Hi and welcome to the reading world!
Today, I’m sharing the second edition of my Love at First Page series. This is my favorite book predictions that I share each year.
First, let’s start off with what books from last year’s list that I’ve read. Many of my TBRs don’t come to fruition- I’m a mood reader through and through, but I did pick up a couple of my predictions and wanted to share my thoughts.
Also, as a note, I personally have moved away from star ratings and so I’m just categorizing these reads as whether or not they’re favorite reads.
2021 Prediction Reads and Results:
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times) This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy. Read the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin
Published by Orbit on August 4, 2015
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Fantasy / Epic, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Magical Realism
Pages: 512
The Fifth Season was incredible. The story kept me on the edge of my seat, the twists and turns that made it feel like I was reading a sci fi fantasy thriller all wrapped up into one. The world building is one of a kind, and the characters are ones I’m excited to read more on in the subsequent installments.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2021 WOMEN'S PRIZE FINALIST “Bennett’s tone and style recalls James Baldwin and Jacqueline Woodson, but it’s especially reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye.” —Kiley Reid, Wall Street Journal “A story of absolute, universal timelessness …For any era, it's an accomplished, affecting novel. For this moment, it's piercing, subtly wending its way toward questions about who we are and who we want to be….” – Entertainment Weekly From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins. As with her New York Times-bestselling debut The Mothers, Brit Bennett offers an engrossing page-turner about family and relationships that is immersive and provocative, compassionate and wise.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Published by Penguin on February 1, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Women
Pages: 400
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * NPR * PEOPLE * TIME MAGAZINE* VANITY FAIR * GLAMOUR
The Vanishing Half is being hailed as a modern classic, and I definitely think this is an acclaimed literary novel for a reason. The storylines and character development transcend generations, years, and places while addressing themes and issues the characters face.
A Good Morning America 2021 Top Summer Read Pick The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
Published by Beacon Press on February 1, 2004
Genres: Fiction / African American & Black / Women, Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Science Fiction / Time Travel
Pages: 288
Octavia Butler is an icon of science fiction, and I was so excited to finally pick up one of her works. Kindred is incredible. It’s devastating, terrifying, and kept me turning pages desperate to know what was next. B2Weird is doing a year long read through of her works, and I can’t wait to dive more into her bibliography after reading this novel.
2022 Favorites Predictions:
Rare edition with unique illustrations and elegant classic cream paper. One of the most widely read novels of all time, Les Miserables was the crowning literary achievement of Victor Hugo's stunning career. Includes unique vintage illustrations.
Les Miserables Volume 3-4 by Victor Hugo
Published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform on June 12, 2018
Pages: 404
So Happy for You by Celia Laskey
GOOD MORNING AMERICA BUZZ PICK • From the bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a riveting noir about a daydreaming secretary, a lonesome enforcer, and the mystery of a missing woman they’re both desperate to find. ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, New York Public Library, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, BookPage, She Reads, Library Journal • “An adrenalized, darkly romantic journey.”—The Washington Post 1970s, Mexico City. Maite is a secretary who lives for one thing: the latest issue of Secret Romance. While student protests and political unrest consume the city, Maite escapes into stories of passion and danger. Her next-door neighbor, Leonora, a beautiful art student, seems to live a life of intrigue and romance that Maite envies. When Leonora disappears under suspicious circumstances, Maite finds herself searching for the missing woman—and journeying deeper into Leonora’s secret life of student radicals and dissidents. Meanwhile, someone else is also looking for Leonora at the behest of his boss, a shadowy figure who commands goon squads dedicated to squashing political activists. Elvis is an eccentric criminal who longs to escape his own life: He loathes violence and loves old movies and rock ’n’ roll. But as Elvis searches for the missing woman, he watches Maite from a distance—and comes to regard her as a kindred spirit who shares his love of music and the unspoken loneliness of his heart. Now as Maite and Elvis come closer to discovering the truth behind Leonora’s disappearance, they can no longer escape the danger that threatens to consume their lives, with hitmen, government agents, and Russian spies all aiming to protect Leonora’s secrets—at gunpoint. Velvet Was the Night is an edgy, simmering historical novel for lovers of smoky noirs and anti-heroes.
Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Published by Random House Publishing Group on August 17, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Historical / General, Fiction / Mystery & Detective / International Crime & Mystery, Fiction / Noir
Pages: 304
At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster--Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP c& her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and--at the same time--an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit.
What Storm, What Thunder by Myriam J. A. Chancy
Published by Tin House on January 17, 2022
Genres: Fiction / Cultural Heritage, Fiction / Disaster, Fiction / Literary
Pages: 320
Parable of the Sower is the Butlerian odyssey of one woman who is twice as feeling in a world that has become doubly dehumanized. The time is 2025. The place is California, where small walled communities must protect themselves from hordes of desperate scavengers and roaming bands of people addicted to a drug that activates an orgasmic desire to burn, rape, and murder. When one small community is overrun, Lauren Olamina, an 18 year old black woman with the hereditary train of "hyperempathy"—which causes her to feel others’ pain as her own—sets off on foot along the dangerous coastal highways, moving north into the unknown.
Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
Published by Seven Stories Press on February 28, 2017
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Science Fiction / General
Pages: 336
I’m so excited to see which of these reads I’ve picked up and what my thoughts were this time next year!
There are also a good number of reads off my 2021 list I haven’t yet gotten to- if you think I should prioritize any of those reads as well, feel free to leave a comment with which of my 2021 or 2022 predictions I should try next!
Thanks for stopping by!
Rae
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