Remember way back at the beginning of 2021 when the global health situation was in flux? Remember when we were being forced—yet again—to work from home, to cancel our travel plans, and to keep our distance?
Fast forward twelve months. Here it is, the last day of 2021, and it’s déjà vu all over again. We’re being forced to work from home. Canceling our travel plans. Keeping our distance. Who would have believed we’d be bobbing around in the exact same boat a year later?
The world may be collapsing around us, but we’ll always have books to escape it.
Books can take us on adventures to the other side of the Earth. Or to space. Or to alternate realms altogether. We can revel in protagonists’ triumphs and root for them through their tribulations. We can scream at the villain or be swept off our feet by a steamy love scene or hunt for a murderer alongside a gruff, overweight, cigar-smoking detective.
My goal for 2021 was to read seventeen books.
It seemed an achievable goal at the time. I’d read twelve books in 2020, so I figured adding five more wouldn’t be impossible. Well, I humbly report that I fell short, and not by a few: By seven. I blame it mostly on the fact that I was also writing book two in my TimeBlink series, which I’d targeted to release in November…yes, as in last month. Sigh. That didn’t happen either, and I’ll be lucky if it lands on the shelves by the spring. On the bright side, I did manage to read ten books this year, and if you stick around, you can read my short and sweet reviews on each of them below.
While I may have missed my own reading goals, I was heartened by this Medium article that states the average “bookworm” in the US spends fifteen minutes a day reading, which works out to approximately twelve books annually, so I’m really not that far off.
That said, I recently became friends with fellow indie author, Jessica Cantwell, who writes young adult fantasy and who—in a fun TikTok post—announced that she’d read a whopping 65 books by self-published authors this year! What? So much for feeling good about my ten measly books, but it certainly does give me something to aspire to.
Hearing Jessica’s numbers made me wonder how many of the books I read this year were independently published, and I was surprised to discover that number was seven. Looking back, I don’t recall feeling cheated or underwhelmed by most of those choices, proving (to me, at least) that indie books have the right to sit on the shelves right next to their traditionally published counterparts.
At any rate, here are the ten books, in no particular order, that I read this year and my accompanying thoughts on each. You’ll see my tastes are quite wide, so chances are you will have read—or perhaps will want to read—one of the books on this list.
The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
Psychological Thriller
I wasn’t blown away by this story, but I did enjoy trying to predict how the ending would play out. After a sluggish first couple of chapters, the plot eventually declares itself and pulls the reader into the story and into the madness of its mute character, Alicia, who, incidentally, is not the protagonist, despite the book’s title. Her psychotherapist, Theo, is both the narrator and main character who is hell-bent to tease out what really happened the day Alicia shot her husband in the face.
The characters were well developed and the plot meticulously crafted, but unfortunately (small spoiler alert here), the author bamboozled his readers. A good psychological thriller/mystery presents clues in such a way that a reader is able to assemble those clues, knock them around in their head a little bit, and maybe even guess the big twist before it is revealed. But in this story, the timeline is purposely vague. It is designed to mislead the reader so that any kind of educated deduction is completely impossible—unless you reread the story. The clues are there, just hidden in plain sight.
Anyway, this is not to say I didn’t enjoy the read, just that I was disappointed by the trickery at the end of it all.
The Guest List – Lucy Foley
Psychological Thriller / Holiday Romance
A glamorous wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. An ominous storm. A mysterious death. Sign me up!
Even though I’m a painfully slow reader, I flew through this book in a few days, but only because the writing was simple and direct, not because the story was particularly engrossing. The most complex part of the book, in fact, was the Gaelic characters’ names. As much as I practiced saying Aoife over and over, I still stumbled on the darned thing every time I encountered it (for the record, it is pronounced ee-fah).
Furthermore, many of the characters in this book were clichéd and underdeveloped and often grated on my nerves. This may have been owing to their younger age and the author’s attempt to paint them as wealthy, successful socialites. But being rich doesn’t automatically make a person obnoxious.
Ultimately, this story reads more like a fluffy daytime soap opera than an engrossing psychological thriller, so if you go in with that mindset, you’ll probably enjoy the ride.
The Plot – Jean Hanff Korelitz
Psychological Thriller
If you’re a writer—heck, even if you’re not—this book will reel you in and hold you hostage.
The story follows Jake Bonner, a man who, having penned a moderately successful debut novel in his younger years, hasn’t written anything of worth in ages and has resigned himself to teaching an unglamorous MFA program in the meantime. Then one day, a cocky, overconfident student gives Jake a peek at a novel he’s been working on—a manuscript Jake is sure will be a bestseller the moment the student finishes it. The story takes an intriguing turn when Jake discovers the student has died and likely never finished his novel.
As a writer myself, I began asking the big questions at this point in the story, the biggest being: Would I be comfortable stealing someone else’s idea if I knew it would sell millions of books and if I were reasonably sure I could get away with it? (For the record, my answer was an emphatic NO. In fact, as a way to avoid committing plagiarism at all costs, I’ve been known to type whole sentences into Google to determine if someone else has already written something even remotely similar.).
To that end, I shall say no more! Just be prepared for a thrilling psychological mind-screw with this one.
Bits & Pieces – Dawn Hosmer
Suspense / Thriller
I discovered this author shortly after I joined TikTok this past September. Dawn was one of those elusive creatures—much like me—who wasn’t flogging romance or fantasy novels there. She was a thriller writer! Oh! Glory be! Here was someone who wouldn’t be posting videos with bare-chested men draped by beautiful, buxom, scantily clad counterparts. Here was someone whose shameless self-promotion efforts would be more in line with my own: rife with images of terrified young women running from shadowy figures in the night.
I digress. Back to the review.
Bits & Pieces took me on one hell of a thrill ride. Right from the beginning of the story when Tessa’s special gift is revealed—or curse as she describes it—until the exciting conclusion where a crazy twist unfolds, we can’t help but root for this protagonist as if she were a cherished member of our own family.
Through no more than a simple touch, Tessa has been absorbing pieces of other people’s lives all her life, coming to her in a flash of color. Sometimes the flashes are pleasant, where she will gain a talent or a fond memory, and sometimes they’re terrible, where she is compelled to indulge in objectionable behaviors. Like smoking. Or killing.
When a local college student goes missing and Tessa volunteers to help in the search effort, she is suddenly overcome with a blinding flash that gives her the ability to see several young women in their last moments alive as if she herself were doing the killing.
As Tessa comes to terms with what this new part of her means, and perhaps who the killer might be, she fights her own battle to keep her sense of self intact before evil penetrates her mind and soul for good.
Bits & Pieces is a quick, easy read full of twists and intriguing turns with an ending that will sneak up on even the most astute reader.
The Unfinished Child – Theresa Shea
Women’s Literary / Medical Fiction
This book was displayed next to mine in the Local Authors section at Daisy Chain Book Company in my city, and on a whim, I bought it. There’s something to be said about jumping into a novel blindly without having read even one review. I’m so glad I took the chance.
Although this story opens in 1947 when a baby is born with Down Syndrome and is whisked away to an institution for “Mongoloid” babies, it is really about the relationship between two women in 2002. Marie and Elizabeth have been best friends since childhood, but their friendship becomes strained when Marie—the mother of two preteen daughters—finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at 39 years of age. For Elizabeth, the news is a slap in the face; she and her husband have never been able to conceive a child despite a battery of fertility treatments over the years.
The novel seamlessly alternates between the two time periods where one mother grapples with the guilt of allowing her child to be ripped away and condemned to a bleak and lonely life in an institution and another contemplates terminating her pregnancy to the astonishment of her childless best friend.
The characters are complex and believable, and the plot is woven with themes of friendship, tolerance, and difficult life choices. If you’re a mother yourself, grab the tissues when you read this book.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit – Valerie Dunsmore
Magical Fantasy
At the beginning of the year, I entered my debut novel, TimeBlink, in the Whistler Independent Book Awards, which is a competition that launched in 2016 as a way to recognize excellence in Canadian self-publishing. There are two categories: fiction and non-fiction, with three finalists chosen in each category.
Unfortunately, my book didn’t make the shortlist. But for the cost of the entry fee, I did receive a glowing critique from one of the judges, so in a way, perhaps I did win.
Valerie Dunsmore’s haunting first novel, Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, took the top prize in the fiction category, and of course, I had to run out and buy it immediately!
The story follows Lily, a young girl whose antagonistic father has just returned after an eight-year absence only to disrupt the entire balance of the family. When Lily discovers she has supernatural powers, she sets a plan in motion to get rid of her father forever, saving the rest of the family from his wrath. But soon Lily’s powers spiral out of control, and she must learn how to rein them in before everything falls apart.
It’s obvious why this novel was chosen as the winner. The prose is as magical as the story itself, and the characters inhabit your mind long after you’ve closed the book. And even though the protagonist happens to be a ten-year-old girl, her narration is captivating. She is wise, yet naïve. Cocky, though anxious. Loving, but brimming with hatred.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to fans of literary fiction, women’s fiction, and magical realism, and I can’t wait to read more from this author.
The Time Capsule – Connie Lacy
Time Travel Romance
I’m a huge fan of time-travel stories, especially ones with a dash of romance. At its core, The Time Capsule is a love story, but because the bulk of it takes place in and around 1918 when the world was in the grips of a whole other deadly pandemic—the Spanish flu—it turned out to be much more than a simple romance novel. It strikes an eerily familiar chord with elements of survival, courage, and heartbreak against the backdrop of a rapidly spreading and horrific disease.
The main character, Hannah, is immediately believable and I loved the way she dealt with the underlying themes of bigotry, antisemitism, and political corruption, and how she squared up to a prickly group of adversaries. I was so invested that by the end, I was on the edge of my seat wondering where her budding romance with David would end up.
Overall, The Time Capsule is an absorbing work of fiction that deftly connects our very real present-day health crisis to events in the past without blatantly exploiting either of them. For me, the parallels lend an extra layer of believability to what could have been an otherwise run-of-the-mill time-travel romance. Add this to the fact that the author began writing this book in the spring of 2019, months before the first case of coronavirus was ever detected, and the story takes on a haunting, almost prophetic bent.
Oh, and one final note. Sometimes when reading indie fiction, it can be difficult to ignore that fact: that the book was written, published, and marketed by one person without the backing of a huge publishing conglomerate. There was none of that here. I enjoyed the story so much that I forgot I was reading a self-published work, and I look forward to reading more from this author.
The Reckoning – D.M. Taylor
Time Travel Thriller
Oh my, this was a great read. At first, the cover design and book description made me think The Reckoning was a straight-up sci-fi story, but it turned out to be much more than that. D.M. Taylor adeptly weaves themes of love, loss, betrayal, and the importance of family into an absorbing time-travel thriller that had the potential to be overly technical but wasn’t.
The first pages introduce us to Taden, a physicist for a secret US government agency who has worked her entire career to solve the mystery of time travel. Now that she’s finally cracked the code and can atone for past wrongs, she learns she has made some unwise alliances that threaten to destroy her life and possibly her country as well.
I recommend this book to readers of thrillers, science fiction, and speculative fiction for its clever mix of all three. The next book in the series, Endemic, was recently released and is on my must-read list.
Let Me In – Adam Nicholls
Crime / Serial Killer Thriller
I don’t generally gravitate toward crime thrillers, but when this book came across my feed, I was immediately drawn in by the stunning cover design. How about that? People really do judge a book by its cover.
The story gets off to a promising start when private investigator Morgan Young’s best friend—Gary Lee, a detective in the same city—asks him to help solve the grisly murder of an ex-girlfriend (but on the sly due to Gary’s close connection to the victim). From there, the plot follows a rather predictable course. Three more people are murdered and someone close to Morgan disappears—ostensibly at the hands of the killer. With the clock ticking and a key character’s life in peril, Morgan must find the killer before it’s too late.
I wanted to love this book, but I was often distracted by odd metaphors and pedantic prose, which prevented me from fully immersing myself in the story. However, the author has done a spectacular job of getting into the mind of a murderer, so if you’re a fan of crime thrillers featuring ruthless, diabolical serial killers, this book might be right up your alley.
Let Me In is the first in a series of three and, at the time of this writing, the Kindle edition is free. This follows a popular strategy in the publishing industry of offering the first book in the series free with the hope of generating sales of subsequent books. Considering this author has a huge following of voracious readers, I just may try again with book two, Watch Them Die, which I note has a 4.5-star rating on Amazon.
When Winds Blow West – Alexander Tatievsky
Literary Fiction / Middle Eastern Literature
This is an engaging, bittersweet story about the struggles of a family fleeing war-torn Syria. It’s not a genre I normally read, but right from the start, I knew that the underlying themes of human resilience, the power of hope, and the travesty of war would leave an impression in my heart long after I’d finished reading it.
The story centers on a young boy and his family who are forced to escape their happy, peaceful life in central Syria amid escalating ISIS tension. One moment, the kids are playing in the family shop, the next, they’re helping their parents load the car with a few meager possessions. Their plan is to make it to Greece where they can eventually go on to Germany and join relatives to start a new life. Unfortunately, they end up in a Turkish refugee camp where things get even tougher and their dreams of freedom are put to the test.
English is this author’s second language, so I found the book to be written in a rather formal tone that may or may not have been deliberate. However, Tatievsky has managed to build realistic settings, believable characters, and well-paced tension as the family encounters one obstacle after another. The author’s meticulous research about the region and its customs was evident throughout, and his use of footnotes was handy in explaining some of the terms I was unfamiliar with.
Despite Tatievsky’s occasionally stiff writing style, he is a fantastic storyteller. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of his work.
What about you? Have you read any of these books? Any favorites?
At the very least, I hope this list has given you food for thought and perhaps even sparked a new way to think about independently published novels. Without stating a number this time around (don’t want to get stuck in that trap!), my goal is to read more indie books in 2022. I often talk about the books I read in my monthly newsletter, so if you don’t want to wait until the end of the year, you can always sign up here.
Anyway, wishing you a Happy New Year…and happy reading!
