Ok, this might be kinda long. But here goes:
Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak - I first read this in middle school which was (too many) years ago and it still sticks with me. Even revisiting it now, as an adult, the story is just as impactful. If you aren't familiar, it is a YA novel about a girl named Melinda entering her first year of high school. Something terrible happened over the summer and the story is told through her eyes as she tries to figure out how to heal from it while dealing with expectations from her parents, friends who will no longer speak to her, and all the other challenges high school brings. Honestly, this book is a must-read as far as I'm concerned. I also highly recommend her other works such as
Catalyst, and
Winter Girls if you like YA fiction with a lot of heart.
Tamsyn Muir's The Locked Tomb trilogy - Currently 2 of the 3 books in this series have been released (
Gideon the Ninth and
Harrow the Ninth) with the third (
Alecto the Ninth) to be released sometime next year. This is a new favorite of mine. I discovered
Gideon at the beginning of the year and have since read both books twice. I cannot wait for
Alecto. These are fun reads with so many layers you do not expect. The stories weave sci-fi with necromancy and spiritualism in a way that just
works somehow and the narration is at times heartbreaking and hilarious. So. Good.
Ellen Hopkins Entire Library - I love love love, Ellen Hopkins. She writes most of her novels entirely in verse and does a darn good job of it. More YA fiction, but all of her books deal with some pretty heavy stuff ranging from drug addiction to suicide to sexual assault. Most people are at least vaguely familiar with her book
Crank, but I also highly recommend
Impulse and
Burned.
Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Another new favorite of mine that I read earlier this year.
Seven Husbands is about a reclusive Old-Hollywood star named Evelyn Hugo who has offered an exclusive interview to unknown writer Monique Grant to finally tell the true story of her tumultuous life. When I say this book is good, I mean it is
so good. The intricacies woven into the flashbacks to Evelyn's past and the threads connecting to the present are so fun to unravel. I highly recommend this one.
Gail Simone - Okay, hear me out. Gail Simone is not a traditional "author" as she is a comic book writer, but she is one of the
best writers in the comics business. She was a hairstylist in the late '90s when DC took a chance and gave her the writing lead on
Birds of Prey a book that was on the cusp of cancellation due to poor sales and dwindled interest. They figured it was being canceled anyway so why not let her try her hand? Her leadership on that book (the
first professional comics writing gig she
ever had) turned it from a failure to an abject success. Her run on BoP became one of DC's top-selling properties at the time and she single-handedly saved the Birds of Prey from comic book relegation. Since then she's written award-winning runs for Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Suicide Squad, and various creator-owned properties. She has such an iconic voice for her characters and manages to turn sometimes shallow super-heroes and villains into three-dimensional
people that you want to root for or against. That is no small task. Her writing has so much heart and she is inclusive in her storytelling, even introducing one of the first out Trans characters to her run on
Batgirl. She has done so much to open the door for other women in comics it's not even funny. Oh, and have you heard of "women in refrigerators" or of "fridging" a character? Yeah, she coined the term before she was even a comics writer with a viral blog exploring the impact of the trope of women dying to further men's stories in comics - a viral blog
in the '90s . She's also just a warm, welcoming, genuinely lovely person. (I got to meet her a few years ago. Best day ever). Anyway, yeah, I could go on and on so I'll stop about Gail Simone now. lol
Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post and Plain Bad Heroines - The first book of Danforth's I read was
Miseducation years ago. It was formative for me in my 'coming out' years. It's a great YA novel about a girl's harrowing experience at a conversion camp. There was even a movie made in 2018 starring Chloe Grace Moretz. Her newest novel
Plain Bad Heroines is even better. A story within a story about the creation of a film about an all-girls school with a dark past. It's difficult to say too much without giving away everything. This novel is witty, dark, creepy, and somehow hopeful. Definitely worth a read.
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next Series - This entire series is wonderful and some of my all-time favorites. Gosh, how do you even describe these books? They are set in a world where fantasy meets reality and there is an entire law-enforcement division dedicated to "literary crimes". Thursday is a literary detective and in the first novel
The Eyre Affair she is tasked with saving Jane Eyre herself from a murderous book-jumper trying to remove her from her own novel. If you are a fan of literature, these books are a nod to that in fun, quirky ways. I can't even give a good summary there are so many wonderful things happening. Just go read these books, I say.
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre - Speaking of
Jane Eyre, also one of my favorites. It is such a classic and for such good reason. Everyone knows Jane and Rochester's story, I'm sure. I've read this book so many times I had to buy a new copy because the spine on my original one was getting too weak. I obviously still have that copy for sentimental collection reasons.
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights - Speaking of the Brontes, Emily is just as talented as her sister. I reread
Wuthering Heights every year around Christmas-time. It's become a bit of tradition and one that I love. You can't go wrong with Heathcliffe and Catherine's doomed love.
James Patterson's Women's Murder Club series - Gotta love a good mystery/crime/thriller novel and James Patterson is so freaking good at them. I've read the first 8 of this series and all are excellent though I'd say the first three are my favorite. I need to get back into this series as I'm pretty sure there are like 30 of them now.
Jane Austen - Of course, you can't forget Jane Austen. She is the queen of regency romance and I am a sucker for it, despite my slightly misanthropic heart.
I'm going to stop there. There are soo many more I could add here, but I don't want to take up the entire thread. lol. Maybe I'll add more later
