My 2019 in Books

This has been a bit of a weird year for me reading wise. I feel like the year started off very strong with my first book being The Alice Network, which I loved. Then about halfway through the year, I fell off the bandwagon and just have not been able to get back on track since.

To be completely honest, I have been going through a lot personally. I started going through the process of getting a divorced, traveled a lot, and moved back out on my own. I always found it difficult finding time to read when I moved back in with my parents because there was a lot of socialization going on. Then when I was traveling, I didn’t read nearly as much as I expected. Add on top of that that I just couldn’t seem to pick a good book this second half of the year and it all equals a slow down.

It’s not that I didn’t find some gems this year, but it just didn’t feel like a very overall successful reading year for me. I’ve decided to share a few of my highlights and some of the stats from my Goodreads Year in Review, rather than doing an entire survey this year.

One exciting thing was that I FINALLY finished the All Souls Trilogy. I started them back in 2015 and never read the third one. After the show Discovery of Witches came out, it sparked my desire to finish the series and I am so glad that I did.

Discovered Kate Quinn. Like I mentioned, this was the first book I read in 2019 and I loved it. I read her newest release The Huntress and she became a solid new favorite for me in regards to historical fiction. I can’t wait to continue reading her stories as they focus on strong women in history which I greatly enjoy.

A surprising read that stuck with me longer than I thought it would was Park Avenue Summer. I received this book as a review offer and agreed to read it on a whim. I didn’t know anything about Helen Gurley Brown before reading this book and learning about her work for Cosmo was fascinating. Even though I read this book back in April, I still find myself thinking about it from time to time.

I read an audio book and loved it! My mom and I did a decent amount of road travel during the month of September, so I decided that we should listen to an audiobook instead of radio surfing. Stay Sexy, Don’t Get Murdered was recommended to me and I loved it. not only was it fascinating to listen to, but it sparked a lot of really fun conversation with my mom.

My favorite book of the year would have to be The Flatshare. I just absolutely loved this book. So much so that as soon as I finished it I pushed it onto 7 people, all who read it and loved it just as much as I did. In fact, just talking about it makes me want to buy a copy to read it again.

While this might not have been the strongest year for me book wise, there were definitely some strong winners. I love finding new favorite authors and Quinn and O’Leary are definitely on that list. I read a lot of lighter novels this year mostly because my life was so hectic I couldn’t handle heavy. I’m hoping that next year I can get back into reading historical fiction again and maybe even a few mysteries or thrillers. I think adding variety back into my reading will help to keep it interesting and exciting and maybe stop me from getting into the kind of rut I got into towards the end of this year.