my 10 favorite fiction reads from 2024

I’m a little picky about fiction. I don’t enjoy the fantasy genre very much, and while I like realistic depictions of romance, love, and marriage in books, I don’t like books that seem to just be about romance in general. Other than that, I just like books that tell good stories and have people in them who act like people with actual brains and hearts. There can be supernatural stuff, that’s fine, but the actual people need to behave like people. That’s my baseline.

This list doesn’t include the fiction books from my top 10 reads of 2024, so you’ll find a few more options there as well.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Let’s start with something super dark, shall we? This book is considered a dystopian classic, and I don’t know why it took me so long to read it. There’s a reason it won the Pulitzer. The main character and his son are never given names, and yet you feel like you are part of them by the end of the book. This book will not make you happy, but it will make you think.

The Boys from Biloxi by John Grisham

I went on a little bit of a John Grisham binge last year, rereading books I had loved as a teenager, while also finding some of his newer work. This book came out in 2022 and is an epic saga of several families who live on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and how their lives intertwine over many decades. It has your usual Grisham procedural stuff when it comes to the courtroom, but it also has a lot more.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

I truly love Ann Patchett. And it’s for exactly the reason I mentioned at the beginning. She writes about real people with real lives and real problems. This one takes place partly during Covid quarantine in the home of a married couple and their adult daughters and partly during flashbacks. It’s best to let the story unfold and not spoil it any more.

(If you like this one, you should also try her book The Dutch House! The audiobook narration is done by Tom Hanks, and it is *chef’s kiss*.)

True North by Andrew J. Graff

I read the author’s first book, Raft of Stars, several years ago. He apparently really enjoys writing about rafting. This one is kind of about rafting, which I know nothing about. My lack of knowledge didn’t affect my enjoyment of the book. It’s really about a failing marriage, and I found the portrayal of marriage as something two people both have to work for, as well as how grace and redemption are shown, to be beautiful.

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

This one has been all over the place, so you’ve probably heard of it. I would say I felt it was slightly overhyped, but it is also a great book. It’s very dark, so heed all the trigger warnings you can think of.

You Like it Darker by Stephen King

Stephen King does know what I like, and this book is full of them in the form of short stories. If you are a Holly Gibney fan, then you’ll be thrilled with her appearance in one of the stories.

The Grey Wolf by Louise Penny

I continue to be surprised at the number of people who have never heard of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. I have made it my mission in life to correct this problem. Inspector Gamache, who at the start of this series is the head of Quebec’s equivalent of the FBI, is one of my very favorite book characters of all time. This is book *nineteen*, and I have read all of them. You will fall in love with the rest of the characters, too.

The first book in the series is Still Life, and it takes a few books for the series to catch up, but it’s totally worth it. I’m not sure what subgenre of “Mystery” I’d place these books in, but they’re not graphic or gory, and they’re also not cozy. Somewhere in between, and I’m all the way here for it.

Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow, but it was still excellent. I don’t love this time period—it takes place in pre-WW II New York—and I think maybe that was why I didn’t enjoy it. I wouldn’t really say it has strong historical fiction vibes, although I guess it technically is. Rather, it is about young people who are trying to figure out the world and make a lot of mistakes in the meantime.

After Oz by Gordon McAlpine

After seeing Wicked in November, I was very much in a Wizard of Oz phase and discovered this book. It is a very interesting twist on the story, focusing on when Dorothy returns to Kansas. She ends up in a mental hospital trying to explain what actually happened to her. It was compelling without being corny.

The Book of M by Peng Shepherd

I went looking for post-apocalyptic books and started this one on a whim. In this reality, people have started losing their shadows, and their shadows are where memories are stored. A husband and wife are still together, shadows intact, but the clock is ticking. This book had a truly unpredictable twist that I did not see coming, and it was also well written. I don’t expect great eloquence in books in this genre, but I hate it when the writing is distracting from the story. This one checked all my boxes!

What were your favorite fiction reads from 2024? Let me know in the comments!