14 Books I Couldn’t Put Down in 2019

 

Choosing a book to buy or loan from the thousands available in bookstores, libraries and online is not easy, these days. It’s especially not easy if you’re writing one yourself. Nevertheless, I’m happy to say, I’ve read 48 novels this year, and 12 non-fiction books. Only a handful kept me turning the pages.

I bought many more books than I finished, or even opened this year.  Mainly because bookbub.com offers daily e-book specials where I can pick up classics and crime classics like The Group by Mary McCarthy and Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely for the ridiculous cost of $1.99, or a dollar more — or less. These are tucked away in my Kindle library waiting for when I have the time to catch up with these oldies but goodies.

But here are some of the recently published books I bought which kept me awake till I’d finished them.

Thrillers & Suspense

These two genres dominate my fiction list since that’s the genre in which I write. I try to pick the most interesting from various lists which come out at the beginning of each year. For example, you couldn’t look anywhere at the start of 2019 without reading about Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient. I bought it, and  blogged about the perils of too much hype here. (I count it on my unputdownable list although, in reality, I cheated and went straight to the ending because of all the hype!)

Another book  in this thriller/suspense category with which I was more patient and which was unputdownable was bestselling British author Ruth Ware’s The Turning of the Key —  a satisfying story with an unusual ending which annoyed some readers, but which I thought was quite, quite clever. Beautiful Bad by Annie Ward, a beautifully, intelligent author, is also among the stunning novels I couldn’t put down for reasons I detailed in my review of the thriller in this Goodreads review.

I’ll also buy those thrillers and suspense novels that are included on bestseller lists from the previous year as were Then She Was Gone (Lisa Jewell) and J.P. Delaney’s The Girl Before — both of them cracking good reads with endings and antagonist revelations I didn’t see coming.

I also belatedly read You by Caroline Kepnes which I raved about here. And, He Said/She Said by Erin Kelly was a psychological thriller so unputdownable that after reading it from start to finish on a three-hour flight, the passenger next to me said, as we landed: “What’s the name of that book you’re reading? You haven’t moved a muscle during the entire flight.”

Favorite Authors

Of course, newly released novels by my favorite authors are a must buy, and immediate must-read like Karin Slaughter’s The Last Widow and Laura Lippman’s The Lady In The Lake. The latter got its own rave review earlier this year because its setting in a newsroom in the Sixties was such a nostalgic one for me!

As an aside, I’ll mention that I thought Thomas Harris’s Cari Mora would give me a sleepless night or two, but — gasp! — No. The villain was nowhere near as exquisitely complex as the author’s best-known creation, Hannibal Lecter. But then again, who could be?

Dystopian Novels

Two “dystopian” novels kept me awake and pondering the question: Could these things happen here? The question plagues me given the horrendous real-life laws that are being passed right now by certain state legislatures to criminalize and imprison women who seek abortions for any reason at all (including rape and incest)  or even those who suffer irreversible ectopic pregnancies!

I’m embarrassed to admit, I only caught up with Margaret Atwood’s classic,  A Handmaid’s Tale this summer. Because of the TV series, most everyone is familiar with Atwood’s novel, but perhaps you know less about Vox by Christina Dalcher.

In this one, women are restricted to the utterance of just 100 words a day (when adults are more likely to use about 16,000 words a day) because they don’t need to use more words to be perfect wives and mothers. They are fitted with electronic bracelets which zap them if they go over the limit.

In a way, Vox is more frightening because while A Handmaid’s Tail disrupts marriage and society as we know it, Vox is about surveillance methods that control women while they remain in their homes and marriages.

Non-Fiction Gems

In non-fiction, three books kept my unabated interest till the very last page. As with one of the novels above, I already raved here about The Library Book, by Susan Orlean, a triumph on so many levels which I described back then as “the best-ever book for book lovers.” I wouldn’t have been turned onto this one except for Orleans’s appearance at the Palm Beach Book Festival — an annual  event on the Florida book scene now about to enter its fifth year.

I also devoted a blog to She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey which documented the unmasking of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein as a serial predator and harasser of women. This was a thrilling book about the superb, step-by-step journalistic process which led to the eventual appearance of Weinstein in a criminal court on charges of sexual assault.

Research

Lastly, I was gripped by a memoir by Kerri Rawson,  A Serial Killer’s Daughter. I chose this one by the daughter of the BTK (“bind, torture, kill”) serial killer to read for research for my third thriller. The antagonist in my new novel –the illegitimate son of a brutal serial rapist and killer — faces the possibility that he has inherited his father’s psycho gene.

No Friends on My List

I have deliberately omitted any books written by friends or acquaintances whom I have met in the writing community because, you know,  bias and conflict of interest  — especially when I have asked some of them to read my novel and write short blurbs.

But I have thoroughly enjoyed their books, and their book launches and signings (some of which I have blogged about.) You know who you are R.G. Belsky (Below the Fold)  Hank Phillippi Ryan (The Murder List)  Cate Holahan (One Little Secret;) Hallie Ephron (Careful What You Wish For;) Andrew Gross (The Fifth Column) Alafair Burke (The Better Sister;) J.D. Barker ( The Wicked Sixth Child;) Barry Levine (All The President’s Women;) Laurence Leamer (Mar-A-Lago;) Gregory L. Renz (Beneath The Flames;)  and of course, my agent, Paula Munier (Blind Search.)