Best of 2020--Five Star Reads

 

This year, I read more books than I have before.  At least in my adult life.  I can say I had a really good reading year, although my reviewing fell off considerably.   You know I haven't posted here in a while, and I feel terrible about that.  But 2020 was a year like one none of us have ever seen.  Having to work from home, school from home, and just always be home, was not something I was prepared for.  Now it's time for a new year and a new lease on life.  

Even though reviewing took a back seat in 2020, reading did not.  I was able to finish 106 books.  39 of those being audiobooks and 6 of them were non-fiction.  There were only 2 books I wasn't able to finish and 4 books I gave less than a 3-star rating.  

So here, in no particular order, are the books that I gave a 5-star rating to.  Let me know if you've read any of these or if you will add any to your TBR for 2021.  

A Love Hate Thing by Whitney Grandison

When Tyson Trice reappears in Nandy Smith's life 10 years after she had last seen him, she knew right away, he wasn't that same seven-year-old boy she used to play with. Trice is coming to live with the Smith's after the tragic death of his parents. He is angry and hurting and this is the last place he wants to be. But will he be able to come out of his funk and find the friendship he once had with Nandy? Will he be able to step away from his old life and try to build a new one with these people who are nothing like him?

I Am Watching You by Teresa Driscoll

Anna and Sarah have decided to take a trip to London after school has let out. They are two young girls on their own and Ella a woman alone on the train has a slight worry for the girls. This worry intensifies when a couple of guys who just got out of jail board the train and start to entertain the girls. A few days later, Ella learns about Anna's disappearance, and she feels guilty about not calling someone when she saw the girls on the train. One year after the disappearance, there seems to be some new evidence in the case. Will Ella use this opportunity to speak up? Will Anna be found?

When I Was You by Amber Garza

Kelly Medina lives in Folsom, CA. She is married with a son. Folsom is a pretty small town where everyone knows everyone. One morning, Kelly gets a call from the pediatrician to confirm the appointment with the doctor for the next day. Only problem is that Kelly's son is 19 years old and wouldn't need a well baby checkup. The mother of the child has the exact same name, Kelly Medina. What are the chances? When she goes to the gym later in the day, this woman has been there as well. Kelly is determined to find out who this woman is and what she is doing in her town. When Kelly sees the woman's child, she thinks he looks just like her son when he was that age. Kelly has been through some mental issues in the past and her friends and family aren't sure they believe her about her new "friend". What will happen when these two women get closer? Will both Kelly's survive?

Sister Dear by Hannah Mary McKinnon

Eleanor is heading to the hospice to see her father, when she overhears a conversation between him and her mother. She and her mother have never had a good relationship, but the conversation she hears stops her dead in her tracks. The man she has known as her father her entire life is not her father. So who is and will he want anything to do with Eleanor? When Eleanor finds out that she also has a sister, she decides to try to meet her father that way. The things she finds our in her quest to find her father will shock you.

The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare

Adunni is 14 years old and lives in a small village in Nigeria with her father and two brothers. The only thing she wants in life is to be able to get her education and teach other girls in her village as well. When her mother passed away, her father promised that he would allow Adunni to get an education, but money talks louder than promises and so Adunni is given as a bride, the third bride at that. When something happens to one of the other wives, Adunni sees her opportunity to change her life, but what she finds isn't much better and she still isn't getting her education. Refusing to give up, she spends the year trying to fulfill her dream. Will she be able to do it?

Jubilee by Margaret Walker

Vyry was born a slave. She was born to a mother who was a slave and a father who was the Marster. When her mother died, Vyry was brought to the big house to work. She was only seven years old. She helped the cook in the kitchen and helped with her half-sister, Lillian. Jubilee follows Vyry's life and the life of those around her from the time she walks into that kitchen until she has her own family. From the Civil War to Emancipation. This book is long, but you will immediately be drawn into the story and will want more even when the story is over.

Custom Built by Chantal Fernando

Bronte lost her mom at a young age, so it’s just her and her dad and her uncle Neville. When Bronte suddenly loses her job she must find something new. Her uncle suggests she starts to work at a local motorcycle shop, Fast & Fury. Bronte doesn’t know anything about motorcycles, but she is a fast learner, it also doesn’t hurt that the manager of the place, Crow, is drop-dead gorgeous. When there is an unexpected death in her family, Bronte will question everything she has known about her life. Will she be able to get her life together to find out what is going on or will she lose her family and friends?

Fumbled by Alexa Martin

Poppy & TK were high school sweethearts, but his future looked a lot more promising than hers.  When their paths cross again, there is a lot they need to catch up on.  Will they be able to move past hurts and misunderstandings to make a future with each other?

The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams

Thea and Gavin have only been married for a few short years, so it's a shock to him when she asked for a divorce. Gavin is a professional baseball player, married to Thea and they have twin daughters. He is crushed when she asks for the divorce and drowns his sorrows in a bottle of alcohol. His friends and teammates come to his rescue as they had been down that road and know they can help. Their methods are quite unconventional, reading romance novels, but it can't hurt right?

The Dilemma by B.A. Paris

It’s Livia’s fortieth birthday and tonight she’s having a party, a party she’s been planning for a long time. The only person missing will be her daughter, Marnie. But Livia has a secret, a secret she’s been keeping from Adam, her husband, until the party is over. Because how can she tell him that although she loves Marnie, she’s glad their daughter won’t be there to celebrate with her? Adam is determined everything will be just right for Livia and the party is going to be perfect… until he learns something that will leave him facing an unbearable decision.

You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen

Shay Miller is having a rough time in life. She's in between jobs, feels like she's being forced out of her house, her best friend just had a baby, and oh yeah, she just saw a woman commit suicide. She feels quite alone. On the way to her temp job one morning, she sees Amanda jump in front of the train she is supposed to be taking. After that, Shay becomes overly interested in Amanda's life, attending her memorial service, meeting her friends, and becoming friends with them. It feels like things are starting to really turn around, until ... the craziness begins.

A Lie for a Lie by Helena Hunting

I stayed up way past my bedtime to devour this book.

Rook is looking forward to this Alaska trip with his brother. They go every summer when hockey season is over. The break is much needed. When his brother lets him know he won't be able to make it, Rook decides to go anyway and enjoy the peace and quiet. Lainey is headed to Alaska for a few weeks this summer to study the mating patterns of dolphins and whales for her thesis. This is her third masters and she may finally be done with school. When she literally falls into Rook's lap, she doesn't know how that will change her summer plans.

Let Me Free You by Alexandria House

Neil McClain is the screw-up, the one everyone hopes will win but expects to lose. He wants to live a better life, one that his late mother would be proud of, but his belief in himself is weak.

Sage Moniba is in need of a major miracle or she’ll be forced to give up the only life she’s known.

Neil is searching for freedom from the demons of his past.

Sage is in desperate need of help.

Could it be that what each one needs resides in the other?

Moth to a Flame by Ashley Antoinette

In the little city of Flint, MI, the good die young and the people left standing are the grimiest of characters. With reign over the city's drug trade, Benjamin Atkins made sure that his precious daughter, Raven, was secluded from the grit that the city had to offer. But when Raven's young heart gets claimed by Mizan, a stick-up kid in search of a come-up, there's nothing Benjamin can do about losing her to the streets. She chooses love over loyalty and runs off with Mizan, but her new role as wifey soon proves to be more than she can handle.

Puppy love always feels right, but things turn stale, and she soon finds that everyone she loves has disappeared. All she has is Mizan, but when hugs and kisses turn to bloody lips and black eyes, she realizes that Mizan is not who she thought he was.

Raven becomes desperate for a way out, but this time, Daddy can't save her. Every time she finds the courage to leave, fear convinces her to stay. Like a moth to a flame, Raven is drawn to Mizan, even though she knows he'll be the death of her.

When the hood life she chose becomes unbearable and the only way out is in a coffin, what will she do?

Verity by Colleen Hoover

When Lowen Ashleigh is chosen to finish writing two books in a series for author Verity Crawford, she's not sure why. But the offer couldn't have come at a better time since Lowen is broke and about to be evicted. The Crawford family has experienced an unprecedented amount of tragedy in the past few months with the loss of two children and Verity's accident. Will Lowen's presence make things easier on this family or are there secrets that Verity is hiding? Will the secrets come to light or be hidden forever?

If You Must Know by Jamie Beck

Sisters Amanda Foster and Erin Turner have little in common except the childhood bedroom they once shared and the certainty each feels that her way of life is best. Amanda follows the rules—at the school where she works; in her community; and as a picture-perfect daughter, wife, and mother-to-be. Erin follows her heart—in love and otherwise—living a bohemian lifestyle on a shoestring budget and honoring her late father’s memory with a passion for music and her fledgling bath-products business.

The sisters are content leading separate but happy lives in their hometown of Potomac Point until everything is upended by lies that force them to confront unsettling truths about their family, themselves, and each other. For sisters as different as these two, building trust doesn’t come easily—especially with one secret still between them—but it may be the only way to save their family.

A Good Neighborhood by Therese Anne Fowler

In Oak Knoll, a verdant, tight-knit North Carolina neighborhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. Xavier is headed to college in the fall, and after years of single parenting, Valerie is facing the prospect of an empty nest. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door - an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenaged daughter.

Thanks to his thriving local business, Brad Whitman is something of a celebrity around town, and he's made a small fortune on his customer service and charm, while his wife, Julia, escaped her trailer park upbringing for the security of marriage and homemaking. Their new house is more than she ever imagined for herself, and who wouldn't want to live in Oak Knoll? With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds: first, over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard, and soon after, the blossoming romance between their two teenagers.

Told from multiple points of view, A Good Neighborhood asks big questions about life in America today―What does it mean to be a good neighbor? How do we live alongside each other when we don't see eye to eye?―as it explores the effects of class, race, and heartrending star-crossed love in a story that’s as provocative as it is powerful.

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

Gifty is a fifth-year candidate in neuroscience at Stanford School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after a knee injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her.

But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive. Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief--a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut.

Tell me about your favorite books of 2020.  Click on any book cover above to learn more about the book or to order a copy. 

Happy Reading!!