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I don’t want to say this might be a regular thing, but this might be a regular thing that Virtual Book Club, February edition is More Maas because if darling Sarah keeps publishing books in February, we’re going to need to revisit the previous titles in that series before reading consuming the next one.  If Queen Maas isn’t for you (because you’ve tried, if not DM us and we’ll help you decide where to start, and if you stopped, DM us that too), and you still need a bookish conversation, let us know, and we’ll see if we can do a buddy read with you!  If you’re all in for House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) and it’s 800ish pages (sorrynotsorry), then  sign up here.  And don’t forget to start thinking about how you’ll get When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole for April’s Virtual Book Club.  

Before we dig into our favorites, we are going to take a minute to be your reading coaches.  Yes, that’s right, Coach Po and Coach Rou here, so take a knee kids.  We read a lot of books last year.  It’s our main hobby, we love sharing books and reviews with you, and Ashley has that #kidfreeflex going on, too.  If you read a book last year, we are proud of you!  Yes, ONE, that’s all it takes.  We want you to achieve YOUR reading goals and to remember that our goals are 100% not for everyone.  TAKE THE WIN if you read last year and do not feel guilty that you didn’t do more.  THERE IS NO SHOULD IN READING.  Follow our beloved Kendra Adachi’s advice and name what matters.  We hope among those things is that you enjoy reading and it doesn’t cause you stress or guilt.  We welcome you into this conversation, and remind you that quality (by your metrics) matters, and quantity does not.  *steps off soapbox*

We read a whole book about it for Virtual Book Club in March 2021, and here I am OVERTHINKING my top titles of 2021. Nikki reminds me that it’s a list of what brought me joy, moved, or changed me this past year. The majority of titles that match those criteria, as I was searching the 125 books on my GoodReads 2021 Reading Challenge, all seemed to be nonfiction titles. I’m really ok with that. So, I’m just going to get down to business (to defeat the Huns!)…

Fiction Favorites:

• A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas
• Lore by Alexandra Bracken
• Rules for Being a Girl by Candice Bushnell & Katie Cotugno
• Gods of Jade & Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

NonFiction Favorites:

• The Lazy Genius Way by Kendra Adachi
• Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger by Lisa Donovan
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• Caste by Isabel Wilkerson

Honorable Mention:

• Fair Play by Eve Rodsky

Let’s state the obvious: Per Usual, Sarah J. Maas is the winner (tied with Samantha Whiskey)  of the authors with the most read books on my 2021 list. Seeing as how we re-read the entire A Court of Thorns and Roses series for Virtual Book Club in preparation for the release of A Court of Silver Flames this doesn’t seem like a big confession. However, the confession comes when I admit that I read A Court of Silver Flames front to back three times this year, and picked up and re-read several sex… I mean SECtions without counting the entire book as a re-read. Not sad or ashamed because Nessian is my favorite. That is all. Ok, that’s not all, I read seven Samantha Whiskey romance novels with my KU subscription and if I hadn’t re-read Nessian two other times she would have been the clear author winner. These are my Confessions.

Lore and Gods of Jade and Shadow were two books from Mythology in May. Moreno-Garcia is an author with such delicious prose and since both Nikki and I had her Mexican Gothic on the 2020 Favorites list, I felt like Gods of Jade and Shadow deserved much more than just an ‘Honorable Mention.’ Lore wasn’t a favorite for Nikki, but Melora Perseos and her found family haven’t left my brain since May. Her badassery is what I strive for in and out of the gym. The same problem of having a book’s themes live rent free in my brain also pertains to Rules for Being a Girl.  I had some major feelings that you can read about in March’s post and I can still find myself thinking about ALL of that when reading other books or interacting on a daily basis.

I am also feeling a little late to the party because Nikki chose both The Color of Law and The Lazy Genius Way as two of her 2020 favorites, but I am a big proponent of the idea that things reach you in your life at just the right time; when you need them. And as much as my book buddy was right that these tiles can be life-changing, I needed to get to them at the proper time for me. I’m so thankful that I read them at the time that I did, and especially that Nikki was ready to re-read and post about The Lazy Genius Way! The Color of Law and Caste are related to each other in that they speak about the treatment and lived experience of BIPOC people in the United States. I think both titles should be required high school reading so that we can start making the much needed changes to the systems that keep BIPOC in a place of inequality. These two titles will live rent-free in my head for the rest of my life. I think they should be in everyone’s and I will certainly pick them up when I need a refresher.

Real short: I bought two signed copies of Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger one each for my mom and sister for Christmas. And if you can’t remember why, here’s the link to our June post about how Lisa Marie Donovan broke me.

And finally, the one and only Honorable Mention, Fair Play by Eve Rodsky. It has also been living rent-free in my head since March and I’m not really happy about it because I’m never going to re-read this book, but the concept of each partner holding specific cards in the game of life could be a really great tool for restructuring the way chores and ‘daily grind’ tasks of life are handled in any household. I’m bitter that it’s not a viable tool for my life and I keep wanting it to be.

So, that’s all. Those are the titles that have settled in my brainspace from 2021 even though there were many more that I thoroughly enjoyed (and one that I 10/10 do not recommend).

$5 gift card to Starbucks to the first reader that messages us this week with the book I 10/10 do not recommend.

~Ashley

Oh readers, I had feelings about my 2021 reading life, and I didn’t want to sit with them.  There were some titles I wanted to love, like wanted to be five stars, will reread, and I just didn’t.  I liked them, a lot, but I didn’t love them.  Do I want to reread them later on when I don’t feel so soul weary?  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes, but they aren’t listed among my 2021 favorites because this year, they didn’t make the cut.  In reviewing my 130 books of 2021, I need to confess something.  Ashley might be right, I might be too generous with my star ratings.  Maybe, or maybe my memory is crap (not maybe, it is crap re keeping books straight afterwards).  Or maybe I really am just tired in my soul and haven’t been leaving space to sit with books and really feel and consider them.  Truly, I think the accurate answer is all of the above.  I need more sitting with books after I finish them, perhaps a bit of journaling or a bit faster on the writing up of my feelings about them will help me find a better star rating reflection too.  Wish Ashley luck with my memory.  When we were recently planning some future titles, she adjusted the order so two that felt similar weren’t back to back…so she didn’t have to clean up my crap memory mixing them up.  Have I mentioned how my reading buddy might be right and I love her down to my very center?  She might be, and I do!  

Now, even with all that, I do have a solid top five and a few more honorable mentions.  For my favorites, I’m still thinking about them, talking about them, and even recommending them to strangers on the internet (yes, that was this past weekend).  We have posts about four of the five, so I’m not going to wax poetic, except perhaps about that one, but I do want to call out what I’m still thinking about for each one, so I will.  Same for the honorable mentions.  Each of those has such soul and depth and even thinking about them makes me want to spend time in that world again, with those characters who are so real to me, even if they’re really not.  There is no particular order within the lists.  

2022 Top Five Reads:

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab:  Despite how hard this book was to settle into at first, I adored it.  The writing, the wanderlust, the struggle to find self, and to have meaning, oh and that ending, it was just glorious and amazing.  Check out the full review here. 
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi: Gyasi is a master, and has earned a place for anything she cares to write in my TBR.  The writing is glorious, the structure is amazingly creative, and tells an engaging, connected story over seven generations.  This book is not only a phenomenal text, it’s also very important because of how Gyasi tells the stories and draws the connections from the colonization of Africa, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, to the war on drugs and the way power and dehumanization stripped generations of their potential at the hands of fellow humans.  Check out the full review here. 
• A Court of Silver Flames (A Court of Thorns and Roses #5) by Sarah J. Maas:  It is no secret Sarah J. Maas can just have our pre-order for anything she cares to write (and I *may* have pre-ordered her next book four months early).  Now, don’t read this first, for the love of Velaris read these books in order, but here are some of the reasons I love this novel, but really all of Maas’s works: the character development is so phenomenal, and they go from bad, to worse, and then do the work to dig themselves out, with the support of people who care about them; the people who care are usually older and wiser, and you get glimpses of what they’ve overcome already, because they too have done the work, even if they do slip up from time to time; and last, but not least, the plotting of the details is so impeccable which just speaks to the genius of Maas’s mind, and the skill she has at her craft (I’m anxiously anticipating her explaining some things from this book in those to come, but I have faith).  
• Wintering by Katherine May:  I only regret that I didn’t read this book sooner.  I’m not sure what the seasons look like in my life right now, but I know that when my body tells me to stop, I need to embrace it because sometimes you just have to hibernate so that later you can grow nourishing and beautiful things.  If you need May’s glorious writing and entertaining anecdotes to remind you that life has seasons just like nature and you can’t fight them off without further injury, please pick this up.  Check out the full review here. 
• The Comfort Book by Matt Haig: If Wintering is explaining the relationship between nature’s season and life’s, then The Comfort Book explains how winter feels to Haig and shares musings that helped him get through it.  Sooner or later, this book, in dead tree form will have a permanent residence on my nightstand, desk, or both.  I will be frustrated and open it and it will help me feel seen, give me hope, or make me laugh.  Could I just order this book?  Yes, but really, I’m going to wait until I go to an indie bookstore and buy it there on purpose, because bookstores are comforts too.  Check out the full review here.

Honorable Mentions:

• This House of Sky by Ivan Doig:  This memoir exposed me to transient life in Montana, Doig’s gorgeous writing, and marvelous story telling.  It reminded me how I love to travel and experience new places.  Check out the my Reading Life Review comments on it here. 
• We Hunt the Flame (Duology) by Hafsah Faizal:  An assassin, a hero, demons, magic, amazing world building, fabulous writing, and I don’t need more, but these main characters are so layered and nuanced and don’t have time to do their work while they save the world, but they and the circumstances force each other to be better and just thinking about it makes me want to reread it.  Check out the full review here. 
• The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson: Give me a novel about witches and I’m excited.  Add in the fact that the author is coming for everything bad in my world and I am HERE. FOR. IT.  Henderson goes after gender stereotypes, racism, purity culture, and more.  It’s dark and I love it.  Check out the full review here. 
• Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson:  This book can be just a fun hang, or it can be a fun hang, with some really deep layers.  The writing is tight and witty, the characters are relatable, and with a bit of the unreal (the whole the kids catch on fire thing), it’s a fabulous story and a great escape!   Check out the full review here. 

Readers, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about what books have been our favorites this year and why.  We’d love to know what topped your favorites list from 2021.  Please share a favorite (or a few) in the comments below!

~Nikki 

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