I read 55 books over the course of 2024. For the past couple of years, I read exactly 38 books. However, 2024 meant less writing, and more reading. I’m okay with this.

Here are some of what I consider the best books from 2024.

Paladin’s Grace (The Saints of Steel series) by T. Kingfisher: I know, I know! I don’t read romance! Yet, I loved these books. It’s about a group of paladins whose god has died, and how they manage to come back to life themselves, eventually. A big part of why I loved these books is because the main characters are older. They aren’t twenty-somethings tasked with saving the world. They’ve seen stuff, done stuff, and seen their world burn down around them.

Ravenwood (Tanyth Fairport series) by Nathan Lowell. I loved this series so much. So hard. It’s about an old woman who comes into her power. They’re almost cozy. Not quite. But so very, very lovely and alive. And again, an old cranky woman as a protagonist.

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul. Non-fiction by one of my favorite drag queens. Can just hear her talking/speaking through the entire book. Fair warning: the ending makes this book feel like book one of two.

Heretical Fishing by Haylock Jobson. In all fairness, I read the first third of this novel sometime the previous year and put it down. I couldn’t get through it. That first third is something of a slog. After that, the book picks up considerably. It’s absolutely worth getting through it, and the next two books are priceless. One of my favorite cozy fantasy book series.

The Starlight Witch by Kim Richardson. This was quite a fun urban fantasy mystery. It’s also a romance, or at least the start of a slow burn. I liked the unexpected surprise of the character reveal at the end. I think the mystery mostly works, that there’s enough mis-direction that if a reader was really paying attention, they might have been able to figure out “who dunit” before the evil-doer reveal at the end. (I hadn’t figured it out.) Again, a slightly older protagonist.

I read a lot more books than this, of course. Many of them were reading the rest of the books in a series (like the couple mentioned above) or reading additional books that were finally published for a series (like To Catch a Falling Leafby J.P. Valentine, book two of the Stargazer’s War series). There were also quite a few book ones that I read that I won’t complete the series for, which is why I don’t have them listed here.

I like cozy fantasy. I read the starts of many of those books, only to not finish them. It’s a new genre, and people are still getting a handle on what it means to be cozy.

For example, I’m currently reading a book that fell into someone’s cozy fantasy reqs because it has found family. However, there’s also a lot of talk of war, and it is NOT slice of life. Too much tension. It isn’t cozy, not for me. So while I’ll finish it, unless something amazing happens between where I am (about the halfway point) and the ending, I won’t end up recommending it. (Actually, coming back to this, I didn’t end up finishing it.)

What did you enjoy reading this last year? What are you reading now?