While my Year in Books alleges that I read 48 over the course of the year, I feel confident that this was actually a 52 book year, because there were some that I read so feverishly quick that I had to immediately reread them.

I once imagined that Leigh Bardugo’s stories are so perfect that they must spring fully formed from her head, Athena-style. Ninth House wasn’t just the best book I read all year, its the best book I’ve read from Bardugo - the characters are as real and troubled and lovely as her others, the setting captivating, creepy, and inviting conversation not just about the thrilling story but about the power dynamics it explores. It’s a rare book I will also afford its length. I could’ve read five hundred more pages of this and am anxiously awaiting the next in the series.

I picked up Fame Adjacent on a whim because, I was a nineties-ish kid and I’m a sucker for a weird heroine. This book was a riot from start to finish with such a pure heart I can’t even.

Speak Easy, Speak Love was the Much Ado About Nothing retelling set in a speakeasy in the 1920s that I didn’t even know my life was missing. Three pairs of lovers, bootlegging, gangsters, found families, and maybe my favorite imagining of Beatrice and Benedick, ever.

I discovered Emily Henry this year and tore through just about everything she’s written. The Love That Split the World was the most vividly imagined, for me. I loved how this book managed to be both other worldly and utterly grounded and real. She also included the best description of an anxious, overthinking mind that I’ve ever read, which made me feel like my own brain is maybe not so bad.

Like I wasn’t going to love The Starless Sea. Morgenstern’s dreamy underworld is irresistible. As it was with The Night Circus, you’ll want to go to there and be so sorry that you probably can’t.

And now I need to know your favorites so my 2020 reading is just as fruitful.