Laura's Top 14 Books of 2020

I read a lot of great books in 2020.  What can I say about 2020?  Although it has been one heck of a year and my socializing is definitely down, it has caused an uptick in my reading.  I noticed I read a lot more romance this year as I focused on comfort reads.  Did your reading habits change in 2020?

 I had so many books that I loved this year that it took me awhile to trim it down to a top 14 list.  I couldn't quite get it down to top 10.  These books are books I read and that stuck with me long after the last page was turned. 

These books were not necessarily books published in 2020, but they were books I read in 2020.  I did not include books that I was rereading, but only books that I’ve read for the first time. They are only in the order of when I read them through the year of 2020.  And now without further ado, my top fourteen books of 2020.  I’ve linked them all to my review of them if you’d like to learn more about them.

1. Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate
2. The Hunting Party and The Guest List by Lucy Foley
3. The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
4. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
5. Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
6. Becoming by Michelle Obama
7. The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare
   
8. The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson
9. The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue
10. When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole
11. The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
12. Clouds by Laura Sobiech
13. Anxious People by Fredrik Bachman

Other books I loved this year, but didn’t quite make my top 14 included:

1. To Tell You the Truth by Gilly MacMillian
2. 
   The Rescuer: One Firefighter’s Story of Courage, Darkness, and the Relentless Love that SavedHim by Jason Sautel with D.R. Jacobsen
3. Olympic Pride, American Prejudice:  The Untold Story of 18 African Americans Who Defied Jim Crow and Adolph Hitler to Compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Deborah Riley Draper and Travis Thrasher
4. When Life Gives You Pears:  The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People by Jeannie Gaffigan
5. Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson
6. Take a Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert
7. Loathe at First Sight by Suzanne Park
8. Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner
9. No Judgements by Meg Cabot
10. The Bookshop on the Shore by Jenny Colgan
11. If I Never Met You by Mhairi McFarlene

For more top books from the past, check out my lists from 2019, 2018, 2017 & 2016, 2015, 2014, 2010, 2009, 2008, and 2007.

What were your favorite books of 2020?

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

I have been wanting to read Before We Were Yours for quite some time.  I’ve been waiting for the holds to die down at the library so I could select it for my book club.  The holds were finally at a reasonable level so I picked it for our March selection.

Before We Were Yours is the type of book that you pick up and you just can’t stop reading.  It was an excellent novel that is told in two time periods, present day and 1939.  Both stories were equally intriguing.

The historic 1939 story took place in a shanty boat on the Mississippi.  The Foss family is tight knit and loves their life on the river.  Twelve-year-old Rill is the oldest and keeps a watch over her family when her father takes her mother to Memphis to the hospital during a difficult birth of twins.  While they are gone, the police visit and take the children to the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage.  The children think it is temporary, but they soon realize that life at the orphanage is a horror and they may never see their parents again.  Will Rill be able to keep her family together?

In present day South Carolina, Avery Stafford is a successful lawyer and the daughter of a Senator and prestigious political family.  She is engaged and moving along on her family’s predetermined path for life, when she stumbles across a mystery.  She is visiting a nursing home for an event and meets May Crandall who mistakes her for someone named “Fern.”  May also has a picture that looks eerily like Avery’s Grandma Judy.  Grandma Judy is suffering from Alzheimer’s and was recently put into a fancy assisted living.  Who is May Crandall and how does she know Grandma Judy?

I was riveted and distressed by this novel.  I loved the shanty boat lifestyle on the Mississippi.  I didn’t even realize that this lifestyle existed!  On the other hand, I was horrified to read how children were treated in the Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage.  I can’t imagine being a parent and having your children taken from you because you were poor.  It made me realize that my own grandparents living on a farm during the depression could have been victims if they lived further south.  I think this novel will give us plenty to talk about at book club this month.

Did you enjoy Before We Were Yours?  What was your favorite part of the novel?

Favorite Quote:

“The reality is that his decisions for Grandma Judy are in no way political.  We’re just like other families.  Every available avenue is paved with guilt, lined with pain, and pockmarked with shame.”

Overall, Before We Were Yours is an excellent novel that looks into the fraught history of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society Orphanage when Georgia Tann took children from poor families and sold them to the rich.  It is also a great look into families.  What makes a family?

Book Source:  Purchased at Costco.