Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about our top 2020 releases. As always, I read overwhelmingly backlist, but I read about 15-ish new releases this year and these were my favorite ten (in order from more-to-less loved)!
A Luminous Republic: This short little book feels almost like folklore, telling a tale about a village on the edge of the Argentinian jungle that doesn't quite know how to react when it finds itself invaded by a pack of feral children. This really got under my skin and made me think.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires: The title is campy, and it often engages in winking humor, but the real story here is about women who feel like they don't quite fit in to their homogeneous southern town finding community together...and also maybe tracking down a vampire.
Mother Daughter Widow Wife: This book was mismarketed badly as a thriller when it's actually much more a work of character analysis, about three women whose lives are forever impacted by the actions of a psychiatrist.
Plain Bad Heroines: This book has a big story to tell, spanning multiple generations of queer women. It doesn't quite succeed at weaving all of its threads together into a tight pattern, but it's a very atmospherically creepy and entertaining read!
Hidden Valley Road: Imagine having 12 children. And then imagine six of those children developing schizophrenia. It's what actually happened with one family in Colorado Springs, and this book examines the impact of the illness not just upon the children who had it, but the ones who didn't as well.
Can't Even: Anne Helen Petersen's Buzzfeed article about millennial burnout is fantastic. This book basically just takes the idea and expands it through research and original reporting without adding much that felt new or different. Better for explaining millennials to other people than to themselves.
Followers: This futuristic story based on social media/influencer culture, and it does some interesting things but can't quite sustain itself.
A Beginning at the End: A post-pandemic story about a family which has experienced loss might have landed a little better in virtually any other year.
His Only Wife: This debut does not imbue the central relationship its narrative depends on with the believablity it needs, but it is otherwise quite promising!
Highfire: I thought this was a bit of a miss, honestly, but my hopes may have been disproportionately high. It's silly and enjoyable enough, if ultimately forgettable.
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