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My Top Five 2017 Reads

5. Beauty Queens -- Libba Bray Published: 2011 Pages: 396

This is an absolute gem of a young adult book. If you have ever asked yourself, “What would happen if a plane full of teenage beauty pageant contestants crash-landed on a deserted island?” this book is for you. Furthermore, if you’ve ever read Lord of the Flies and thought, “Wow, a whole shitty book just to prove that boys are stupid,” this book will validate you. Your classic wilderness survival novel meets Miss Congeniality with a diverse cast. It’s both laugh-out-loud hilarious and thought-provoking, and frankly, I’m surprised that it isn’t more famous.

4. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe -- Fannie Flagg Published: 1987 Pages: 416

This is an absolute lesbian classic with so many quotable lines (and if you want to be a fun combination of amused and sad, check out all of the commenters on Goodreads jumping through hoops to justify that Ruth and Idgie are “just good friends,” but that’s neither here nor there...) The characters are all so endearing, and it offers a fantastic “slice of life” of the American South during the Depression. This book has its fair share of tragic and heart-wrenching moments but it’s also chock full of fluff and humor and will generally leave you feeling warm and fuzzy inside. The present-day plot about the empowerment of Evelyn Couch is equally lovely.

3. Homegoing -- Yaa Gyasi Published: 2016 Pages: 300

If you’re looking for a book you won’t stop thinking about for weeks after you put it down, this is the one for you. Effia and Esi are half-sisters living in 18th century Ghana. Effia gets married off to the colonial governor; Esi gets sold into slavery and brought to America. The book follows their descendants through the generations up to the modern day. It’s epic in scope, exploring three centuries of Ghanaian and African-American history, and is full of strong and memorable characters. A definite must-read.

2. The Golem and the Jinni -- Helene Wecker Published: 2013 Pages: 657

This book was a marathon of a read that I made the mistake of getting on audiobook. I thought about quitting several times in the first ten hours, but I’m glad I didn’t, because by the halfway point I was completely sucked in. Two supernatural beings, a golem (made to resemble a human woman) and a jinni (also trapped in human form by an evil sorcerer) both end up immigrating to NYC in the early 20th century. It starts out with their early exploration of the city and (sometimes failed) attempts to pass for human, and turns into a high-stakes race against the clock to stop the evil sorcerer before he enslaves them both and destroys the world. A mix of historical fiction and fantasy, this book contains everything I love: multiple timelines, multiple sideplots, more characters than you can comfortably keep track of, and a mystery with the perfect climactic moment. A++, highly recommend.

1. The Alice Network -- Kate Quinn Published: 2017 Pages: 520

If you like epic historical tales, parallel timelines, raw emotions, and badass ladies kicking butt, this book is for you. Charlie St. Clair, a young American woman, is sent to Europe by her wealthy parents to procure a hasty abortion; instead, she runs off to London in search of an investigator who holds the key to finding her cousin Rose, who disappeared in France during WWII. The investigator, Eve Gardiner, was a member of the Alice Network, a famous network of female spies in WWI, but now she mostly stays confined to her home, drinking heavily and dealing with her various demons. The book alternates between Charlie’s story in 1947 and Eve’s in 1915; while I found Eve’s storyline a lot more interesting, the two tie together satisfyingly at the end. Fair warning that this book does have a lot of violent and potentially triggering content and may not be for everyone.