11 Best Books to Read in 2021 (So Far)
- By Staff Writer
- Feb 19, 2021
- 13 min read
Updated: Jun 18, 2021
The 2021 releases include some of the most exciting titles in recent years, from bold debuts to the return of some of the best contemporary writers. whether or not you have promised yourself that you will read more books in 2021 or just few books in 2021, here is a list of options for you.
1.
The Four Winds
by Kristin Hannah
amazon.com
The Today Show/Jenna's Book Club February Pick
One of "2021's Most Highly Anticipated New Books"—Newsweek
One of "27 of 2021's Most Anticipated Historical Fiction Novels That Will Sweep You Away"—Oprah Magazine
One of "24 books for February"—GMA.com
One of "The Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2021"—Parade
One of the "Books Everyone Will Talk About in 2021"—PopSugar
One of "The 57 Most Anticipated Books Of 2021"—Elle
From the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone comes a powerful American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression, a time when the country was in crisis and at war with itself, when millions were out of work and even the land seemed to have turned against them.
“My land tells its story if you listen. The story of our family.”
Texas, 1921. A time of abundance. The Great War is over, the bounty of the land is plentiful, and America is on the brink of a new and optimistic era. But for Elsa Wolcott, deemed too old to marry in a time when marriage is a woman’s only option, the future seems bleak. Until the night she meets Rafe Martinelli and decides to change the direction of her life. With her reputation in ruin, there is only one respectable choice: marriage to a man she barely knows.
REVIEWS
Praise for The Four Winds: "Epic and transporting, a stirring story of hardship and love...Majestic and absorbing."--USA Today "Hannah brings Dust Bowl migration to life in this riveting story of love, courage, and sacrifice...combines gritty realism with emotionally rich characters and lyrical prose that rings brightly and true from the first line"-- Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Outstanding.... [A] rich, rewarding read about family ties, perseverance, and women's friendships and fortitude." -- Booklist (starred review) "Brutally beautiful."--Newsweek "One woman’s journey exemplifies the hard choices families faced when confronted with survival versus a sense of home."--GoodMorningAmerica.com
Buy your The Four Winds book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3tK9i6n
2.
Detransition, Baby
by Torrey Peters
amazon.com
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • “An unforgettable portrait of three women, trans and cis, who wrestle with questions of motherhood and family making . . . Detransition, Baby might destroy your book club, but in a good way.”—Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.
Review
“Dynamic and vibrant, Detransition, Baby is a fiercely confident novel.”—O: The Oprah Magazine
“Irresistible . . . Witty, elegant and rigorously plotted.”—The Guardian
“A huge, funny, heartbreaking romp of a book.”—Observer
“[An] electrifying debut . . . In this compassionate, gut-punching story, Peters leans all the way into the tragicomedy of how families and identities are formed, making for a deeply searching novel that resists easy answers.”—Esquire
“A world so lovable and complex, it’s hard to let go.”—Publishers Weekly
Buy your The Detransition, Baby on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3cTRujg
3.
The Prophets
by Robert Jones, Jr.
amazon.com
Instant New York Times Bestseller
“A new kind of epic...A grand achievement...While The Prophets' dreamy realism recalls the work of Toni Morrison...its penetrating focus on social dynamics stands out more singularly.” —Entertainment Weekly
A singular and stunning debut novel about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence.
Isaiah was Samuel's and Samuel was Isaiah's. That was the way it was since the beginning, and the way it was to be until the end. In the barn they tended to the animals, but also to each other, transforming the hollowed-out shed into a place of human refuge, a source of intimacy and hope in a world ruled by vicious masters. But when an older man--a fellow slave--seeks to gain favor by preaching the master's gospel on the plantation, the enslaved begin to turn on their own. Isaiah and Samuel's love, which was once so simple, is seen as sinful and a clear danger to the plantation's harmony.
Review
#1 Indie Next Pick
One of: The New York Times Book Review's Books to Watch for in January The Washington Post's 10 Books to Read in January TIME's 10 New Books You Should Read in January
“With this epic novel, Jones, who is known for his blogging and Twitter presence as Son of Baldwin, marks his entry into the literary arena....The greatest gift of this novel is its efforts to render emotional interiority to enslaved people who are too often depicted either as vessels for sadistic violence or as noble, superhuman warriors for liberation....Jones’s debut novel is an important contribution to American letters, Black queer studies and the present moment’s profound reckoning with the legacy of America’s racialized violence.” –The Washington Post
“Robert Jones, Jr.’s debut novel The Prophets feels like it might be a classic one
day….Kaleidoscopic…Audre Lorde wrote ‘Unless one lives and loves in the trenches, it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless.’ An ambitious debut, The Prophets is right there in the trenches, firing shots.” –San Francisco Chronicle
Buy your The Prophets book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3tNbwBR
4.
Black Buck
by Mateo Askaripour
amazon.com
A New York Times Bestseller
A Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club Pick!
An unambitious twenty-two-year-old, Darren lives in a Bed-Stuy brownstone with his mother, who wants nothing more than to see him live up to his potential as the valedictorian of Bronx Science. But Darren is content working at Starbucks in the lobby of a Midtown office building, hanging out with his girlfriend, Soraya, and eating his mother’s home-cooked meals. All that changes when a chance encounter with Rhett Daniels, the silver-tongued CEO of Sumwun, NYC’s hottest tech startup, results in an exclusive invitation for Darren to join an elite sales team on the thirty-sixth floor.
Review
One of WIRED's "Picks for the 10 Books You Have to Read This Winter"
One of Vulture's "46 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2021"
One of Elle's "55 Best Books to Read in 2021"
One of AV Club's "5 New Books to Read in January"
One of Cosmopolitan’s “Best New Books 2021”
"An irresistible comic novel about the tenacity of racism in corporate America . . . [Black Buck] is alternately sly and sweet, a work of cultural criticism that laments and celebrates the power of money."
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“Darkly comic . . . The message at the heart of this novel [is] very American, that the power is in the pitch . . . Black Buck is not unlike The Great Gatsby, in its own way.”
—NPR, Weekend Edition
Buy your Black Buck book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2OqsqGr
5.
The Wife Upstairs: A Novel
By Rachel Hawkins
amazon.com
Instant New York Times and USA Today Bestseller
“Compulsively readable...a gothic thriller laced with arsenic.” ––EW
One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021: CNN• Newsweek • Vulture • PopSugar • Parade • BuzzFeed • E!Online • TimeOut • Woman's Day • Goodreads • She Reads • Good Housekeeping • CrimeReads • Frolic • Hello!• Mystery and Suspense
January 2021 Indie Next Pick and #1 LibraryReads Pick
A delicious twist on a Gothic classic, The Wife Upstairs pairs Southern charm with atmospheric domestic suspense, perfect for fans of B.A. Paris and Megan Miranda.
Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name.
But her luck changes when she meets Eddie Rochester. Recently widowed, Eddie is Thornfield Estates’ most mysterious resident. His wife, Bea, drowned in a boating accident with her best friend, their bodies lost to the deep. Jane can’t help but see an opportunity in Eddie––not only is he rich, brooding, and handsome, he could also offer her the kind of protection she’s always yearned for.
Yet as Jane and Eddie fall for each other, Jane is increasingly haunted by the legend of Bea, an ambitious beauty with a rags-to-riches origin story, who launched a wildly successful southern lifestyle brand. How can she, plain Jane, ever measure up? And can she win Eddie’s heart before her past––or his––catches up to her?
With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, The Wife Upstairs flips the script on a timeless tale of forbidden romance, ill-advised attraction, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. In this vivid reimagining of one of literature’s most twisted love triangles, which Mrs. Rochester will get her happy ending?
Review
...this suspenseful domestic thriller will keep readers turning pages.-- Publishers Weekly
Rachel Hawkins delivers a sharp, fresh twist on a classic in this darkly funny, suspenseful story of murder, ambition, and love. Creepy and fast-paced, The Wife Upstairs kept me on the edge of my seat from the first page to the very last.--Megan Miranda, New York Times bestselling author
Buy your The Wife Upstairs book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3rCFbMl
6.
Let Me Tell You What I Mean
by JOAN DIDION
amazon.com
*A New York Times Best Seller* From one of our most iconic and influential writers: a timeless collection of mostly early pieces that reveal what would become Joan Didion’s subjects, including the press, politics, California robber barons, women, and her own self-doubt. A Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Vogue, TIME, Bustle, The New York Times and many more. These twelve pieces from 1968 to 2000, never before gathered together, offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of a legendary figure. They showcase Joan Didion’s incisive reporting, her empathetic gaze, and her role as “an articulate witness to the most stubborn and intractable truths of our time” (The New York Times Book Review).
Didion touches on topics ranging from newspapers (“the problem is not so much whether one trusts the news as to whether one finds it”), to the fantasy of San Simeon, to not getting into Stanford. In “Why I Write,” Didion ponders the act of writing: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” From her admiration for Hemingway’s sentences to her acknowledgment that Martha Stewart’s story is one “that has historically encouraged women in this country, even as it has threatened men,” these essays are acutely and brilliantly observed. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive, bemused, and stunningly prescient.
Review
"Didion’s remarkable, five decades-long career as a journalist, essayist, novelist, and screen writer has earned her a prominent place in the American literary canon, and the twelve early pieces collected here underscore her singularity. Her musings—whether contemplating “pretty” Nancy Reagan living out her “middle-class American woman’s daydream circa 1948” or the power of Ernest Hemingway’s pen—are all unmistakably Didionesque. There will never be another quite like her." —O Magazine
“Didion presents a dozen eclectic essays. . . . They are quintessential Didion. . . . Didion’s stories are personal, brilliant, and fascinating with her usual honesty.” --The Florida Times Union (“Essay collection presents Joan Didion at her best”)
Buy your Let Me Tell You What I Mean book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3709Kn8
7.
Aftershocks
by NADIA OWUSU
amazon.com
Nadia Owusu grew up in different countries, struggling with identity, race, and trying to find a place for herself. Her memoir discuses the results of growing up without stability and being rejected by your own mother. She was brought up primary by a stepmom, and aunt and her father who worked for the UN so travelled a great deal, but he taught her much about life.
She is struggling to understand herself and her roots and where she came from so that she can move into her future.
She talks about historical events in the countries she's lived in and how colonialism and slavery shaped Ghana.
Review
"In a literary landscape rich with diaspora memoirs, Owusu’s painful yet radiant story rises to the forefront. The daughter of an Armenian-American mother who abandoned her and a heroic Ghanaian father who died when she was thirteen, Nadia drifted across continents in a trek that she renders here with poetic, indelible prose."—O MAGAZINE "[Owusu] dispatches all of this heartache with blistering honesty, but does so with prose light enough that it never feels too much to bear."—ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY "[A] gorgeous and unsettling memoir."—THE NEW YORK TIMES (EDITOR'S CHOICE)
Buy your Aftershocks book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/36XS37U
8.
How Beautiful We Were: A Novel
By IMBOLO MBUE
amazon.com
This novel is set in the fictional African Village of Kosawa, and tells of villagers living in fear due to the environmental degradation and loss of life caused by a greedy American oil company.
The story is told from the perspective of a family, mainly a girl called Thula who hopes things would be better one day and also that she, a girl, might teach the men a lesson.
“A novel with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time.”—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the National Book Award
"A great contemporary with characters that will be remembered."
Review
“The unforgettable story of a community on the wrong end of Western greed, How Beautiful We Were will enthrall you, appall you, and show you what is possible when a few people stand up and say, ‘This is not right.’ It is a masterful novel by a spellbinding writer engaged with the most urgent questions of our day.”—David Ebershoff, bestselling author of The Danish Girl
“How Beautiful We Were goes to the heart of one of the most urgent matters of the day. The highly suspenseful story of an African village’s struggle for survival and justice in the face of ruthless American corporate greed is written with remarkable acuity and compassion. Mbue has given us a book with the richness and power of a great contemporary fable, and a heroine for our time.”—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the National Book Award
Buy your How Beautiful We Were book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2MP9mkx
9.
A Crooked Tree: A Novel
By UNA MANNION
amazon.com
My mother made a snap decision.
How could we know it would change us forever?
'Brimming with curiosity and wonder.'Irish Times
'Lushly atmospheric.' Daily Mail
'Thoroughly gripping.' Lucy Caldwell
'Brilliant.' Sara Baume
Rage. That's the feeling engulfing the car as Ellen's mother swerves over to the hard-shoulder and orders her daughter out onto the roadside. Ignoring the protests of her other children, she accelerates away, leaving Ellen standing on the gravel verge in her school pinafore and knee socks as the light fades.
What would you do as you watch your little sister getting smaller in the rear view window? How far would you be willing to go to help her? The Gallagher children are going to find out. This moment is the beginning of a summer that will change everything.
Review
“A Crooked Tree is completely entrancing—as suspenseful as a good thriller, steeped in an aching nostalgia but unflinchingly sharp-sighted. I tore through this novel.” -- Julia Pierpont, New York Times bestselling author of Among the Ten Thousand Things
“The menace in this moody, meticulously plotted debut lies not in preposterous plot twists, but within the mysteries of dysfunctional families, close-knit neighborhoods harboring dark secrets, and adolescents’ imperfect and sometimes disastrous, understanding of the world of adults.” -- Sarah Lyall, The New York Times Book Review
Buy your A Crooked Tree book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/36TNhbm
10.
The Push: A Novel
By ASHLEY AUDRAIN
amazon.com
A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
An instant New York Times bestseller!
“Taut, chilling….Audrain has a gift for capturing the seemingly small moments that speak volumes about relationships.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Hooks you from the very first page and will have you racing to get to the end.”
—Good Morning America
A tense, page-turning psychological drama about the making and breaking of a family—and a woman whose experience of motherhood is nothing at all what she hoped for—and everything she feared
A Book to Watch in 2021! As selected by:
Grazia, Vogue, Red, Stylist, Marie Claire, Sunday Mirror, Evening Standard, Daily Mail, The Sun, Hello!, Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, Porter
Blythe Connor is determined that she will be the warm, comforting mother to her new baby Violet that she herself never had. But in the thick of motherhood’s exhausting early days, Blythe becomes convinced that something is wrong with her daughter—she doesn’t behave like most children do. Or is it all in Blythe’s head? Her husband, Fox, says she’s imagining things. The more Fox dismisses her fears, the more Blythe begins to question her own sanity, and the more we begin to question what Blythe is telling us about her life as well. Then their son Sam is born—and with him, Blythe has the blissful connection she’d always imagined with her child. Even Violet seems to love her little brother. But when life as they know it is changed in an instant, the devastating fall-out forces Blythe to face the truth. The Push is a tour de force you will read in a sitting, an utterly immersive novel that will challenge everything you think you know about motherhood, about what we owe our children, and what it feels like when women are not believed.
Review
"Starkly original and compulsively readable, Ashley Audrain's THE PUSH is a deep dive into the darkest nooks and crannies of motherhood. Raw, visceral, and often disturbing, this is an intense psychological drama that will be embraced by serious book clubs and fans of Lionel Shriver'sWe Need to Talk about Kevin."
"A poetic, propulsive read that set my nerves jangling." —Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone
“The Push is written on the edge of a knife. It’s a howl in the face of what we think we know — or want to believe — about motherhood. Relentlessly compelling, distressing and beautiful, Ashley Audrain’s debut is the next Gone Girl, with shades of We Need to Talk About Kevin. I devoured it whole.”
— Marissa Stapley, bestselling author of The Last Resort
Buy your The Push book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3rzm2Lb
11.
The Kitchen Front: A Novel
By JENNIFER RYAN
amazon.com
From the bestselling author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir comes an unforgettable novel of a BBC-sponsored wartime cooking competition and the four women who enter for a chance to better their lives.
Two years into World War II, Britain is feeling her losses: The Nazis have won battles, the Blitz has destroyed cities, and U-boats have cut off the supply of food. In an effort to help housewives with food rationing, a BBC radio program called The Kitchen Front is holding a cooking contest—and the grand prize is a job as the program’s first-ever female co-host. For four very different women, winning the competition would present a crucial chance to change their lives. For a young widow, it’s a chance to pay off her husband’s debts and keep a roof over her children’s heads. For a kitchen maid, it’s a chance to leave servitude and find freedom. For a lady of the manor, it’s a chance to escape her wealthy husband’s increasingly hostile behavior. And for a trained chef, it’s a chance to challenge the men at the top of her profession. These four women are giving the competition their all—even if that sometimes means bending the rules. But with so much at stake, will the contest that aims to bring the community together only serve to break it apart?
Review
“A novel set in a time of war to a tune called pleasing.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Sinks you deep inside the rich, intricate atmosphere of an English village in the middle of war . . Jennifer Ryan creates the kind of wartime novel that plays out over the intimate territory of the human heart—full of soul, full of hope.”—Beatriz Williams, New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Hours
“Richly detailed . . . This tale swept me away!”—First for Women
Buy your The Kitchen Front book on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3q2FXld
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