I looked up my reading for the year and was rather taken aback to find that while I'd only rated one book 5 more than a third of my reading was 4.5. That said, some of those books were more brilliant than others.
My best book of the year by that measure was Leslie T Chang, Factory Girls - the author is Chinese-American and spent some time living in China interviewing young women working in the factories there about their lives.
Of the others, I especially liked
P A Reilly, The Fine Colour of Rust - a single mother in a small Australian town tries to fight greedy developers
Kate Grenville's Secret River trilogy (also Australian, though that's a coincidence)
Sita Brahmachari, Artichoke Hearts - older children's/YA novel - a few months in the life of a 12 year old whose beloved grandmother is moving into a hospice and preparing for death from cancer - funny and sad and lovely
Marina Lewycka, Various Pets Alive and Dead
John Harvey, Good Bait (crime novel) and A Darker Shade of Blue (short stories)
Cathi Unsworth, Weirdo
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Elizabeth Taylor, At Mrs Lippincotes, Palladian (and others) - am reading all her work this year - she was a 20th century novelist, not THAT Elizabeth Taylor