It’s time to share my favorite books of the year! While I do write about the books I read at the end of every month, I find it a lot of fun to create a final list of the best of the best to share at the end of the year. Last year I think I only shared my absolute favorite 5* books, but this year I’d like to share my 5’s as well.
This is how I usually rate the books I read:
1 – I’m not sure I’ve ever actually rated a book a 1 because if I like it enough to finish it I feel like it at least deserves a 2. So if I rated my pile of “Did Not Finish” books, they would have 1’s. But I don’t want to rate them because that would skew the data on books I actually read!
2 – I managed to finish it, but I did not like it. I’d say it’s pretty rare for me to give a 2 as well, but I will often give a rating of 2.5 if I really didn’t like it.
3 – It was okay. I enjoyed reading it, but I will have probably already forgotten what the book was about by the time I write about it at the end of the month.
4 – I really liked the book. There might have been one or two issues that bothered me enough to give it a higher rating, but overall I found very few things to dislike.
5 – I loved the book! It made me feel things intensely. It was unputdownable. It made me laugh out loud and/or it made me cry. It felt like something very important and vital to my being. It brought me tremendous joy.
5* – This extra special rating is reserved for books that I love so much I want to share them with everybody. They’re the books I’ll actually talk about to people, even if they don’t seem to share the same interest in reading as me. They’re also usually the books that I love so much I would probably re-read them at some point and want to own a great copy for my own shelves. They also might have a swoon-worthy character in them that I ADORE. 🙂
Looking back on my list for 2018, I think I’ve either been reading a lot better books or I’ve become much more liberal with my ratings! 19% of the books I read were given a 5 or 5* rating. That’s quite an upgrade from the 10 I deemed best and wanted to share in 2017! Considering five of my eleven 5* books were in December, I think I might have been feeling a bit generous. Some of them don’t exactly follow my criteria – I wouldn’t read them again (the thrillers). But I loved every page and know I’ll never forget their stories!
The Best of the Best 5* Books (maybe, a little bit, in order)
1 – The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
I loved this delightful workplace romantic comedy SO MUCH. I laughed through the entire book and adored the characters and seriously, it just made me swoon. It is one of my favorite books of all time because it’s just so FUN. It made me so happy.
2 – Only Love Today by Rachel Macy Stafford
I loved reading through this book one short essay a day. With a few months off here and there, it took me over a year to read through it, but I was never tempted to totally set it aside like most (or all) devotional books I start. I thought this book was so beneficial for guiding my soul to focus on love and only love, especially where my children are concerned. Her words really made me consider the choices I make and the things I prioritize. I loved it and fully intend on reading through it again.
3 – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Burrows
I have a serious weakness for books that center around letters/emails/notes being exchanged. Though this book is entirely written in letters, it still has such an amazing sense of plot and characters because there are so many different voices. I found the entire book to be an absolute delight. I also thoroughly enjoyed it on audio and in its Netflix adaptation!
4 – Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis
Okay, when I first read this book I was blown away. It’s one of the only nonfiction books that I tore through because it felt so vitally important to my outlook on life. In the six months since then, as Rachel Hollis has become mega popular and there have been a lot of negative things written about her and her book/message, I’ve been wavering a bit on how much I maybe actually should have enjoyed this book. Greg pointed out to me that this is on some list for top five top worst books of the year because she writes so much about her white privilege. And yeah, that’s a valid point. She also has a message about loving your body and yourself, while at the same time basically fat shaming you if you’re not at your ideal weight. But still, after taking some of those things into consideration, I do believe that Rachel Hollis genuinely has a great message out there to empower women to take charge of their own lives and DO SOMETHING. This is an idea that I also feel very strongly about and it helped to read a book that pushes that idea so strongly. So! If you need some encouragement to make changes in your own life, this will be a great read.
5 – A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
I see that I gave this first book in the series a 5* and the second book a 5, though in hindsight I feel like I maybe liked the second book a tad bit more. Either way – this series is fantastic. I try to steer clear of reading a lot of fantasy series because there are always so many random things to keep track of about their world and I seriously just don’t care. I’m all about the characters. And this series has some AMAZING drool-worthy characters. 🙂
6 – 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Another book written entirely in letters, though this one is the real deal telling the actual friendship between an American book lover and an English book seller. I really just adored this book because it celebrates books and the passion for reading. Helene’s letters were incredibly delightful and I found the whole book to be an absolute joy.
7 – Verity by Colleen Hoover
I can’t have a top list without Colleen Hoover! She continues to amaze me. Verity is even completely out of her typical genre. It’s a psychological thriller that will mess you up. For real. It was really, really great, though. I can’t talk too much about the plot because it might give things away. I loved this book, though.
8 – Noteworthy by Riley Redgate
Surprisingly, this is the only YA-ish book to make my top list this year. It’s about a college girl with boyish features who decides to dress up as a boy in order to join a male a capella group. While you think this story will be pretty straightforward, it takes a lot of interesting turns and spends a lot of time examining gender roles in today’s society. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
9 – Mud Vein by Tarryn Fisher
This is the last book I read and I couldn’t put it down. The two main characters who have an awkward and unusual past, are kidnapped and trapped together in a small cabin in Alaska with nowhere to go. The expectation is that they’ll fall into some sort of desperate romance as they work together to survive, but the story is so much more complex than that. Their dynamic is complicated and sobering, but ultimately ends in hope.
10 – Bird Box by Josh Malerman
I think I rated this book so highly because it was so far outside the box (ha!) in the type of books I usually read. The creepy factor was through the room and I think it’s such a crazy story that I’ll never forget it. It was scary, but not in a way that makes me scared to walk around my house in the dark (the reason I don’t usually read horror). The resilience of the characters really amazed me as well.
11 – Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
I read this book while I was recovering from my broken ankle and it provided me with so many unique and interesting things to think about as I read letters that people write into Cheryl as “Dear Sugar” and her insightful responses to them. It’s the only thing I’ve ever read by her, and I found it so full of wisdom and wit. The depth of both the letters and her responses were just the distractions I needed from my own pain while I read.
The Other 5 Star Books from 2018
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover
A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
Beard Science by Penny Reid
Life from Scratch by Sasha Martin
The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay
More Than We Can Tell by Brigid Kemmerer
Roomies by Christina Lauren
Quiet Girl in a Noisy World by Debbie Tung
This is How it Always Is by Laurie Frankel
Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly
A Sloth’s Guide to Mindfulness by Ton Mak
The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang
And that’s it for 2018! I’m going to be using a much more elaborate bookkeeping system next year so I can give all the stats on how much fiction vs nonfiction I read, memoir vs graphic novel, books by women vs books by men, average page number, etc. I’m really excited about this! I think I might try and go back to being a very harsh critic when it comes to rating my books as well. We’ll see on that. 🙂
I’d love to hear YOUR favorite books of the year!
