My Favourite Books of 2024

As I write this there are still 10 days left of 2024, but I’m very confident in my list being fixed - I haven’t added to it since October!

I’ve been reflecting on what sort of reading year I’ve had this year and I think that overall it’s been really positive. I’m 1.5 books away from completing a lofty goal of reading 25 books over 500 pages; I’ve read 157 books; and I’ve made some really good progress on the series I planned to read this year. I enjoyed a lot of what I read, too. Though I’m getting fussier and fussier as the years go on and I only have 14 five stars for the year, and 3 of those are re-reads.

But the five star reads that I did get this year are truly spectacular and and most of them have held their spot on the list for months and months.

My Favourite Books of 2024 (in no particular order)

I haven’t included any re-reads and not all of these are necessarily 5 star reads, but there was really something special about them that kept me thinking about them all year, and probably should be bumped up to 5 stars officially…

‘Golden Son’ by Pierce Brown

The second book in the ‘Red Rising’ series was my very first book of 2024 and it kicked off my year with a bang. I can’t tell you anything about it without spoiling book one, but if you haven’t given this series a chance, please do. It’s incredible sci-fi dystopia that is thought to be wrapping up this year with ‘Red God’. In 2025 I really need to read the second part of the series…

‘Floating Hotel’ by Grace Curtis

I absolutely adored Curtis’s debut, Frontier’, so this went to the top of my wishlist and didn’t disappoint. Set on the Grand Abeona Hotel which travels around the universe providing its guest with the ultimate floating luxury. A mystery unfurls across the multiple narrators who lead us through the stars, with Carl, the manager of the Abeona, at the centre of the story. It’s a cosy sci-fi that’s focused on found family, and the hope and resilience of humanity. Grace Curtis is rapidly becoming a favourite author of mine.

‘Natural Beauty’ by Ling Ling Huang

I fell into that specific horror demographic of weird, sad women and body horror type of horror novels in 2024 and ‘Natural Beauty’ is one of my absolute favourites. Set in New York City, our narrator, a musical prodigy flees her calling and finds herself working at a new and mysterious beauty store where using the products actually seem to work, but at what cost?

‘Natual Beauty’ is a shocking, excoriating look at beauty standards, the issues of what’s actually in the products we use and the things we consume, and the ways that society force women into doing terrible things, to themselves and others, in order to find their places and meet expectations of beauty and womanhood.

‘Piglet’ by Lottie Hazell 

This is another weird, sad girl books with less of the physical horror, but a hefty dose of emotional and mental horror for our protagonist who’s appetite spirals out of control as she comes face to face with the deception of her fiancé as they approach their wedding day.

It’s sad and hopeful, sharply observant, and a brilliant, brilliant debut. I’m so excited to see what Lottie Hazell has in store in the future.

‘The Stars Too Fondly’ by Emily Hamilton

Another sci-fi novel! Are you noticing a theme yet? This debut sci-fi, accidental heist, sapphic rom-com is all I wanted and more. When Cleo and her friends accidentally steal an old spaceship while they’re searching for answers to a decades-old mystery, the last thing that she expects is to fall in love with the former captain of the ship.

The longing in this book. Phew. ‘The Stars Too Fondly’ is a masterclass in friendship, longing, and just how vibrantly diverse and fun sci-fi can be.

‘Freakslaw’ by Jane Flett

A horror set in a travelling funfair landing in a small Scottish town in 1997? Yeah, it was as brilliant as I had hoped.

While excited to read this, I was also hesitant about how it would treat the characters with disabilities and differences that make their home in the Freakslaw, but it was handled really, really well from my perspective.

The tension as the group clamour for revenge and the town frays further and further into violence or into seduction by the freedoms of the fair build and build, culminating in a startling, Grotesque conclusion that’s very powerful and a little bittersweet.

‘The Pairing’ by Casey McQuiston

I’m a huge Casey McQuiston fan but their two most previous novels haven’t hit me in the way that ‘Red, White and Royal Blue’ did, but ‘The Pairing’? Utter perfection.

The sun drenched love story set during a summer wine and food trip through Europe is everything that I ever wanted from a summer romance novel. Food, drink, summer sun, longing, friendship, and some very messy emotions.

‘The Expanse’ series by James SA Corey

I read 8 of the 9 books in ‘The Expanse’ series in 2024 after reading book one, ‘Leviathan Wakes’, last December and it’s been a highlight of my reading year.

The journey from book one to book nine is phenomenal and even thinking back to where we began with Jim, Naomi, Alex and Amos is completely wild - the whole universe is different after nine books.

‘The Expanse’ begins when an ice mining ship finds an abandoned ship floating in space and end up in possession of a galaxy-changing secret and a girl who holds the secret in the balance, while Jim and the crew are left to try and locate her before it’s too late.

Phenomenal, emotional, truly awesome in scope, and a new forever favourite. I was bereft finishing ‘Leviathan Falls’ and I’ll be thinking about the Roci crew for a long time.

‘The Centre’ by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi

I basically bullied Sarah into us having this on season nine of ‘The Dark Academicals’ and I’m so very glad that I did because I loved it. It’s one of my favourite books I’ve read for the podcast in many seasons.

When translator Anisa discovers a special centre where you can become effortlessly fluent in a new language in only 10 days for just the price of 10 days of isolation and £30,00, she can’t resist the draw to use it to level up her career. But there’s something sinister at the heart of The Centre…

I adored this book and the discussions of translation, colonialism, appropriation, and the price of success. One of my most recommended books of 2024.

‘The Nightmare Before Kissmas’ Sara Raasch

I can’t even deal with how much I loved reading this. It’s one o the few on the list that is here for reasons of pure fun and gleeful enjoyment. ‘The Nightmare Before Kissmas’ is a holiday romance between the Prince of Christmas - Coal - and the Prince of Halloween - Hex, as they’re forced together as a PR stunt to demonstrate the alliance between the two holidays.

Pure kick your feet joy and my favourite holiday romance that I’ve ever read. I cannot wait for book two, ‘Go Luck Yourself’, about Coal’s brother, Kris, and Lochlann, the Crown Prince of St Patrick’s Day.

‘Tom Lake’ by Ann Patchett

I am honestly as shocked as you probably are that this incredibly popular literary novel made it to my favourite lists.

I was completely suckered by the unending hype and the fact that Meryl Streep reads the audio book and I ended up requesting the audiobook from my library and then devoured it in only a few days. There’s a quiet magic about this book set during Covid where Lara tells the story of her fling with a famous movie star to her three grown up daughters and how it led her to their father, the true love of her life.

'Tom Lake’ is absolutely stunning and Meryl Streep’s narration is so perfect; I’m so very glad I took a chance on this book.

‘Divine Rivals’ by Rebecca Ross

I read very little YA in 2024, but ‘Divine Rivals’ alone was enough of a win that I felt sadness about missing out on some big YA releases. I was utterly swept up in the magic, romance, mystery and longing of this book, and while the sequel really disappointed me and dampened my feelings about book one, I was able to move past it and reflect on how special this novel is.

A magic realism slash fantasy world that feels reminiscent of England in World War One where gods are real and they are at war. Iris and Roman are rivals journalists who are sent to the front line of the war to bring the truth to people being made to chose a side in a war that will change the world that they live in, they find that maybe they’re a little more than rivals with the help of a magical typewriter that connects them across any distance.

Just like with ‘The Nightmare before Kissmas’, the romance and the longing in ‘Divine Rivals’ had me in a chokehold - I was swooning and kicking my feet the whole time, desperate for them to open their eyes to each other. The hype served me well with this one.

‘Assistant to the Villain’ and ‘Apprentice to the Villain’ by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Even though these books went viral on BookTok, the reception is very mixed outside of that and I didn’t have hugely high expectations - I just wanted a fun read. It’s silly and not the most well written in the world, but I devoured book of these books this year and I’m eagerly anticipating the third and final book, ‘Accomplice to the Villain’.

Evie’s dad is sick and so she’s responsible for looking after him and her little sister and is desperate for a job after being forced out of her previous position by her creepy boss when she finds herself landing a job as The Villains’ assistant.

It’s a slow burn, grumpy sunshine romance to be and I’m salivating for (what I think is) the conclusion of the series, I enjoy them so much that I think I’ll even reread the first two before I read book three.

‘Empireland’ by Sathnam Sanghera

I haven’t done very well with reading non-fiction this year, but from what I have read, ‘Empireland’ and ‘Empireworld’ take the top spot and hold their own even among the fiction choices.

Sathnam explores the lasting cultural, social, mental, emotional (and more -als) of the British Empire across modern Britain and how Imperialism has informed everything. This is a sobering, confronting book that should be compulsory reading and used to frame how Empire is taught in British schools, because I can confirm that I never learned any of this until a particular course on colonial writings in my Masters.

I’m so glad that I got to these incredibly important books this year and I can’t recommend them enough.

What have you read and loved in 2024?

Written by Sophie