With a new year come new resolutions. Sadly, it seems that most people don’t get the hang of a new life routine quite as quickly as they thought they would. New habits don’t take root overnight, which is why gyms usually empty again after the first three weeks of January. It’s hard to stay consistent when other busy work keeps popping up to eat away all of your time.
If one of your New Year’s resolutions includes dusting off your bookshelf and starting to read more regularly, then here are my 10 favorite books of 2021 that will get you off your phone and excited to read.
1. Beach Read
Emily Henry’s Beach Read is an easy-flowing rom-com that follows writers January Andrews and Augustus Everett as they try to find a way out of their writer’s block. Living in two neighboring beach houses, the two decide to challenge themselves and write something completely out of the ordinary: Andrew is tasked with a happy ending while January has to write the next great American novel.
Beach Read has it all: nemesis characters who form a deep, meaningful, and well-written relationship, captivating storytelling, and a witty plot that balances the characters’ deep emotions and relationships.
2. The Bridge Kingdom series
This series by Danielle L. Jensen is the perfect enemies-to-lovers romance, full of dramatic plot twists and cliffhangers. Since she was born, Princess Lara has been training to bring the ruthless Bridge Kingdom to its knees and kill their king. The day finally comes when she is sent under the ruse of an arranged marriage to be the king’s bride and spy on him and his people. What she discovers is unlike anything her father told her, and Lara is torn between doing right by her Kingdom or her heart.
The Bridge Kingdom series is a fast-paced fantasy book with an imperfect heroine and a well-written plot.
3. The Secret History
In this novel by Donna Tartt, a group of eclectic boarding school students discover a way of thinking and living away from their contemporaries’ humdrum existence. As they traverse the boundaries of morality, they become obsessed, corrupt, and inexorably evil.
This book, which can only be described as a modern Greek tragedy, is a cataclysm of emotions. All characters are morally gray and absolutely terrible humans who have a sort of fever dream air around them. What starts as a critique of elitist circles transforms into something the elites can only understand. You’ll feel left out and critiqued by the snobby characters, who are wonderfully written and transformed.
4. The Love Hypothesis
Simply put, this is a love story. It follows a Stanford grad student and a professor as they enter a fake dating pact. Olive and Adam both have something to gain from it: Olive needs to convince her friend that she’s over an ex, while Adam must prove to the university that he’s fully settled in Palo Alto. As they try to keep up with their charade, accidents push them closer together until the lines between real and fake are entirely blurred.
Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis follows the love story between Adam and Olive and their own personal goals, achievements, and issues. It all ties back into the love story, making the book flow easily.
5. Boy Parts
Eliza Clark’s Boy Parts is psychotic. Violent. Dissociative. Irina, a fetish photographer, prepares a shoot of a shy young man from her local supermarket for an art gallery in London. She is an obsessive anti-hero who can’t help but entrap everyone’s attention- even the readers’. Boy Parts feels like a toxic relationship, one that you can’t help but stay in love with. Not for the faint of heart.