top ten favourite books of 2024
who cares about reading goals when you've stumbled on ten new favourite books?
This post is too long to read in its entirety via email. If you want to see the whole list, be sure to head over to the Substack app and read it over there!
I read a total of 50 books this past year and although I didn’t quite reach my personal reading goal, I have read more books than I did in 2023, so I’m calling it a win! Even better, I discovered some really amazing reads — books that were not only enjoyable but also confrontational. These reads made me pause and reflect, pushing me to ask myself questions I might not have considered without them. I’m not the type of reader who only focuses on new releases, so the following list includes books that were published before this year. After all, literature is timeless so I refuse to exclude these gems just because of their earlier release dates. I just can’t keep these titles to myself! Here’s a list of my top ten favourite reads of 2024, with two honourable mentions!
Honourable Mentions…
Shark Heart: A Love Story (2023) by Emily Habeck
Genre: Magical Realism. Romance. Literary Fiction.
Pages: 416
Newlyweds Wren and Lewis are exact opposites. Wren is formulaic where Lewis is creative; Lewis is passionate about artistic expression where Wren enjoys the rigid predictability of numbers; Wren is healthy and human where Lewis is… turning into a great white shark.
He was an aimless kite in search of a string to ground him to the world but, instead, he’d found Wren, a great, strong wind who supported his exploration of the sky.
— Shark Heart: A Love Story (2023)
Have you watched The Lobster (2015) directed by Yorgos Lanthimos? If you haven’t, I totally recommend that you check it out, and if you have… this book exists in the same space as the film. Habeck uses magical realism to explore love, transformation and the hardship of having to let go of someone you hold dear. Lewis’ rare condition — though seemingly wacky to begin with — is used as a vehicle to explore terminal illness and the way a serious diagnosis impacts not only the sick individual but all the people that have relationships with them. This is a gorgeous book that gets right at the core of how it feels to love with all your heart and still lose.
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky (2017) by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Genre: Short Stories. Magical Realism
Pages: 232
A young mother and her daughter orchestrate accidents that lead to their own injuries in hopes of collecting insurance settlements. A woman desperate for a child of her own weaves a baby out of shed hair she gathers off the floor of a local salon. Another woman, a skilled mathematician, works as a “grief worker” tasked with the job of “subtracting” grief and pain from her customers. Two gods begin to argue over a lack of respect; their feud escalates and begins to have an effect on humans and the wider mortal world.
There was only so much a mother could ask a daughter to bear before the bond became bondage.
— What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky (2017)
Short story collections are tricky because oftentimes I’ll sit through about ten short stories and only really like about three of them. I didn’t have that issue at all with this book. From beginning to end, Arimah was able to keep my attention and I felt that every single story was intriguing, perfectly paced and all-round a great read. Many stories tackle the tension between the older and younger familial generations as well as the cultural differences and the shifting of identity that occurs when being a Nigerian living in the diaspora.
Top 10 Reads of 2024…
10. The Ministry of Time (2024) by Kaliane Bradley
Genre: Science Fiction. Historical Fiction. Romance.
Pages: 352
When a time machine falls into the hands of the United Kingdom’s government, a newly established government ministry decides that the best way to study the effects of time travel is to extract people from different points in history and bring them to modern-day England. Hired as a civil servant, the unnamed narrator is tasked with the job of monitoring the health of these expats, as well as teaching them about the modern world to better aid their assimilation. But, how can she teach someone about everything when her own understanding of the world is so limited?
There’s something vengeful about agreeing on an interpretation. Set your narrative as canon and in a tiny way you have pried your death out of time, as long as the narrative is recalled by someone else. I certainly understood better why people became writers, and why jealous lovers force so many false confessions, and why the British history curriculum looks the way that it does.
— The Ministry of Time (2024)
Bradley presents such an interesting exploration of immigration in this novel, using the time-travel aspect as a lens to examine displacement and the many ways individuals are made to hide or completely abandon parts of themselves in order to fit into society. This book also tackles a broader topic of “political correctness” and the superficial ways in which "well-meaning” people practice it. The narrator, born in the modern world, often claims to embrace inclusivity, acceptance and a more elevated way of thinking, yet her own biases and unspoken prejudices seep into her interactions with the time-displaced expats, as well as the way she conducts herself in the workplace. This was a fun, adventurous read balanced with some very timely discussions about the true meaning of identity and all the history that goes towards crafting one.
9. Poor Things (1992) by Alasdair Gray
Genre: Historical Fiction. Science Fiction. Gothic.
Pages: 318
Alasdair Gray presents a collection of letters, manuscripts, and notes from Archibald McCandless, a doctor in Scotland, who recounts his extraordinary marriage to Bella Baxter—a young woman resurrected and granted a second chance at life after drowning in a local lake. But the question remains: is any of it true?
Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police. Truth, beauty and goodness are not mysterious, they are the commonest, most obvious, most essential facts of life, like sunlight, air and bread. Only folk whose heads are muddled by expensive educations think truth, beauty, goodness are rare private properties. Nature is more liberal. The universe keeps nothing essential from us — it is all present, all gift.
—- Poor Things (1992)
Yes, I liked the book ten times more than I liked the film (you can read a more detailed comparison between the two here).
I’ve always been a sucker for an unreliable narrator, and Gray took it a step further by giving us an entirely unreliable book. Every aspect of the novel — from its shifting perspectives to the very structure of the novel — keeps you questioning and second-guessing the truth: the truth about Bella, the truth about science, and the truth about history itself. Bella’s life is revealed slowly and solely through the voices of the men around her, and in doing so, Gray reminds us that the version(s) of her truth we’re presented with are filtered through the limited worldviews, biases, ailments, and prejudices of the men in her life. Gray masterfully explores the fragility of perception and subjectivity, even within the seemingly objective realm of science and medicine.
8. Assembly (2021) by Natasha Brown
Genre: Literary Fiction
Pages: 112
An unnamed Black-British woman is preparing for a significant social event: she’s about to attend a party at her upper class boyfriend’s family estate. As she prepares herself mentally and physically for the task of meeting her partner's entire family, she’s forced to confront their drastically different social circles and how she’ll never be able to bridge the gap, no matter how much money she makes and no matter what parts of herself she works to suppress.
I pay my taxes each year. Any money that was spent on me: education, healthcare, what — roads? I’ve paid it all back. And then some. Everything now is profit. I am what we’ve always been to the empire: pure, fucking profit. A natural resource to exploit and exploit, denigrate and exploit.
— Assembly (2021)
This book is so small yet so angry. So very angry in that quiet, thrumming way that only a black person in a predominantly white school or work-space can properly understand. What I particularly liked about this book is the fact that this anger wasn’t only directed externally; the narrator is also increasingly angry at herself, angry over the fact that she let herself erase parts of her identity because she was so swayed by the desire to succeed. What is the cost of assimilation? Your identity? Your health? Your very soul?
7. Alone with You in the Ether (2020) by Olivie Blake
Genre: Literary Fiction. Romance.
Pages: 288
Aldo, a doctoral student, keeps himself afloat by immersing his mind in the calculations needed to prove his theory of time travel. Numbers are his lifeline, a distraction from the pull of self-destructive tendencies. Regan, a retired counterfeit artist now working as a tour guide at the local Art Institute, wrestles with her bipolar disorder while grappling with the challenge of creating original art. Both feeling untethered from the world around them, Aldo and Regan cross paths. Intrigued by one another, they agree to meet for six conversations, hoping that this experiment will solve their isolation and deepen their understanding of each other.
They part for a while, he has to work, though in truth he doesn’t want to overwhelm her. What he wants to do is get on his bike and go somewhere he can scream into empty air, where he can take a breath that is not full of her just to prove that it can still mean something, just in case.
— Alone with You in the Ether (2020)
This book hits the sweet spot for me when it comes to romance. That sweet spot? It’s the raw, messy space where Aldo and Regan are more consumed by "limerence" than love. Blake masterfully creates two characters who move beyond initial lust into a deeper, more intense attraction that feels completely believable and, dare I say, addictively unhealthy. By the time the book ends, their relationship crackles with enough tension and vitality to suggest it could endure, though not without ongoing interpersonal struggles. What I especially appreciated is how the story doesn’t suggest that "love fixes everything." Instead, Aldo and Regan remain deeply flawed individuals, even as they try to navigate their connection. It’s a gorgeous, unflinching exploration of love and mental illness. A book that feels achingly tender like a bruise.
6. The God of Endings (2023) by Jacqueline Holland
Genre: Literary Fiction. Horror. Historical Fiction.
Pages: 480
Over two centuries ago, Collette was granted the gift of immortality in order to avoid succumbing to a plague. But this gift is not without its own consequences. Not only is Collette now entirely dependent on drinking blood for sustenance, but she is also being hunted by an old god that is angered by the fact that she refuses to die. And since she, herself, can’t end, the god is intent on ending every mortal thing she dares to surround herself with.
I envy their brevity. I envy the low stakes of their choices. Whatever they lose, whatever they suffer, they don’t suffer long. They get just a little life. Birth, some joys, some sorrows, then death to wash it all clean. Their race is a sprint, and so they are free to tear furiously out of the gate, to give it their all, hold nothing back for a few quick laps before collapsing in exhaustion and glory, but mine is an unending marathon. It’s slow and steady for me. It’s settle in. It’s endure.
— The God of Endings (2023)
I love vampires, man! Especially the Literary Vampire — a character that goes beyond being a horror trope and is, instead, used as a symbol to explore the bittersweet nature of mortality, the shifting of societal norms and the complexities of human psychology. Holland has crafted a perfect literary vampire through the character of Collette. Collete spends the whole novel grappling with hunger for more than just blood. She hungers for the past, hungers for companionship and, above all else, she hungers for rest. The book asks: how much life is too much life? And, can you really live if you’re not privileged enough to fear your own death?
5. After Dark (2004) by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (Translator)
Genre: Magical Realism.
Pages: 191
Over the course of a single winter night in Japan, several strangers find their lives interconnecting while they navigate the quiet, neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Among them is a nineteen-year-old girl spending her night reading alone at a Denny’s; her sister, who has remained mysteriously asleep for the last two months; the management team of a local love hotel dealing with an injured worker; and a salaryman whose visit turns the hotel into a quiet yet unsettling crime scene.
“You know what I think?” she says. “That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed ’em to the fire, they’re all just paper. The fire isn’t thinking, ‘Oh, this is Kant,’ or ‘Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,’ or ‘Nice tits,’ while it burns. To the fire, they’re nothing but scraps of paper. It’s the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there’s no distinction—they’re all just fuel.”
— After Dark (2004)
You can read my detailed thoughts and review of the book here.
4. Family Lore (2023) by Elizabeth Acevedo
Genre: Magical Realism. Literary Fiction.
Pages: 371
The many women of the Marte family are each blessed with extraordinary magical gifts. One can instantly tell the truth from lies, another has herbalism skills that seem almost miraculous, and another can control the very wetness of her vagina. But when the oldest sister, infamous for her ability of predicting death, begins inviting everyone to her own living wake, what does it mean for the future of the family — and what does it reveal about their past?
The baby had shaken her head angrily against the nipple, refusing to latch, smearing herself with milk instead of taking a single drop. The rejection had felt jagged; this flesh of her flesh, who had eaten and grown and taken from her body, refused this bond. Even at her hungriest, preferring starvation to the nipple of the woman who had touched death to see her born.
— Family Lore (2023)
Acevedo weaves a rich, multi-generational family saga that delves into how the bond between sisters, mothers, and daughters can be shaped — both positively and negatively — by time and distance. When daughters are born in the diaspora while their mothers’ childhoods are rooted in their homeland, how do they bridge the gap between them? I really enjoyed how well Acevedo juggled the many perspectives this book is told from; we are following several women from the same family and, yet, not one perspective feels similar to another. The character work here was masterful and I enjoyed reading this in one sitting during a random, long road-trip I took back in the summer.
3. Martyr! (2024) by Kaveh Akbar
Genre: Literary Fiction. Queer.
Pages: 352
In 1988, the United States military accidentally shot down an Iranian commercial plane after mistaking it for a fighter jet. Everyone aboard died instantly — everyone, including Cyrus’ mother. Now, as a young man, Cyrus is grappling with grief, his new sobriety, writer’s block, and his ever-present obsession with martyrdom.
It was invented, of course, language. The first baby didn’t come out speaking Farsi or Arabic or English or anything. We invented it, this language where one man is called Iraqi and one man is called Iranian and so they kill each other [. . .]. Because of language, this sound stands for this thing, that sound stands for that thing, all these invented sounds strutting around, certain as roosters. It is no wonder we got it so wrong.
— Martyr! (2024)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… poets make the best novelist! Akbar is another perfect example of that fact. Because I’m a reader deeply interested in hoarding quotes, reading this novel was especially hard on me because I found myself highlighting ENTIRE PAGES.
Like Akbar, the character of Cyrus is a poet who has decided to work on his debut novel. Unlike Akbar, Cyrus is struggling to get words on the page. Cyrus’ grief surrounding the unexpected loss of his mother in his youth has manifested in his adulthood as an obsession with death and martyrs, both of which he intends to explore in his manuscript, but he’s realising that he knows very little about what it means to “meaningfully die.” I especially enjoyed how this book explores the overlap between death and art, looking at how art, itself, is immortal but death can be used to create an ever-lasting art piece.
2. The Death of Vivek Oji (2020) by Akwaeke Emezi
Genre: Literary Fiction. Queer.
Pages: 248
Vivek Oji’s body is found on his family’s doorstep, badly bruised and wrapped in nothing but tattered fabric. He’s dead, and no one knows how it happened. With no answers to be found in the present, Vivek’s family and friends are forced to look into the past, hoping to uncover what could have led to such a devastating and sudden tragedy.
I kept the book for the title, for how it was spelled. Beautyful. I had no idea why that spelling was chosen, but I liked it because it kept the beauty intact. It wasn’t swallowed, killed off with an i to make a whole new word. It was solid; it was still there, so much of it that it couldn’t fit into a new word, so much fullness. You got a better sense of exactly what was causing that fullness. Beauty. Beauty. I wanted to be as whole as that word.
— The Death of Vivek Oji (2020)
Emezi is an automatic buy and immediate read for me; their writing never fails to leave me in awe, and this book was no exception. It delves into the complexities of conditional love, queerness, and the repression of sexuality within the confines of a traditional family and a rigidly conservative society. Despite Vivek’s death being revealed in the blurb and on the very first page, his presence and experience feel vibrant and alive throughout the book. By weaving together the voices of everyone who was part of his life (including Vivek’s own) Emezi crafts a harrowing yet beautiful mystery novel about all the lives that ultimately shaped Vivek’s death.
1. Nefando (2016) by Mónica Ojeda, Sarah Booker (Translator)
Genre: Horror. Queer.
Pages: 184
When I look back, I still don’t completely understand what was my state of mind when I wrote Nefando. It is a very dark book that narrates harsh experiences like sexual abuse, a book that thinks about desire, pain, and cruelty all together, as if they were the same monster. I must say that I’m a little afraid of it, a little afraid of my own book. I haven’t read it since it got published in Spanish in 2016.
— Mónica Ojeda, Latino Book Review
Six young artists share an apartment, each grappling with their own struggles and creative ambitions: a researcher writing a pornographic novel, a writer in deep conflict with his own body, a video-game designer who funds his craft through theft, and three siblings striving to rebuild their lives after surviving childhood abuse. Together, they unite their talents and perspectives to create Nefando, a provocative and controversial cult video game that pushes boundaries and challenges conventions.
The siblings said, with good reason, that there are two ways to face our humanity: digging into the sky or digging into the earth. Clouds or worms. Sky-blue or black. Normally we all dig into the sky, because only crazy people look down and excavate. Supposedly we want the immensity, not our own but the one that’s beyond us, that’s always far away from skin and bones, far away from the dust to which we’ll return and use to feed the grass.
— Nefando (2016)
Is this my top read of the year? Yes. Do I recommend that you give this book a read? Uh… well… I don’t know. This is one of those books that has every single trigger warning known to man packed into it and Ojeda makes no attempts to make these topics even the slightest bit digestible for the reader. She explores themes of online voyeurism, religious trauma, gender dysmorphia and then digs even deeper, even darker, to explore pornography (what it can do for you, what it can do to you), child abuse, sexual abuse and the way in which society views “proper victimhood.”
What I found the most compelling about this book were the discussions on language and its many forms. How do you put language to your own suffering? Do you write it down, code it, draw it, or simply speak it aloud? Once you’ve found your outlet, can that form of language truly capture your pain? Will the listener, observer, or player ever fully understand what you’re trying to express? Does it even matter? Or is it less about others understanding and more about your own process — about releasing that suffering so you can cope with it?
The creation of your “I” began with violence, and there wasn’t anything beautiful about the process, or maybe there was, but how would they ever understand it? How would they ever understand you if they couldn’t even pronounce you?
— Nefando (2016)
And where do you find the language to explain your experience? Who and what do you learn it from? From your parents, even when they refuse to acknowledge your trauma? From your teachers, even when their teachings are constrained by their syllabus? From literature, movies, or art, even when you’re too young or too poor to access books, films, or exhibitions? Or do you turn to the internet, where language flows freely, uncensored, and piracy allows for an endless exchange of words, where your search for the right expression pulls you further into the depths?
The prose in this book is crude, vulgar and unflinching but in spite of all the disturbing content, Ojeda has crafted a novel that is not only masterful on a line-to-line level or a formatting level, but also on a character-voice level. Every perspective in this book has been created with so much depth despite the novel being no longer than two-hundred pages. Nefando is a transgressive piece of literature that has lodged itself between my ribs — I read it once, I’ll only ever read it once, but it’ll remain stuck in me forever.
Revulsion is worth articulating; someone needs to get dirty in language so others can see themselves.
— Nefando (2016)
So… that’s the list, folks! Another great year of reading despite how hectic everything else was around me. I hope you’ve found something that you might be interested in adding to your 2025 reading list! What are your top reads of 2024? I’d love to hear your recommendations!
I loved What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky and Family Lore! Speaking of anthologies that stick to your ribs, have you read Ghostroots by ‘Pemi Aguda yet?
Oh I love !!! So intrigued by Nefando!!! I’ve got the paperback of Martyr coming in Jan and I am excited! So much anticipation for this novel I can’t believe it and I’ve got no idea what to except tbh! Every review I’ve low-key skimmed to make sure I’m going in blind! Congrats on reading more than last year - a huge accomplishment !!! xx