Reading: TOP 10 BOOKS 0F 2021!

Not a bad reading year, 2021. No major slumps, some brilliant writers and stories, even some surprises - including a few highly-anticipated reads/authors I fully expected to be on this list, but for one reason or another fell short. 

There may be books I read in 2021 that I gave higher star ratings to than a few listed here, but I've come to realize that, by end of year, what makes my Top 10 Reads list are those books that have stuck with me. Stories and characters I still think about weeks (or even months, in some cases) late; books that have left a permanent mark like a visceral punch to the gut. These are those ten. To put it in maybe an even clearer way: I don't own many books, because I tend to give away all but the best reads as soon as I finish them, wanting to pass on a good book to someone else. With these ten, all of which were read via Kindle (money being what it is), I can honestly say I wish I owned a copy of each, to keep in my library forever.

Ranking isn't my thing, but usually I try to choose a #1 of the year. This year, there was at least a three-way tie for first place that I couldn't work through, so the books are listed in the order I read them, from earliest in 2021 to most recent. No ranking because all of them were ... well, the best of the best, at least to me.

1: GREASE: THE DIRECTOR'S NOTEBOOK by Randal Kleiser. Kleiser's personal diaries about the making of the iconic musical starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John; a shot-by-shot recounting of the film that includes never-before-seen images, deleted script scenes and dialogue, interviews with some of the cast, and Kleiser's own memories of his cast and the filming of a film that, today, remains as popular as it was 40+ years ago. A must-read for any fan of the film.

2. SNAPDRAGON by Kat Leyh. I read about a half-dozen fantastic graphic novels this year, but Snapdragon - read early on in 2021 - still rose to the top. A young girl named Snapdragon - Snap for short - learns a great deal about life and humanity when she makes an agreement to help out an old lady in town named Jacks, who may or may not be a witch.  Poignant, touching, lyrical. A beautiful story with a quirky, incredibly likeable heroine.

3. THE BURNING GIRLS by C. J. Tudor. To say the remote English village of Chapel Croft has a dark past would be an understatement, but even Reverend Jack Frost - recently relocated there as the new vicar - isn't quite prepared for the chilly arrival and haunting stories of the Protestant martyrs burned alive there five hundred years ago. Jack's teenaged daughter Flo, meanwhile, has her own issues trying to adjust from city life to a creepy wasteland steeped in its horrific past, finding some solace in a young, sickly boy her own age who is also a loner. But when Jack learns the truth of what happened to the previous vicar, and Flo actually has a vision of young girls set on fire, Chapel Croft's newest residents find themselves in real danger - and The Burning Girls goes bat-sh*t crazy, with reveals I never saw coming resulting in a book that had me holding my breath for its second half ... and a book my mind kept going back to, weeks after reading it. In a lesser year, could have easily been my #1.

4. THE LOST APOTHECARY by Sarah Penner. Told in two timelines; in modern-day London, history buff Caroline Parcewell has just checked into a well-to-do hotel to celebrate her tenth wedding anniversary. Problem is, just before leaving the States, Caroline learned her husband was cheating on her, so she's come to London alone and determined to both enjoy the trip and take some time away from him, to figure out what to do. But a chance enounter with some amateur treasure finders leads her to discover a small bottle in the Thames, which starts her on a journey to discover the truth behind a series of murders from a hundred years ago ... where the second timeline takes over, depicting the life of a young woman named Nella running a London apothecary shop who, behind the scenes, dispenses poisons to women with no other course in escaping the abusive men who've taken over their lives. A slow burn at first, I was nevertheless immeditely sucked into both stories - especially Nella's - becoming more intrigued, as the pages turned, to learn how the lives of these women a century apart would somehow come together. Author Srah Penner knows how to build both tension and characters, and for a debut especially this is a winner.

5. ACE OF SPADES by Faridah Abike-Iyimide. Niveus Private Academy is as exclusive a school as it sounds. It's senior year for the school's only two Black students, Chiamaka and Devon, both of whom are already given the honor of being named prefects on the first day of term, and the future seems bright for two of the school's best students ... until someone calling themselves Aces begins to start sending blanket anonymous texts to the entire student body, revealing secrets about Devon and Chiamaka that start off embarrassing and upsetting, but soon grow in size to potentially damage both students' reputations and educational trajectories. When things finally start getting downright threatening, Chiamaka and Devon - who really didn't know or associate much with each other, prior to Aces - must combine forces to find out who is targeting the only Black students in the school, uncovering something far more sinister than either anticipated. Though the ending felt a bit rushed for me, this was another sure-footed debut with a pair of main characters so real on the page, once I hit the halfway point every time I had to put down the book, it absolutely irritated me until I could pick it - and the story - up again. And if that isn't a freaking great book, I don't know what is. 

6. DIAL A FOR AUNTIES by Jesse Q. Sutanto. Another novel that could easily have been my #1 of the year in any other year (and easily the book that made me laugh the most in 2021), this insane little caper starts when a young woman named Meddelin "Meddy" Chan accidentally kills a man who tried very hard to force himself on her sexually ... only to be rescued by her mother and three eccentric aunts, who help her hide the body on the eve of a huge wedding event catered by the auntie's popular catering company. When the corpse accidentally ends up attending the nuptials, and Meddy's life is further complicated when the one man she let get away shows up in her life again - at the wedding, no less - the ever-increasing lunacy proves nothing more than Sutanto's incredible skills at chraracters and plotting and depicting the culture of the family, because even as you shake your head with laughter at how outrageous the shenanigans get ... at the same time the characters are so real and hilarious and engaging, OMG I can't even express how much I loved this book - nor how badly I await the sequel in March!

7. MURDER IN A TEACUP by Vicki Delany. If I remember right, the first book in this series made my Top 10 last year, and here Delany continues the trend. Tearoom owner Lily Roberts is gearing up for her grandmother Rose's company at the B&B, even after  the McHenry family turns out to be a bickering mess of angry people with hidden agendas and bigger secrets - but when one of the family literally drops dead in Lily's tearoom, poisoned, the amateur sleuth has a tangled knots of alibis and backstories to unravel to find the killer. Delany is a joy to read, the mystery laced with lighthearted bits of humor and wonderful characters. Here, though, what kind of blew me away was the revelation of the killer, and how the book's finale plays out afterward. SO well-done, and well-plotted, but also a pretty riveting read, for a cozy especially when so many cozies I've read lately have come off very "vanilla". Really, really love this series, and am wondering if book three might be out in time to make 2022's list?

8. VELVET WAS THE NIGHT by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Another author on my Top 10 list for the second year in a  row (I will love Mexican Gothic to my dying day), one of the remarkable things about this book is how wildy, incredibly different in style and tone it is from that previous gothic-horror novel - but wow, did I adore this, another of my tied contenders I couldn't decide betwen for the #1 position of the year. Here, the reader is set up in 1970's Mexico City, where a rather bland office drone named Maite leads a humdrum life that's about to get a lot less humdrum. See, Maite's much more beautiful, glamorous neighbor, Leonora, enlists Maite's aid in cat-sitting for the weekend ... and then promptly disappears, really irritating the snot out of Maite who was only doing it for the money (well, and to also be able to poke around the girl's apartment unchecked). Even when Leonora finally gets in touch, asking Maite to grab the cat and a few other things and meet her at a strange address, Leonora doesn't show, further irritating Maite who needs the cash. Meanwhile, our second POV character, a small-time thug named Elvis, has his own issues that tie into Leonora - and as the book's violent and mysterious events continue, we see Maite and Elvis geting closer and closer to having their paths cross, in a tumultuous era of Mexico's history that leaves anything up for grabs. I don't know how many writers can bring people to life on a page like Moreno-Garcia; with both this novel and Mexican Gothic, literally from page one her characters are just so all-consuming to me; I am intrigued by them on this weird, deep level, and whether I like them or not I can't help but follow their journey. And it's quite a journey here, leading to one of the most satisfying endings I read in a book in 2021, if not ever, and has made Moreno-Garcia a go-to author whose backlist I need to catch up on, asap. 

9. THE DECAGON HOUSE MURDERS by Yukito Ayatsuji (translated by Hong-Li Wong). I had an opportunity to read an ARC of part one of the manga version of this celebrated Japanese novel, finally translated into English, and when I coudn't get to part two fast enough (thanks to that part one cliffhanger!), I went straight to the source and read the novel. An homage toAgatha Christie's And Then There Were None, this is the story of a group of college students in Japan - all part of a school group of detective fiction fans, and each one nicknamed with a the name of a famous mysery writer - who journey by boat to the remote Tsunojima Island, the site of some grisly murders one year ago. They will be staying in the infamous Decagon House, a one-story, ten-sided structure built by the eccentric architect presumed guilty of killing his wife and servants the year before, prior to setting their manor home on fire and killing himself as well, and from the start even the smaller Decagon House comes complete with no electricity and a sense of creepiness that feels etched into the walls. Nevertheless, even without wi-fi service, the students are all mostly excited to spend the week investigating and studying the crimes that occurred on the island ... until they learn they've all been invited there for a reason, desolate and cut of from the world or any help. And then, one by one, they start to die. I loved this book from the beginning, it was atmospheric and creepy and kept me turning the pages - and even though I guessed the killer within maybe ten pages of the reveal, it was still a gasp-inducing surprise and spoiled nothing, thanks to the shocking way the finale played out. And while I thought it a great mystery - and homage to Christie - with maybe the occasional clunker as far as style (due, perhaps, to the translation), what I didn't foresee was that this book would absolutely haunt me for weeks to come, after finishing it. I simply couldn't get it out of my head; not the reveal, the ending, even how just the last page plays out. Another tie for #1 I couldn't break on, though in any other year this could have been #1 just because - to this day - it won't fully leave me alone.

10. CHRISTMAS DINNER OF SOULS by Ross Montgomery. Lewis is an 11-year-old boy in England, caught damaging the ancient, scary Soul's College on the hill. As punishment and to pay for the damage, his mother agrees to send Lewis over on Christmas Eve night to help serve at a huge dinner being held for the holiday, but upon arrival Lewis finds both the meal and chef distasteful, even gross - but then the dinner guests, the staff of the college, show up and Lewis realizes he is in the presence of a room full of genuine psychopaths, murderers, and monsters, all of whom can now, on Christmas Eve, show their true, noxious colors. Then the Dean arrives, and Lewis learns he's witnessing a yearly ritual designed to destroy children, happiness ... and kill off Christmas for good; a ritual in which a handful of guests are chosen to each tell his or her most disgusting, repulsive story of all time, the winner of this competition then moving on to try and find the one thing in the catacombs downstairs that will destroy Christmas for good  An ingenious, original, and actually at ttimes fairly unsettling middle-grade novel that kept me riveted from cover to cover. Not your average Christmas read, but quite possibly my favorite one, now.