The new year has passed and another failed Goodreads challenge has taught us absolutely nothing about setting realistic goals. For me at least, I fell short of my 30-book goal, but you better believe when prompted for my 2025 goal, I typed 30 right back in. It’s the small things.
At the very least, many books were started last year. Whether they were finished is yet to be seen, but the industrious writers of The Michigan Daily Book Review have most definitely fared better than I have. From another hopeful Sally Rooney novel, multiple memorable memoirs and even the discovery of an author that though not new was new to us, The Michigan Daily Book Review has assembled seven of the best books we’ve read this year. So, if you have a New Year’s Resolution to read more or better books, this might be a good place to start.
— Senior Arts Editor Cora Rolfes and Books Beat Editor Alex Hetzler
“My First Book” by Honor Levy
It’s easy for books that reference modern topics like the internet or AI to somehow feel disconnected. Instead of portraying a moment in time, authors can sometimes freeze it, date it or, worst, misunderstand it. Honor Levy did not fall into this trap in her short story collection, “My First Book.”
In the collection, released in May, Levy curates a compilation of vignettes dedicated to the generation that lived through formative life experiences online — and who are perhaps all too aware of the world as a result. Levy covers the online relationship in “Love Story” and the ever-expanding internet language in “Z was for Zoomer,” alongside wealth disparity and the shades of suffering that come with it in my favorite story, “Hall of Mirrors.” While not every story hits its mark, Levy’s prose is pseudo-poetry, meticulously crafted for those who are unafraid to pull up an Urban Dictionary tab without losing sight of the connection that binds us. It is fresh and biting and worth a read simply for how Levy is able to spin subjects that often disengage and isolate us, internet politics and oppression-olympic doom spirals, and imbue them with an undercurrent of connection — something that is increasingly important to look for in our modern online world.
You can read my full review (linked at the end of my opening paragraph) for more, but the gist is that, in “My First Book,” Levy sparks a conversation that is fresh, timeless and entirely representative of the mode in which we currently live, making it entirely worthy of a place among 2024’s highlights.
Senior Arts Editor Cora Rolfes can be reached at [email protected].
“The Safekeep” by Yael van der Wouden
Given my fixation on the man, I was tempted to nominate a John Green novel (some are great, even if others have their flaws) as my pick for this list. Unfortunately, I must yield to common sense and instead recommend Yael van der Wouden’s debut, “The Safekeep.”
Set in the Dutch countryside after World War II, the novel follows Isabel, who lives alone but tends her house with an iron fist. Unmarried, she fends off the romantic advances of a family friend, unable — or unwilling — to understand why he repulses her. When her brother’s girlfriend, Eva, arrives for a months-long stay, everything about Isabel’s life is thrown into disarray. An obsessive affair soon sparks between the two women, forcing them to contend with the lies they tell each other and themselves.
“The Safekeep” is an excellent period romance, with a third act reveal that hurls the first two-thirds into a new, uncertain light. It’s a novel that is deeply invested in the daily battles for control and survival fought by women and Jewish people in the 1950s. Aching and unsparing in its condemnation of European anti-Semitism, Van der Wouden’s rich prose oozes the plot forward, golden and ripe, with delicious, unbearable deliberateness. At its best —which is often — the novel raises questions of self-hatred and complicity in great evil, and the limits of passion to overcome them.
Books Beat Editor Alex Hetzler can be reached at [email protected].
“Funny Story” by Emily Henry
Since 2020, acclaimed adult romance author Emily Henry has released one romance novel per year, wooing her loyal readers with classic tropes and love stories that will assuredly sweep you off your feet. This past year, yet another Henry hit made its way onto my bookshelf.
“Funny Story” follows protagonists Daphne and Miles as they are forced to move in together after their respective significant others, Peter and Petra, leave them for each other. Daphne and Miles could not be more different, and their initial interactions are limited to the strictly necessary conversations that naturally arise between two people sharing a tiny space. However, this dynamic changes when they receive an invitation to Peter and Petra’s wedding and decide to begin fake dating each other, eventually leading them to actually falling in love.
“Funny Story” is Henry’s fastest-paced romance novel yet. It will have you glued to your seat as you turn each page, desperately rooting for Daphne and Miles to finally admit their (very real) feelings for each other. The characters are piercingly human and immensely relatable, each having flaws and virtues that will simultaneously annoy and endear you, keeping you rooting for them until the very end. It is the perfect read for when you need a lighthearted pick-me-up that will concurrently break your heart into a million pieces just to stitch it back up again.
Until I can get my hands on Henry’s upcoming release in April 2025, I will keep reminiscing on the absolute romance perfection that is “Funny Story.”
Daily Arts Writer Graciela Batlle Cestero can be reached at [email protected].
“Fire Exit” by Morgan Talty
Morgan Talty first made a name for himself in 2022 with his debut short story collection “Night of the Living Rez,” a series of interconnected nonlinear stories that explore themes of family, addiction and trauma. In this second book by the acclaimed author, Talty follows Charles, a white man living on the Penobscot Reservation in Maine, where he grew up. While still interested in many of the same themes from his first novel, “Fire Exit” asks broader questions of what it means to belong to a community, and what keeping secrets from those in it might take from us in return.
Adopted into the reservation when his mother married his stepfather, Charles has never had a true claim to the place he calls home. This feeling of isolation is only exacerbated when Charles’ daughter is born — a daughter who can never know he’s her father unless he wants her to experience the same driftlessness he’s faced all his life by having no Native heritage. Instead, Charles chooses to live in the house across the street, watching his daughter grow up with the life he could have had.
It’s a beautiful — albeit tragic — story of what it means to be different among those we want to call family and to watch the life we could have had slip away from us even as we try to hold on. As Charles faces the question of what it could mean to finally claim his daughter as his own, readers will in turn be sure to claim “Fire Exit” as one of the best books of the year.
Managing Arts Editor Camille Nagy can be reached at [email protected].
“This Is How You Lose the Time War” by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar
Just as wonderfully moving as it is short in length, “This Is How You Lose The Time War” boasts many accolades, including its title as the 2019 winner of the Nebula Award for best novella. This epistolary novel follows two rivals, Red and Blue, on opposite sides of a war across both time and space, fighting against one another as well as the societal standards that hold their worlds together. Though they begin as enemies, over the course of the novel their letters to one another shift from taunting to romantic, with tragedy written in every word. Though the letters disappear after being read, their permanence is something to be reckoned with.
Each word Red and Blue write grows more and more dangerous, both of them aware that their discretion is not just for privacy, but for survival. Their communication is utterly forbidden, and forming an epic sapphic love story, their words are profound and full of personality.
This novel obliterates a reader. It toys with narrative styles, creating a cleverly distinct voice for each character, constructed by the co-writers. Genre is bent every which way, and with it, the reader’s heart. As soon as you finish the last sentence, your fingers will ache to turn right back to the first page. In times of war and violence, a declaration of love might be the most dangerous thing of all.
Daily Arts Writer Archisha Pathak can be reached at [email protected].
“You Like It Darker” by Stephen King
Even those who haven’t picked up a book in the past year will undoubtedly recognize the name of author Stephen King, a prolific writer whose most recent book, “You Like It Darker,” stands up to the rest of his extensive oeuvre. In a collection of 12 short stories, his newest work dives into all of the darker sides of life, ranging from discussions of mortality to how our societal institutions cope with matters of the unknown.
Each short story captures a different horror-filled reality for a new set of characters. In the story “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” Danny wakes up from a dream with the vivid knowledge of a murder that has occurred. Not able to let this vision go, Danny gets further implicated in the police investigation that follows. King also builds on his past novel, “Cujo,” through the sequel “Rattlesnakes,” which follows retired Vic Trenton and his move to a desolate neighborhood in Florida during the COVID-19 pandemic. When Vic meets his neighbor, Alita, he faces the unsettling delusions of a woman who is still tormented by the death of her kids from decades before — delusions that resonate with him as well.
“You Like it Darker” is the perfect stepping stone into horror for those of us a little weary of the genre, unrelentingly tying in matters of systemic and realistic horror with that of the supernatural. While briefer than King’s other novels, the short stories in his newest release are just as thoughtful and thorough, making full use of the short length to fully capture readers’ attention.
It took 21 years of my life to finally get into Stephen King’s formidable collection of novels — a bittersweet admission now that I know how much I love his work. King masterfully captures his audience’s attention through the page-turning horror he lays down on the page but keeps his readers truly captivated through his cunning ability to show the humanity to be found within darkness. King’s newest novel, “You Like It Darker,” is again a masterful example of his talent and should be next on your list for 2025.
Daily Arts Writer Logan Brown can be reached at [email protected].
“Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner
Even though I’ve already reviewed the book for The Daily, I couldn’t help giving this one another mention before the year is out. “Creation Lake,” a spy novel surrounding an anarcho-primitivist leftist commune accused of ecoterrorism, is Rachel Kushner’s biggest literary push to date. Not only is the book creatively plotted and filled with Kushner’s powerful prose, but its powerhouse of a narrator brings the novel a sense of complexity hard to find in similar genre fiction — if you can even call it that. A character study of a woman who, in the most literal sense, is playing a character, “Creation Lake” is more a meditation on identity and politics than a classic mystery story. To those looking for a traditional detective novel, this may not be what you’re expecting.
Personally, I love a book that challenges me while reading, and “Creation Lake” was the most brain-intensive thing I finished all year. Pleasantly, this wasn’t due to an unintelligible plot structure or overwhelming cast of characters, but rather the constant need to stop and consider whether I believed the book’s narrator. In some cases, I felt myself drawn to her perspective, understanding and buying into her description of events. In others, my sense of unease at her callous worldview prompted me to consider the lens of other characters, making me reevaluate all I had read up to that point. Some readers may hate this mode of storytelling, but I loved it, and I implore anyone interested to give the book a try. You might leave with more than you’d think.
Daily Arts Writer Grace Sielinski can be reached at [email protected].
This post was originally published on here
