For much of the past two decades, both my writing and my reading have been tied to my advocacy work. This past year, however, marked a huge shift for me.
Aside from a piece I wrote for Poets & Writers on book sanctuaries (which came about only because the editor reached out to me), I didn’t do any journalistic work in 2o24. And while in previous years, I read a ton of narrative journalism on sexuality and social justice, all I wanted to do this year was… chill the eff out. In fact, 81 percent of the 177 books I read this year were fiction, most of them in the horror and fantasy genres.
Why this huge shift? I think a huge part of me felt burnt out. Dispirited. Helpless. Hopeless. By both the state of the world and the state of the journalism industry.
In focusing on fun, however, I was able to reconnect with my creative self, returning to a writing practice that had been missing for quite some time. I love this for me.
How has this looked on the writing and editing front?
Writing-wise, I’ve been playing around with genre and form in a way I never have before. Because of that, I had my first fiction piece ever (a long-ass horror story titled “The Infestation”) go up on Coffin Bell on January 1, 2024. I also had a flash sci-fi/horror piece (“Night Sounds”) go up on Litmora just a few days ago. And I have a hermit crab essay forthcoming in Cutleaf Journal. I’m hoping to get more of my work out there in 2025.
I also continue to bring other folks’ work into the world as Essays Editor at Hippocampus Magazine, occasionally moderating author chats.
Not to say that I’m completely disconnected from social justice work. I became a mentor for Girls Write Now, a nonprofit organization that works with youth of marginalized genders to help them develop their writing, multimedia, and leadership skills. Right now, I’m in the midst of my second season with them, co-facilitating sessions on advocacy journalism and also meeting regularly with my mentee, a high school senior. And I’ve become more involved in my work with Feminist Book Club, which is transitioning into a worker-owned co-op. (Support us here!) I’m now the Chair of their new Board of Directors, and am acting as their interim Editor-in-Chief.
So, all in all, a good year for bookish-type things.
Now, I know you’re here for the book list. But if you’d like to keep up with what I’m doing throughout the year, please do subscribe to my Thunder Thighs newsletter.
And now, my 29 favorite reads of 2024, out of the 177 books I managed to finish.
1. The Lightning-Struck Heart by TJ Klune. This comedic romantasy is the first book in Klune’s Tales from Verania series (which he described as “erotic Shrek” when I saw him speak at my local Barnes & Noble). There are knights and magic and shit. There is unresolved longing. There is also a sassy, oversharing unicorn named Gary, an overprotective half-giant named Tiggy, and a perpetually-sexed-up dragon named Kevin, all of whom are besties with a young wizard’s apprentice grappling with a high-stakes destiny. Never before have I come across something so over-the-top, chaotically funny/unhinged. The audiobook is also fantastic.
2. The Wake Up by Michelle Mijung Kim. As an activist-writer who often wishes she was doing more, I had my eye on this one for a while. This book is a fantastic look at the gap between good intentions and true allyship, giving readers a map for effecting real change in a way that doesn’t overburden those who are already marginalized.
3. Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns. The voice of this protagonist—a messy ride share driver living paycheck to paycheck—had me hooked from the very first page. In this social satire, everyone is fighting for change on behalf of people like Damani, a queer Tamil immigrant from Sri Lanka. But Damani is just trying to survive. And to perhaps find love along the way… even if the woman she sets her sights on is a flaming bundle of red flags. The way this story just continued to careen out of control was so much fun.
4. Thunder Song by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe. I had previously read and enjoyed LaPointe’s memoir, so I jumped on this essay collection that tackles what it means to be a queer Indigenous woman in the United States today. Pulling from her own experiences, in addition to the anthropological work of her great-grandmother, LaPointe explores everything from indigenous identity and stereotypes to cultural displacement and environmental degradation.
5. The Great British Bump-Off by John Allison and Max Sarin. This is the same team behind Giant Days (a series I’m re-reading right now), which I love for its humor and lively artwork, so I was all in. In this humorous murder mystery in graphic novel form, folks gather to participate in the taping of a beloved baking show, when someone is murdered. This could derail everything—including the hopes and dreams of the contestants—so one plucky baker promises to solve it all before things get messy.
6. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer. The story starts unassumingly enough. A young woman and her long-term partner purchase a house, intending to fix it up and flip it. One evening, the doorbell rings. It’s a man who allegedly grew up in the house, and he wants to show his family around. Eve lets them in…and soon finds it impossible to get rid of them. As the night goes on, a sense of creeping dread builds and things go slowly but wildly off the rails. Is Eve losing it? Overreacting? Slipping into an alternate dimension? Terrified as I was, I nevertheless made it to the end and still don’t know.
7. Pay the Piper by Daniel Kraus and George Romero. In this reimagining of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”—a German legend in which a piper lures away children when the townsfolk neglect to pay him for his rat removal services—the piper is a supernatural entity seeking vengeance against the ancestors of the region’s slave traders. Having just read and loved Kraus’s Whalefall, I couldn’t resist.
8. So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison. I feel like Rachel Harrison ends up on all my lists. I can’t help it. Ever since her debut novel back in 2020 (The Return, which was filled with creepy shit, but which also contained whip-smart commentary on female friendships), I can’t get enough of her. In So Thirsty, Harrison gives us another troubled female friendship in the form of two besties who couldn’t be more different from one another. When they go away together for the weekend, protagonist Sloane imagines a cozy time with wine tastings and plush robes. But her troublemaker friend Naomi is looking for a wilder time, and when Sloane reluctantly tags along, they get more than they bargained for. As per usual, I love how Harrison’s books are filled with horror and dark humor, and with women who hold on tightly to their friendships, even when things get rocky.
9. The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. While Lightning-Struck Heart is the first book of Klune’s I’d ever read, I was of course already aware of Cerulean Sea, perhaps his most well-known and widely popular book. Now let me be clear. It is nothing like Lightning-Struck. Still, I was primed at this point to love anything by Klune, and his break-out book didn’t disappoint. In this fantasy, a case worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth receives a highly classified assignment in which he must evaluate a strange orphanage on a remote island. Linus is supposed to determine whether the children at the orphanage are a danger to others, but the biggest danger of all may be the man who captures his heart… and who challenges his cut-and-dry approach to life. (P.S. I also just finished the followup to this book, Somewhere Beyond the Sea, and it made me sob.)
10. Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan. Based in ’90s Harlem, this truly fantastic coming-of-age novel centers around Malaya, an eight-year-old whose mother and grandmother have high expectations of what it means to be a young lady. Malaya’s weight, especially, concerns them. As Malaya struggles to fit into a world that seems ill-suited to her hunger, facing family tragedy in the process, she’s forced to grow up fast. This book made me feel so many feels and remember so many things about how I grew up internalizing the messages of fatphobia.
11. The Queen by Nick Cutter. In this novel, Margaret, a high school student, wakes up to a text from her best friend—who’s been missing for a month and is presumed dead. Margaret follows the texts on a macabre scavenger hunt that leads her to discover that her bestie is not who she thought she was. Wasps and other insects play a huge part in this story, but I don’t want to reveal too much. Just trust me when I say that you’re in for a wild, over-the-top, absolutely terrifying ride.
12. Bookish People by Susan Coll. I never would have read this book had my 10-year-old’s best friend not pulled it out of her grandmother’s Little Free Library and given it to my kiddo. (Em later handed it over to me, saying, “I don’t think this is for kids; the main character’s husband is dead.” LOL.) If it weren’t for all that, I never would have ended up fully charmed by this story featuring a cast of bookshop staffers who continue to persist despite the constant chaos. Readers go back and forth between the POVs of the bookstore owner—a widowed woman who’s burnt out on books and who dreams of moving into the secret room in a random corner of her shop—and her events coordinator—who has booked an event with an especially controversial author… for personal reasons. As I hurtled toward the end and the ill-fated event, I was desperate to know how it would all turn out.
13. Woke Up Like This by Amy Lea. New adult romance isn’t my usual fare, but throw in time travel and I’m game. I was thoroughly charmed by this tale in which a pair of high school nemeses takes a tumble and wakes up 30 years later—only to find that they’re engaged to be married. Say what now? The two scramble desperately to get back to their normal lives, unwilling to believe that such an unlikely match could be real. But they just might surprise each other.
14. Once Upon a Time at the End of the World, Vol. 2 by Jason Aaron, Leila del Duca, and Tamra Bonvillain. I loved the first volume of this post-apocalyptic romance. In the second arc, Maceo and Mezzy build a sex-positive utopian settlement that, for a time, flourishes. But then things start to turn sour, threatening the partnership that had, for so long, felt rock solid. As things fall apart, will they ever find their way back to each other again?
15. Suggested Reading by Dave Connis. This YA novel is about a high school library that has recently been targeted by a wave of attempted book bans. Horrified by her principal’s “prohibited media” hit list, our bookish protagonist creates an underground library that she runs out of her locker. But with high school graduation on the horizon and her entire future at stake, the pressures of peddling contraband around campus start to become too much to bear. This book was a delight that I couldn’t put down.
16. The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. This story centers around Tookie, a formerly incarcerated woman whose love of books got her through an overblown sentence and who eventually ends up working in an indigenous bookstore in Minneapolis. When her most annoying customer dies, the customer’s ghost starts appearing in the shop during Tookie’s shifts. What does Tookie have to do in order to help her move on? This story—which takes place during COVID, George Floyd’s murder, and the ensuing protests—feels like a love letter to both readers and booksellers.
17. I Never Thought of It That Way by Mónica Guzmán. Journalist Mónica Guzmán’s life’s work revolves around cross-partisan communication, which may or may not have something to do with the fact that she’s the liberal daughter of Mexican immigrants who happened to vote for Trump—twice. In her book, she writes of how we might turn toward each other in support of mutual understanding and empathy, rather than turning away. She delves into how we might find common ground, and how we might find expansiveness within our conversations with others if only we approach them in the spirit of open curiosity.
18. How to Resist Amazon and Why by Danny Caine. I’m not gonna lie. I picked this one up from my local indie’s counter so I’d meet the minimum purchase amount required to use my credit card. I already hated Amazon. I didn’t need a book to convince me. But this book went deeper than I expected, covering everything from the details of the corporation’s worker exploitation to the surveillance state enabled by its Ring devices to much, much more.
19. All Fours by Miranda July. When I first started this book, I was worried it would be too wacky for me. Which is par for the course with Miranda July. But once I was in, I was IN. In this novel, a woman approaching perimenopause becomes terrified that her sex drive will disappear, and she nearly blows up her life in an attempt to give her sexuality/sensuality the care it deserves. The book delves into important questions about marriage and autonomy and female desire, but it is also a glorious accounting of an older woman starting to spiral at this new stage of her life, only to come into her own.
20. Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. This next one isn’t out until February (sorrynotsorry). In this effed-up dark comedy, a bloodthirsty governess is looking for closure, however she can get it. I don’t read a lot of historical fiction, but the protagonist of this book—the living embodiment of #nofilter—was just so compelling, I couldn’t stop reading. This woman’s deeds are truly heinous, and the book pulls no punches in describing them. At the same time, I couldn’t help rooting for her because, deep down, I felt the source of her ire deserved everything he got. Bonkers as this book is, it provided some fantastic commentary on womanhood and sexuality and desire and, hell, I wanted this woman to get everything she desired.
21. Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. Hendrix is always a must-read for me. Add in the fact that I’ve been especially into witchy stories lately, and you’ll see why picking up this book was a no brainer. It’s 1970 and 15-year-old Fern is sent to a home for unwed mothers. She longs for a return to normalcy, but as she becomes closer with some of the other young women at the home, she begins to chafe at the culturally-imposed helplessness of young girls. When she comes into possession of a witchcraft guidebook, she begins to wonder if there’s a better way…
22. Brownstone by Samuel Teer and Julia Mar. In this coming-of-age teen graphic novel, the mixed-race Almudena is sent to live with her Guatemalen father for the summer, a man she barely knows. Almudena feels out of place, and is also grappling with the complicated emotions she carries toward her up-’til-now absent father. The emotional journey she goes on over the course of the summer made me weepy.
23. Tilda Is Visible by Tara Jane. In the opening chapter of this book (out in February), the titular character is working at her computer when she notices her pinkie finger has disappeared. Worried she’s losing her grasp on reality, she retreats to the bathroom, where she sees that one of her ears is gone, too. Her first assumption is that she’s having a mental break. But at an appointment with her primary care physician, she’s given a diagnosis of Invisibility, a condition that primarily affects older women starting in their late 40s/early 50s. It’s all a bit on the nose, but I truly enjoyed this novel, which interrogates the sense of invisibility older women often feel as they’re passed over for opportunities, as they’re no longer seen as beautiful, as they start to embody the things they’ve come to believe about themselves thanks to the way they’re treated by our culture.
24. We Were Witches by Ariel Gore. In this surreal work of autofiction, a single lesbian teen mother attempts to scrabble her way out of poverty but is faced at every turn with phallocentric narratives and paternalistic forces. In an attempt to fight back against societal scorn for unconventional women, she embraces witchcraft that looks suspiciously like… feminist-driven self-advocacy? This one was a re-read for me, but I enjoyed it even more the second time around.
25. Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley. This forthcoming book was described by one reviewer as a cross between High Fidelity and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, which turned out to be pretty spot on. I feel such deep nostalgia for High Fidelity, especially, and this book for sure brought those vibes, bringing me back to the days of mix tapes and concerts and a longing to make music, whether as a singer or a songwriter. In this book, music snob Percy Marks ends up in conversation with songwriter/musician Joe Morrow, sparking a lifelong collaboration that proves complicated, especially as it bumps up against their feelings for each other, and against Percy’s dreams of being a songwriter in her own right.
26. Model Home by Rivers Solomon. This is a haunted house novel—the sort where you don’t know if the hauntings are supernatural in nature, attributed to some more rational explanation, or all in the characters’ heads. This is my favorite type of haunted house story. Hell, it’s my favorite type of horror story, period. In this particular tale, the Maxwells move into an upper-middle-class gated community outside Dallas where they happen to be the only Black family. Immediately, terrible things start happening that may or may not be otherworldly. Either way, the family matriarch refuses to be pressured into giving up their home. The three Maxwell siblings eventually flee into adulthood, leaving their parents behind. But when they learn of their parents’ death, they’re compelled to return home and make sense of what really happened.
27. This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno. This one started slow for me, and I almost didn’t stick with it. We meet Thiago at his wife’s funeral, eventually learning that he blames her death on a smart device they bought for their home, a device that became strangely glitchy. Or perhaps sentient? Either way, nothing much happens for quite some time, but when Thiago moves to a remote cabin in order escape the memories that live in the apartment he and his wife once shared, things get freaky fast. I was so creeped out by the end, I can’t believe I almost DNFd it.
28. The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I learned about this one from a Feminist Book Club colleague when I was on the verge of re-reading Braiding Sweetgrass and, my god, this is the bite-sized dose of wisdom we all need right now. Much like Braiding Sweetgrass, it’s about abundance and the gift economy and living in reciprocity with the earth and with each other. So so so so timely.
29. Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel. I honestly didn’t think I’d have another book to add to my list this late in the game, but on the day after Christmas (a very lazy day), I holed up in bed and finished the egalley for this unflinching speculative horror debut about family and obligation and resentment and trauma and was left speechless. The lowdown: 25-year-old Calla has taken over the guardianship of her 16-year-old brother Jamie. Middle sibling Dre—who had promised to help—always has an excuse, and Calla is overwhelmed. She feels she’s always always cleaning up her brothers’ messes, and she mourns the life she could have had. Then there’s a mess that’s too big for her to fix and all three of them go on the run. But they can’t outrun problems as big as theirs. Out in Februarrryyyyy!!!
Speak Your Mind