Year in Reviews

A few years back I realized I had only read three books all year. I made a new year’s resolution to read more books, and I did. When I first started querying Parallelogirl, I decided to read more middle grade so I would know my genre and age category. At the time, I was posting reviews to a private message board for some friends. When I created this website, I repurposed a lot of those reviews for my blog, and I started out with quite the backlog. Despite posting new reviews 1-3 times per week all year, I’m still behind.

I will eventually catch up at the rate I’m going (I read at least a book a week, but definitely not three), but it might be a few months down the road, depending on how often I post reviews. Still, I want to share the list of books I read in 2019 now. They’re not really in any sort of order, but I did put my favorite books of the year in each category at the top and bolded them. Full reviews for middle grade and YA books are coming eventually. 🙂

I completed about 60 books this year. It’s a bit of a fuzzy number because there are a few books I read 80% of before giving up on, and I still keep track of those for my own sake, though I have labeled them “did not finish” in the list below. Including the DNFs, there are 61 books on this list. (There were a handful of others I abandoned early on, simply because it was immediately apparent they were not my thing. They are not on the list.)

First, middle grade books:

1. Planet Earth Is Blue, by Nicole Panteleakos
2. The Terrible Two, by Mac Barnett and Jory John
3. Bob, by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead
4. Nevermoor, by Jessica Townsend
5. The Unteachables, by Gordon Korman
6. The City of Ember, by Jeanne DuPrau
7. The Terrible Two Get Worse, by Mac Barnett and Jory John
8. Wundersmith, by Jessica Townsend
9. Alcatraz 2: The Scrivener’s Bones, by Brandon Sanderson
10. Squirrel Girl: 2 Fuzzy 2 Furious, by Dean and Shannon Hale
11. Alcatraz 3: The Knights of Crystallia, by Brandon Sanderson
12. Shouting at the Rain, by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
13. Best Friends, by Shannon Hale and LeUyen Pham
14. Other Words for Home, by Jasmine Warga
15. Space Case, by Stuart Gibbs
16. Where the Watermelons Grow, by Cindy Baldwin
17. Pi in the Sky, by Wendy Mass
18. Snow and Rose, by Emily Winfield Martin
19. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, by Dusti Bowling
20. The Terrible Two Go Wild, by Mac Barnett and Jory John
21. Liar and Spy, by Rebecca Stead
22. The Strangers, by Margaret Petersen Haddix
23. Chasing Vermeer, by Blue Balliett
24. The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall
25. Percy Jackson 1: The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan (did not finish)

Next, YA:

1. The Defiant Heir, by Melissa Caruso
2. These Broken Stars, by Amie Kaufman
3. On the Come Up, by Angie Thomas
4. Gift Child, by Janci Patterson
5. Obsidio, by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
6. Blood Water Paint, by Joy McCullough
7. Magonia, by Maria Dahvana Headley
8. Mirage, by Somaiya Daud
9. Two Can Keep a Secret, by Karen McManus
10. Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi
11. The Light Between Worlds, by Laura E. Weymouth (did not finish)
12. The Tethered Mage, by Melissa Caruso
13. Nyxia, by Scott Reintgen

And finally, adult, which I don’t generally review on the blog but still read some of. I will include star ratings for these, since reviews are not forthcoming:

1. Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson *****
2. Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik *****
3. The Book of M, by Peng Shepherd *****
4. Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty **
5. Murder on the Orient Express, by Agatha Christie ** (but Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey did the audiobook, and he was terribly entertaining)
6. Legion, by Brandon Sanderson *****
7. Legion 2: Skin Deep, by Brandon Sanderson ****
8. Legion 3: Lies of the Beholder, by Brandon Sanderson ***
9. The Extra, by Megan Walker and Janci Patterson *****
10. The Girlfriend Stage, by Megan Walker and Janci Patterson ***
11. Everything We Are, by Megan Walker and Janci Patterson **
12. Everything We Might Have Been, by Megan Walker and Janci Patterson ****
13. The Five Books of Jesus, by James Goldberg ***** (Though this book has a very small audience, I’m in it. I can’t say whether a poetic, human retelling of the New Testament from the POV of the people who loved Jesus will be for you.)
14. Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer ****
15. Authority, by Jeff VanderMeer *
16. Acceptance, by Jeff VanderMeer **
17. Chaos Queen 1: Duskfall, by Christopher Husberg ****
18. Vinegar Girl, by Anne Tyler *****
19. The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue * (full disclosure: I didn’t quite finish this book. I was getting the feeling the ending was going to make me really mad, so I read spoilers, and yeah, it was going to make me really mad, so I stopped reading.)
20. The Expanse 8: Tiamat’s Wrath, by James S. A. Corey ****
21. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman ****
22. Uprooted, by Naomi Novik ***
23. A Man Called Ove, by Fredrick Backman ****