The best books of 2021

Fiction. “I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves.” “I remember a friend of mine once telling me that we hate what we fear in ourselves.” Set in 1950s Ireland, Cyril Avery’s mother had him out of wedlock and gave him up for adoption. Adopted by a wealthy couple, he grows up in a loveless home, with parents who constantly remind him that h...

Horror, short stories. “I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.” “I have heard all of the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them.” I read Muchado’s collection of short stories with my book club as our Halloween pick. Although we were split on this book, we did agree that we were not smart enough to und...

Fiction. “I’m good, but not good enough, which is worse than simply being bad.” Twenty-three-year-old Eddie enters a relationship with a man in an open marriage, Eric. When she loses her job for sleeping with several coworkers, she isn’t able to make rent on her apartment. When she runs into Eric’s wife while he’s on a work trip, she is invited to stay in their home without Eric’s ...

Fiction. “Rachel turned the page. ‘Thought experiments are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.” I don’t think it’s possible to summarize this book other than to mention that an ant crawls into a woman’s eye, that woman’s son later accidentally ends up in an alternate reality, and the ant ends up kind of being G-d? In all honesty, I had no idea w...

Fantasy. “We're not helpless. Novels are full of ragtag bands facing impossible odds.” The final book of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse series, Rule of Wolves, follows Nikolai, the king of a war-torn nation who is also kind of possessed, Zoya, a general trying to deal with personal identity and loyalties, and Nina, who I can’t tell you about without giving major spoilers for the other bo...

Fantasy. “After all, power makes everyone monstrous. At least a little.” “After all, power makes everyone monstrous. At least a little.” Princess Malini is imprisoned by her traitor brother in an abandoned temple that was once the location of the powerful, magic Deathless Waters. Priya is a maidservant who was once a Child of the Temple, a group of children raised to take on the powe...

Contemporary, short stories. “Gender is one of the biggest lies of our civilization” Girl, Woman, Other tells the story of 12 different women whose stories are loosely connected as they navigate the world. The book jumps around the globe and across time. The judges of the Booker Prize, which this book won in 2019, describe it as “An impressive, fierce novel about the lives of black Bri...

Science fiction. “Atlantis sinks. Serves it right.” Red and Blue are time travelers on opposite sides of a time war. When they begin writing letters to each other, they discover a virus encoded into their systems that they both somehow share. Soon, against their wills, they start to develop feelings for each other. The plot twist in this book is amazing. The premise is so inventive and, a...

Fiction. “I love you as much as I’m willing to love anybody” Written as a collection of interviews, Daisy Jones and the Six tells the story of a famous rock band from the seventies, The Six. When lead singer Billy meets beautiful singer Daisy, the band secures its place in history. Billy, a recovering drug abuser who got sober for his wife and daughter, struggles to deal with his growing f...