Carrying on with the end-of-the-year posts we have my infamous worst, most surprising and most disappointing. These posts are getting harder and harder to do due to the number of books I read. Trying to narrow over 140+ books into 3 per category has been a challenge but I am happy with my choices for this year.

The Most Surprising Books of 2024

This category is basically for books that I didn’t think would astound me as much as they did. Books that might zoom under the radar a bit.

Synopsis: In her twenty-five years as a secondary school English teacher, Carol Atherton has taught students of all abilities, from all walks of life. But the common thread to her lessons has been the books which have appeared on syllabuses year after year. But what is it about these books that sparks conversations? And why do they still matter? From Macbeth to Lord of the Flies, and from An Inspector Calls to Noughts and Crosses, each chapter invites us to take a fresh look at the novels, plays and poems we studied at school, revealing how they have shaped our beliefs, our values, and how we interact as a society. Atherton’s love for literature shines through on every page, but there’s more to her passion than being a bibliophile. As she reflects on her career, her experiences as a pupil, and her journey to becoming an adoptive parent, Atherton emphasises the vital, undervalued role teachers play, illustrates how essential reading is for developing our empathy, and makes a passionate case for the enduring power of literature.

As someone who had complicated feelings about school and English, I was intrigued to see how I would feel reading a book about all the boring books I read and studied in school. Will this change my thoughts about any of the books? Will it make me appreciate my English classes more? Overall, yes. I thoroughly enjoyed dissecting these stories and learning that we can still learn something from these texts even today many years/decades/centuries later. While in school I hated analysing texts, now as an adult and a bookseller who reviews and promotes books for a living, I love diving in and seeing what I can take away or notice from a story. I liked looking at these texts from different lenses and I enjoyed hearing all the anecdotes that Atherton shared about her time in the classroom both when she was a student and as a teacher. My favourite section had to be the one on A Kestral for a Knave. It nearly had me crying on my commute home!

Plot: New Alms is a city of sin and vice, populated by all manner of criminals. The ruling Cerenite priests can barely keep order; not that they—or anyone else for that matter—ever try too hard. It’s a den of cutthroats and thieves, and there ain’t many thieves out there as talented or as skilled as Jackson Balor. When Jackson’s hired by a priest to steal an old mask, he thinks it’s just another job. But that’s before he sees the blasphemous shrine it’s housed in, before he starts getting followed around by bugs and birds and three-eyed cats, before he finds out that the mask was a vessel for the Wild God Ferengris, and that by filching it, he’s invited the Enemy of Civilization to take up residence inside his head. Now to save his own mind, Jackson’s gonna have to team up with the very Wild cult he stole the mask from and take it back from the Cerenite Temple. But the priests have their own plans for the Wild God’s artifact. They have their own ambitions for New Alms—and Jackson’s about to learn that there ain’t no room in their design for no-good criminal scum like him.

I actually have a whole review dedicated to this book but this book made for a really surprising and amazing experience.

Plot: Thomas Ward is the seventh son of a seventh son and has been apprenticed to the local Spook. The job is hard, the Spook is distant and many apprentices have failed before Thomas. Somehow Thomas must learn how to exorcise ghosts, contain witches and bind boggarts. But when he is tricked into freeing Mother Malkin, the most evil witch in the County, the horror begins..

This was a book I had seen on the shelves numerous times and wasn’t one I would ever plan reading. But we read it for book group and I ended up being shocked by how much I loved it! The emotion behind this book is incredible!

The Most Disappointing Books of 2024

This section is dedicated books that I had high hopes for or had a lot of hype around it that ultimately did not meet the mark.

Plot: Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti’s stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself — but first she has to make it there, alive.

I was just very underwhelmed by this. I think because it was so hyped up when I read it I just felt that I was missing something.

Plot: Yuugo Hachiken flees the hustle and bustle of city life to enroll at Oezo Agricultural High School. At first he’s just trying to outrun his problems, but instead he finds a place for himself in this quaint rural community. Between the classrooms and cowpatties, the boy becomes a man.

I am devastated by this as I normally love Arakawa’s work but this could not engage me at all. The info dumping on agricultural stuff was boring, the plot was boring and I just wasn’t fussed about the characters.

Plot: When an ex-catholic woman develops a sexual relationship with a vampire, she is forced to confront the memories that haunt her religious past. Struggling to deal with the familial trauma of her Catholic upbringing, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute. There, she meets a man who claims to be a vampire, and a relationship blooms between them based solely on confession. But as talk turns sacrilegious, and the weather outside grows colder, Noelle struggles to come to terms with her blasphemous sexuality. She becomes hounded by memories of her past: her mother’s affair with the local priest, and the part she played in ending it.

At first glance, the writing is really interesting, raw and introspective but I wanted a bit more from the story. I came for the vampires but I wanted more of the vampire elements. It is not the main driving force of the novel like I expected. I did enjoy the look into the main characters relationship to her mother and how that and the aftermath of her mother’s affair affects her relationship to religion. But I just felt that all the themes in this book were half-arsed and I am not sure what the author wanted to get out of this book.

The WORST Books of 2023

Obviously, reading is subjective so these are only for me. You can love them if you want.

Plot: Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

This felt like a waste of pages. It’s a very short story dragged out to look like a novella. There is barely any substance to the story at all and I just left feeling a bit annoyed.

Plot: Nine years ago, with the world’s eyes on her, Charlie Colbert fled. The press and the police called Charlie a “witness” to the nightmarish events at her elite graduate school on Christmas Eve—events known to the public as “Scarlet Christmas”—though Charlie knows she was much more than that. Now, Charlie has meticulously rebuilt her life: She’s the editor-in-chief of a major magazine, engaged to the golden child of the publishing industry, and hell-bent on never, ever letting her guard down again. But when a buzzy film made by one of Charlie’s former classmates threatens to shatter everything she’s worked for, Charlie realizes how much she’s changed in nine years. Now, she’s not going to let anything—not even the people she once loved most—get in her way.

This book felt like any basic thriller ever. I could guess every single element of this story, nothing shocked me. It just was so basic. I felt that this should have been a tv show on Netflix rather than a book as I think that medium would have better served the story.

Plot: Love comes in many forms. A magnificent bird comforts a struggling girl; a vampire waltzes with a young lady at night; a blind girl lives with a “monster” of whom there is more than meets the eye. This six-story manga collection by masterful manga creator Nagabe explores fascinating relationships that refuse to be confined.

As you know I love Nagabe’s The Girl from the Other Side series so much. It’s incredible! But reading his spin off was so disappointing. The amount of irresponsible age gaps, power imbalances, honestly the grooming that is normalised in this collection was shocking. It has me very worried for how The Girl from the Other Side is going to end!