb writing, utterly gripping.

The Binding
The Mermaid of Black Conch
Poisonwood Bible

All truly excellent reads 📚

New
Still Life - Sarah Winman
Light Perpetual - Francis Spufford (stunning)

Older
A God in Ruins - Kate Atkinson

If you like a bit of Victorian Gothic...
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - Imogen Gowar
Melmoth - Sarah Perry
Fallen Angels - Tracey Chevalier

Mr Rosemblum's List - Natasha Solomons - I think this is one of my favourite books of all time!

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

I tried the invisible life of Addie la roux and really struggles! Is it worth persevering with?

I've just been reading on the kindle so there's also been a lot of unlimited stuff that was ok but not amazing. Good reads this year:

The tattooist of Auschwitz
Young Team
How To Kill Your Family
The Troubles With Us
Blood Orange
Verity

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

Best I’ve read this year are Shuggie Bain, American Dirt, and Agent Zigzag.

Another recommendation for Great Circle. Didn’t want it to end.

Loved Lessons in Chemistry.

Discovered Dorothy Whipple this year and working my way through her books. Have loved them all. Someone at a Distance was probably my favourite.

Loved Pirinesi and finally got round to reading A Little Life which was good (but not as good as I was expecting). I also loved Again, Rachel.

Oh, and Cecily by Annie Garthwaite is wonderful.

I will agree with all the pp who said The Dictionary of Lost Words. And I’m in the middle of Great Circle and loving it so will agree with those pp too.

I really enjoyed Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (expected it to be frothy nonsense from the cover but picked it ul to read the back as I’d heard so much about it, was intrigued so bought it and it was great) and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid,

recently…
A woman made of snow (Elisabeth Gifford)
Small pleasures (Clare Chambers)
The Mercies ( Kiran Millwood Hargrave )
The invisible life of Addie LaRue (V.E Schwab)
The Foundling (Stacey Hall)

old favourites

Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
The light between oceans by ML Stedman
The thirteenth tale by Diane Setterfield
and all of Kate Morton’s books

Year One by Nora Roberts - in fact the whole trilogy. Couldn't put it down.