The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,098 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

Christine Herbert ❤️ loved this book because...

Judging by the soggy mountain of tear-soaked tissues that piled up by my reading chair, this may be the most touching love story I've ever read. Maybe because it is not meant to be a love story. At least not in the traditional sense.

This is a story about friendship and partnership. It's about finding ways to connect, set free, and re-connect with the people that give our life meaning. It is about seeing and being seen. About being present for someone in their grief, and allowing others to do the same whether we think we want them there or not. It's about those precious few individuals who (if you are very lucky and very loved) are just waiting in the wings, ready to embrace us in all our flawed glory when we are finally ready to see past our own pain. This is the kind of story that breaks your heart even as it heals it.

A beautiful, emotional sucker-punch in the feels. Rating: five tissues.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Gabrielle Zevin,

Why should I read it?

38 authors picked Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

* AMAZON'S #1 BOOK OF 2022 *

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest, examining identity, creativity and our need to connect.

This is not a romance, but it is about love.

'I just love this book and I hope you love it too' JOHN GREEN, TikTok

Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital in 1987. Sadie is visiting her sister, Sam is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there, but playing together brings joy, escape, fierce competition -- and a special friendship. Then all too soon that time is…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

Christine Herbert ❤️ loved this book because...

This memoir is unlike anything I have ever read before, and I've read many! The writing is sublime and deeply personal. I gobbled it up in one sitting.

Imbler plumbs the depths of their life experience like a deep-sea diver, pausing at each uncomfortable interval allowing the reader to observe, acclimate, and absorb inner truths about the human condition. From pelagic anecdotes and testimonies, to benthic inner-demons and dark nights of the soul, Imbler explores the breadth and range of human psychological, biological, gender, and sexual identity. With sea creatures.

Yes, you heard me right. Sea creatures. Intrigued? You should be. This memoir is in a class all its own.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Sabrina Imbler,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked How Far the Light Reaches as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A fascinating tour of creatures from the surface to the deepest ocean floor: this "miraculous, transcendental book" invites us to envision wilder, grander, and more abundant possibilities for the way we live (Ed Yong, author of An Immense World).

A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including:

   ·the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Darkness Outside Us

Christine Herbert ❤️ loved this book because...

I've got a soft spot for sci-fi and queer romance, so I wasn't surprised how quickly I fell in love with this book. What did surprise me was how this story kept pulling the rug out from under me, forcing me to continually re-evaluate everything I thought I knew about the characters, their environment, their mission, and their fates.

As a sci-fi, it is a masterful piece of story craft. As a romance, my poor, tender heart got all but pulped due to catch-and-release throughout the storyline.

This book blew my mind about ten times over. It truly kept me guessing until the very end. An absolute page-turner!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Story/Plot 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Eliot Schrefer,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Darkness Outside Us as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

They Both Die at the End meets The Loneliest Girl in the Universe in this mind-bending sci-fi mystery and tender love story about two boys aboard a spaceship sent on a rescue mission, from two-time National Book Award finalist Eliot Schrefer. Stonewall Honor Award winner!

Two boys, alone in space. Sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission.

Ambrose wakes up on the Coordinated Endeavor with no memory of a launch. There's more that doesn't add up: evidence indicates strangers have been on board, the ship's operating system is voiced by his mother, and his handsome, brooding shipmate has barricaded…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Book cover of The Color of the Elephant

What is my book about?

An outstanding new voice in memoir, Christine Herbert takes the reader on a “time-machine tour” of her Peace Corps volunteer service as a health worker and educator from 2004–2006 in Zambia. Rather than a retrospective, this narrative unfolds in the present tense, propelling the reader alongside the memoirist through a fascinating exploration of a life lived “off the grid.”

At turns harrowing, playful, dewy-eyed and wise, the author’s heart and candor illuminate every chapter, whether she is the heroine of the tale or her own worst enemy. Even at her most petulant, the laugh-out-loud humor scuppers any “white savior” mentality and lays bare the undeniable humanity—and humility—of the storyteller. Through it all, an undeniable love for Zambia—its people, land and culture—shines through.

A must-read for the armchair adventurer.