2021 in Books

• A Heart in a Body in the World 

A Heart in a Body in the World by Deb Caletti was the first book I read in 2021. To say it simply, it set my year of reading off to a great start. This is one of my favorite books of the year, but it is also one of my all time favorites. I read this book in about two sittings because it was just one of those stories that kept me hooked. The story was about a high school senior, Annabelle, who was trying to overcome some recent trauma. She does so by running across the entire country, starting in her state of Seattle, all the way to Washington D.C. During this journey she is outrunning the pain of what happened and at first it was a rough and lonely run, but by the end she had quite a bit of support from people all around the country. By the end of the book everyone knows Annabelle's story and what it was that she went through, whereas at the start no one knew. That was part of the book that was one of my favorites. Just watching the story evolve as Annabelle kept running and putting the little pieces together was what made A Heart in a Body in the World so good, as well as the seriousness and relevancy of the issues addressed. I would definitely reread this book because I liked it so much. 

• Sadie  

Sadie by Courtney Summers was another one of my favorite books of 2021. It is a story about a girl named Sadie who is looking for who she believes killed her younger sister, Maddie. There isn't much evidence to back up her thoughts, but she is determined to find the man who she is sure killed her and to get her revenge, whatever that means for her. While Sadie goes on this journey a person who is running a podcast catches light of her story and decides to start a new serial podcast about Sadie. The book is written from Sadies point of view and from the point of view of the podcast. It is clear from the start that Sadie got a bit of a head start on the person who is looking for her through this podcast, so he would have to work fast. While reading you get to know what happened before they do, so that adds an extra bit of suspense when you're reading to see if they will figure out what happened in time to find Sadie before it's too late. I enjoyed reading this book so much because of that and because it was a new way of writing I hadn't seen before. Overall, the story was very exciting to keep reading all the way up until the end when everything is figured out and the podcast ends. Sadie is another one of those books that is an all time favorite, as well as a favorite of the year. 

• Heroine 

Heroine is an amazingly written young adult fiction book by Mindy McGinnis. This story is about such a real and serious topic, opioid addiction. It starts with the main character, Mickey Catalan, a high school senior and softball star, getting in a car crash with her best friend. Both of them sustained serious injuries, which ended in Mickey needing to get screws in her hip to keep it together. With such a serious surgery, opioids were prescribed to her to help with the pain. This started her addiction. Mickey was now a high school senior who could only keep going because of the little white pills which eventually turned into a white powder. She had all of this going on behind the scenes of her okay seeming life. She still went to school and she still did softball, so no one thought anything was wrong. I loved this book so much because its bringing awareness to this very sad and real problem of addiction, how it can go unnoticed, and how it can happen to anyone. The message behind this story sat with me for so long after I read it, and truthfully it still does. Beyond the message of the book, the writing was also amazing and that's why Heroine might be my favorite book of 2021. 

• A Good Girls Guide to Murder

Written by Holly Jackson, A Good Girls Guide to Murder, in my eyes, is a perfect murder mystery. The mystery starts when high school senior, Pippa Fitz-Amboi, needed to find something to do her senior research project on and she chose to try and solve the solved murder-suicide case from her town just five years prior. The case is solved, but Pippa doesn't think that they got the whole truth when solving it years prior and that the alleged killer was not actually the killer and his suicide was staged to cover up the true killer. These are some large allegations coming from a girl who is still in high school, but she is determined to find the truth for the victims families. The story takes us through Pippa's thought process as she gathers her evidence by researching and interviewing people to get to the bottom of what truly happened. As she does so she starts to learn that there is much more going on in the seemingly boring town of Fairview than she thought. Everyone has secrets and everyone is hiding something. This murder mystery was so engaging and was truly a great book. I may have ranked it my top book of 2021, but there are so many great options, so I could say that it tied for a top place. I liked every part of this book and I would definitely read it again, though the mystery wouldn't be the same. 

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is one of my more recently read books that I really enjoyed reading. Evelyn Hugo was a fictional old Hollywood actress who was retelling the story of her life for a biography. She told the story chronologically through each of her seven husbands which was really interesting. Being so famous led to Evelyn having to try and keep some secrets from the public, but once this biography was published her hope was that she would no longer have any secrets and any question people could have about her life would be answered. I have never read any books like this one, so that was a reason why I liked it so much. I also really liked this is because the story was very engaging and kept me reading. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo was yet another book that didn't take me too long to finish. Definitely a top book of the year simply because of how different and well written it was. 

Honorable Mentions 

I read a lot of amazing books this year and it was really hard to narrow this down to my top five, let alone actually rank them from favorite to least. All five of these books could easily tie for first place in my year of books. Some honorable mentions that I liked just as much are All the Pretty Things by Emily Arsenault, I Am Still Alive by Kate Alice Marshall, and High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins. (Though I have not finished High Achiever it was still one of my favorites of the year)