As the world grew dark this year, I found light tucked in the pages of some truly wonderful books. I have a sweet spot for a fast-paced work of fiction, but I also found some guidance. These are my top ten of 2020, not necessarily in this order.
Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert
I devoured Big Magic once I had my hands on it. This was an excellent read and a must for any creative out there. You don’t have to be a suffering artist to be a good one. Only when you learn to rise above your fear of failure can you realize your true potential. And that is Big Magic.
Circe, Madeline Miller
This reimagining of the life of the sorceress who enchanted wily Odysseus is full of spellbinding imagery that fully immerses you in the world of the Greek gods. Circe incurs the wrath of Zeus and is banished to a remote island where she cultivates her magical garden and ensnares hapless sailors. When the king of Ithaca washes up on her shores, she finds he is the first true match for her cunning.
Where the Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens
Set in the marshes of North Carolina in the 1960s, Kya grows up as an outsider. Abandoned by her mother and known only as the “Marsh Girl” by the townsfolk of Barkley Cove, she takes solace in the natural world and the critters who inhabit it. This is a story of learning to trust after experiencing betrayal when two boys from town each find themselves drawn to Kya’s wild spirit, one intent on loving her, the other on taming her. It’s deftly woven with a murder mystery after the town’s star quarterback is found dead. It’s a story as bittersweet as the crawdad’s song (if they could actually sing, that is).
Beach Read, Emily Henry
Henry’s Beach Read was a goddamn delight that left me with a serious case of book hangover. Bestselling romance novelist January Andrews is broke, single and living in the beach house next door to her college rival. Gravedigger-turned-author of acclaimed literary fiction Augustus Everett is battling his own past. When he kills off his entire cast, she writes happily ever afters—at least she did when she still believed in love. To dislodge themselves from their creative ruts, they make a deal. He’ll write something with a happy ending and she’ll write something serious.
This is a super cute story and just the thing I needed when I was feeling down about my own love life. Gus and January have an incredible chemistry and it nearly ruined the next book I read because the connection between the protagonists just wasn’t as believable. The thing about lasting love is that “you have to keep falling in love with every new version of each other, and it’s the best feeling in the whole world.” I can’t wait for next summer’s People We Meet on Vacation.
Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Delightfully wicked and best read on a crisp autumn eve when there’s fog in the air and wood burning on the fire, because Mexican Gothic is the kind of book that will give you goosebumps and send shivers racing down your spine.
Had It Coming, Robyn Doolittle
I absolutely adore Doolittle. The Globe and Mail investigative journalist published Unfounded—a collection of stories about police mishandling of sexual assault cases in Canada—in 2017 ahead of the global MeToo movement, and the rest is history. But her research proved especially refreshing for me as a young journalist who wanted nothing more than to find the truth and tell it.
“The fury that many women are experiencing and voicing right now is real and warranted, and writing 70,000 words about it would have been cathartic…I could have taken that Molotov cocktail of resentment, lit it on fire, and lobbed it into the world, screaming, ‘Burn it all down!’ That’s a book that would have earned me a lot of love on Twitter… But that is not the book I’ve written.”
No, it isn’t. This book is a very fair look at the world as it is today. It might just change your perspective on a few key issues and on the very culture we exist in.
Untamed, Glennon Doyle
It all started with a tiger at the zoo. A beautiful, wild creature, tamed for the spectator’s enjoyment. Does she miss the jungle? No. She was born in captivity and doesn’t know any better. This is the metaphor Doyle uses for the modern woman. We strive for perfection. We mould ourselves into society’s carefully crafted image of the woman who has it all – motherhood, a successful career, and when we fall short as we invariably do, we suffer a crisis of identity. But we don’t have to. Doyle carefully deconstructs this ideal image of womanhood, because the beauty of life is in its messiness. You get to taste true freedom when you break free from expectations.
The Last Train to Key West, Chanel Cleeton
I read Cleeton’s breakout novel Next Year in Havana first and thought it was decent as far as debuts go, but she has truly outdone herself with The Last Train to Key West. Cleeton has a way of conjuring imagery that will have you flipping pages long after your own coppery tan has turned into a burn, because if you’re like me, you took this book to the beach and then stayed out in the sun far too long.
Three women—a pregnant, battered wife who’s only ever called Key West her home, a Cuban newlywed on honeymoon coming to terms with her new husband’s shady business dealings, and a runaway from Chicago searching the veteran camps for her brother—cross paths over the course of the Labour Day long weekend as the most powerful hurricane in the history of the Florida Keys barrels toward them. It’s the perfect storm of suspense.
Jackie and Maria, Gill Paul
Paul is my go-to gal for light and breezy reads with a surprising amount of soul. I picked up her earlier novel, The Affair—a sizzling scandal (and no, not Liz Taylor’s and Dick Burton’s) on the set of the 1964 Cleopatra film two summers ago, and was it ever a delight. Jackie and Maria, the story of Jackie Kennedy and Maria Callas, rounded off my summer this year and it was equally sublime. Dallas motorcade and Whitehouse politics aside, the azure waters of the Aegean on-board Aristotle Onassis’s yacht are a captivating draw as these two women duke it out—and precisely where you’ll wish you could be reading this book.
The Evening and the Morning, Ken Follett
Follett has never failed to delight me. This much-anticipated prequel to the bestselling The Pillars of the Earth was just as good as I expected. At the turn of the first millennium, a young shipbuilder loses the woman he loves in a vicious viking raid and travels to a backwater settlement where he begins to rebuild his life, ever at odds with his new master. A Norman noblewoman travels to England to marry an Anglo-Saxon chieftain, a man she fell in love with, but discovers that his brutal, scheming brothers will stop at nothing to get their hands on the earldom.
One observation was that the main characters bear remarkable similarities to the leads in the other books of the Kingsbridge series. The cast includes a pure-hearted builder, a noblewoman shocked to find her new world is one of violence, a pious monk and a scheming bishop… I felt like I was experiencing déjà vu watching Edgar and Ragna’s forbidden romance play out the same way it has before in three other books. Regardless of the repeated unfolding of this storyline, it does not take away from the plot. It’s perfectly obvious that Follett was a thriller writer before he turned to historical epics, because this 1,000-page tome is a page-turner. If you want to be completely engrossed in another time, this is the novel that will take you there.