If you’re looking for the perfect read to cosy up with as the grim January weather persists, one woman has got the perfect recommendations for you.
If you use Goodreads or any reading progress-tracking app, you’ll know that once you’ve finished reading something, you can rate it out of five stars. Your favourite books will be rated five, and books you didn’t vibe with or straight-up hated will be rated a one.
Book lover @em_ondrizek admitted that she’s stingy with her five-star ratings, sharing that she read 65 books in 2024 and rated only eight of them five stars – and she shared the reasons why you need to read them this year.
She said that the books she’d rated five-star were “perfection” in her mind “in every way possible,” and she said she’d be “recommending them to everyone for a very long time”.
First up on her list was ‘The One by John Marrs,’ which she referred to as a six-star read rather than five. She described what it was about, saying: “This takes place in a future society where science matches you with your perfect match based on your DNA. Obviously, it’s not as simple and easy as it sounds; things go wrong, and it is so freaking twisty, the twists literally never stop coming.”
She described it as “so dramatic” and “messy,” praising it for its “extremely short chapters” because you “feel like you’re just flying through it,” and she even said she enjoyed the audiobook, saying it was “chefs kiss”.
Next up was ‘Appetite for Innocence by Lucinda Berry,’ and straightaway, she warned that Lucinda Berry’s books are “very dark, very traumatic, and very triggering for some people,” so if you wanted to read this, proceed with caution.
She said: “This is about a man who kidnaps pure, innocent teenage girls. Disgusting. This one’s not for the faint of heart, okay? […] I was literally reading and wanting to crawl out of my own skin. It was very hard to get through in parts. But I’m a weirdo, and I liked that”.
The third book she said she’d highly recommend was ‘The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward,’ saying it was “one of those books where you are very confused the whole first half”.
She said her head “literally exploded” when it was “revealed what was going on,” and she said she didn’t see it coming “at all”. Em described the book as “dark and so messed up” and a “total mind f***,” and she said she “loved it”.
Number four on the list of five-star books was ‘The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon,’ saying “the energy it brings is icy, bone-chilling, claustrophobic,” and she even said it made he want to constantly look over her shoulder to make sure that she wasn’t being watched. She said she was “creeped out” and “scared” by it, describing it as “absolutely perfect.”
Number five was ‘The Drowning Woman by Robyn Harding,’ and she said it was a “messy domestic thriller”. Em said she didn’t “want to stop reading” when she’d started the book, saying “there were twists and turns in every corner,” and when she thought she’d figured something out, she was proven wrong.
Another five-star read for Em was ‘The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand,’ which she said included a “messy relationship” and is a “mystery” type of book. “It worked so beautifully,” Em praised, saying the characters were “messy, dramatic” and “entertaining”.
She said you “have a reason to suspect everyone” in the book, and she said it “did so much” for her when she was reading it.
“And the last two I’m gonna talk about together,” Em said as she prepared to reveal what books seven and eight were on her list of five-star reads. They were ‘A Court of Mist and Fury and A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas,’ which are the “second and fifth books in the ACOTAR series”.
Em explained she was “in love with this series as a whole,” but books two and five “stood out big time” to her because they were “the perfect mix of romance, fantasy, and action”. She said she was “shocked” by how invested she became in the books.
In the comments, someone joked: “Every time I watch Booktok, I end up adding 800 books to my Amazon cart like I’m Elon Musk himself”. Another said she’d rated the right amount of books five star, sharing: “I think 5 stars should be saved for books that were exceptional. I don’t trust reviewers with too many 5-star reads. I had 315 reads this year and only 15 5 stars. In 2023: 412 books, 26 5-star reads.”
This post was originally published on here
