The Most Memorable + Enjoyable Books of the Year | 2021 [Part 1]

Hello again, dear readers! I am so excited to share the first part of this list with all of you! I read so many wonderful books this year that putting together this list (and the much shorter part 2) was incredibly difficult. I am quite pleased with the amount of reading that I was able to do this year, I enjoyed so many incredible fictional stories and read the largest number of biographies I have ever read in a year.

My reading habits didn’t change dramatically this year. I am glad that I have remained strong in my commitment to quality over quantity and there were only a handful of books that I read this year that I would categorize as truly light-weight [I’m looking at you, Deadly Little Scandals].

I am incredibly grateful for the access that I have to books – both new and library copies – and the fact that my personal library is slowly, but surely, growing. 🙂

Anyway! I hope that you enjoy glancing through this list, and….Happy New Year!

*All summary credits go to either Goodreads or TheStoryGraph*

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Published 2015 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction–if they don’t kill each other first.

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Published 2020 | My Review | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

Code Name Hélène is a spellbinding and moving story of enduring love, remarkable sacrifice and unfaltering resolve that chronicles the true exploits of a woman who deserves to be a household name.

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Published 2020 | My Review | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

Avery Grambs has a plan for a better future: survive high school, win a scholarship, and get out. But her fortunes change in an instant when billionaire Tobias Hawthorne dies and leaves Avery virtually his entire fortune. The catch? Avery has no idea why–or even who Tobias Hawthorne is. To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man’s touch–and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. 

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Published 2021 | My Review | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

This luminous and heartbreaking contemporary novel follows a girl caught between two brothers as the three of them navigate family, loss, and love over the course of two summers.

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

Unfolding over decades, Eternal is a tale of loyalty and loss, family and food, love and war–all set in one of the world’s most beautiful cities at its darkest moment.

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

We Are the Ashes, We Are the Fire is a searing and nuanced portrait of a young woman torn between a persistent desire for revenge and a burning need for hope.

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

As fiction blurs into reality, Josie and Elias must decide: How does one live if love can’t wait? Separated by two hundred years, they fight against time to find each other in a story of her, him, and the novel written by the man who loves her.

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Published 2017 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Lisa Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

When King Lord blood runs through your veins, though, you can’t just walk away. Loyalty, revenge, and responsibility threaten to tear Mav apart, especially after the brutal murder of a loved one. He’ll have to figure out for himself what it really means to be a man.

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

All’s fair in love and cheese ― that is, until Pepper and Jack’s spat turns into a viral Twitter war. Little do they know, while they’re publicly duking it out with snarky memes and retweet battles, they’re also falling for each other in real life ― on an anonymous chat app Jack built.

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Published 2021 | My Thoughts | Add on: Goodreads or TheStoryGraph

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

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Well, now it’s your turn! What were a couple of the best books that you read this year? Have you read any of these books?