For more than a decade, NPR has released ‘Booke We Love’ — an annual list highlighting staffers, trusted critics and librarians’ favorite books of the year.
This year’s titles covers a stunning 351 books — from children’s stories to cookbooks, essays and poetry and novels.
We went through the entire list to see where sunny and strange slices of Florida show up and give you a rundown of the authors from the state who also deserve some love.
The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson
“This book is wonderfully tender – you just have to stay strong through the cringefest that kicks it off,” says NPR senior producer Lauren Migaki.
In Central Florida author Alicia Thompson’s romance novel, a professional baseball player and his heckler develop feelings, except he doesn’t know she’s the one who heckled him. But when she reaches out to apologize on social media, she forgets to identify she’s the one who gave him a hard time. And now she doesn’t know how much she can keep lying to him.
“In a move straight out of the playbook for ‘worst person at a baseball game,” Daphne Brink (who, admittedly, is going through some stuff) gets drunk and heckles the guy at bat. And the guy at bat … starts crying,” Migaki says. “Suddenly the interaction is being replayed in GIFs, memes and every sportsball show on television. Are you hiding under the covers from embarrassment yet? Me too, but hang on!”
If you like reading about sports and romance, this book is for you.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
In The Book of Love, three teenagers, Laura, Daniel and Mo, who were all presumed dead (and are), are brought back by their teacher who gives them magical tasks to return to their families. But only two get to stay.
“Nobody else writes a sentence or renders the mundane into the magical like Kelly Link. No other book made me cry quite so much or love quite so hard,” writes Jessica P. Wick, a writer and book critic.
She calls the book “a masterpiece.”
But it’s not just a fantasy-filled ghost story, it’s a “narrative about love — and death and resurrection and kissing people and growing up and sibling rivalry and horror,” writes author and book reviewer Gabino Iglesias.
The Book of Love made New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2024, Time’s 100 Must Read Books and Vulture’s Best Books of 2024. And it’s on our list because Link has Miami roots.
Deer Run Home by Ann Clare LeZotte
Deer Run Home is a story of love and survival and found family. The story centers around 12-year-old Effie who is deaf and isolated from her family because they don’t speak American Sign Language. Language-deprived, abused and neglected, Effie finds hope in herfriend Cait at school and her caring ASL interpreter Miss Kathy.
The story, which is for kids ages 10 to 14, is based on a real adoption case.
Lisa Yee, author of The Misfits #1 – A Royal Conundrum, says she was unprepared for the power and grace of the novel in verse. Yee recommended the book for NPR’s Books We Love list. It’s one of 31 kids’ books in featured this year.
“This important book, based on a true story, is a testament to friendship, found family and courage,” she wrote. “Ann Clare LeZotte’s Deer Run Home stayed with me long after I finished the final sentence.”
LeZotte is a youth librarian who lives in Gainesville with her family.
READ MORE: ‘Anything Is Good’: A real life fall from wealth to homelessness in Miami Beach
Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez
Santiago Jose Sanchez’s debut is a coming-of-age novel about a queer boy who emigrates from Colombia to America and later returns to his homeland as a young man only to realize his life is in the U.S.
Hombrecito takes the reader straight into a boy’s heart.
“Sanchez communicates the anxiety and discomfort of adjusting to life in Miami, and later trying to make it in New York, while his relationship with his mother becomes increasingly fraught,” said Martha Anne Tolle, a book critic and author of Three Muses. “He embraces his sexuality with dangerous lows and stunning highs.”
Penguin Random House says Sanchez’s book is for anyone searching for home or a way to love.
The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich
Annabelle Tometich’s family memoir starts with a bang. “Rows of orange people sit handcuffed in a beige room. One of them is my mother.”
It is a courtroom scene like no other, says Shannon Rhoades, senior editor of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Tometich’s mom was arrested and charged with firing a BB gun at a man she says was stealing mangoes from her front yard. (The most Florida story ever?) Then the story steps back in time, going to her childhood in Fort Myers with her Filipino American mom and white dad.
“The writing is both jewel-like and effortless, and Tometich’s memories – some mundane, some extraordinary – are mesmerizing,” Rhoades says.
State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg
And finally, a ghost story. Sort of. “State of Paradise is an enchanting and complex study of Florida’s psychogeography that is also a creepy story about people who went missing mysteriously, ghosts, cults and technology,” says Gabino Iglesias.
“Written in a unique voice and dealing with things like family and the lingering effects of the pandemic, this is one of those novels that defy categorization. That said, the only thing that matters is that it is sharp and superbly written. It’s, perhaps Laura van den Berg’s most bizarre and wildly entertaining novel to date, and that’s saying a lot.”
We’re Alone: Essays by Edwidge Danticat
“Edwidge Danticat is agile when juggling duality,” says Tinbete Ermyas, editor of NPR’s All Things Considered. “It’s a core feature of We’re Alone, her essay collection that strives for a ‘kind of aloneness/togetherness.”
Danticat spoke on WLRN Sundial about life in Haiti and Miami — and the stories that made her. “I see myself more as like a crack in the door, and then others will push it open,” Danticat told Sundial in 2023.
Her observations in this book — of displacement, gun violence, hurricanes — feel like a guide to living, a testament to what writers can offer in difficult times, Ermyas says.
READ MORE: Looking for your next read? Here are the ‘Books We Love’ for South Florida readers
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