My 5-Star Reads from 2019

No time like the present, eh? I read 94* books last year — thanks to a long commute + it’s now part of my job — and have a goal to finish 100 in 2020.

If you’ve started (or abandoned!) a reading goal or are stuck on what to read next, here are the books I gave 5 stars to after reading them in 2019. It’s a pretty even split between new and old, fiction and nonfiction, plus various genres.

And while I’ll happily discuss books with anyone, anytime, I do not need to hear your thoughts on why a book “sucks.” We all have our preferences; if some (or all) of these aren’t your style, simply share your faves so I can try those out, too 🤓

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

Fiction

• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
• An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
• The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
• The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
• All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
• The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
• A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
• Me Before You by Jojo Meyes
• Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Nonfiction

• Beautiful on the Outside by Adam Rippon
• Educated by Tara Westover
• We Should All Be Mirandas: Life Lessons from Sex and the City’s Most Underrated Character by Chelsea Fairless and Lauren Garroni
• American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century by Maureen Callahan
• We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
• Karl the Fog: San Francisco’s Most Mysterious Resident by Karl the Fog…
• Becoming by Michelle Obama
• The Library Book by Susan Orlean
• Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
• Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

*I read 94 books from cover to cover. For the first time in a while, I allowed myself to abandon books I wasn’t enjoying. I listened to some in audiobook format, but did not make it through any from start to finish. </end disclaimer>