I read around 75 books in 2014. (I know that seems like a lot but that’s 50% down from 2011 so doesn’t feel like much to me!)  Here are my favorites, just a month late compared to all the other book bloggers out there! I track my reading on Goodreads.  So if we’re not friends there, you should join me!

Here are my favorite fictional books of 2015.
(with apologies for the repetitiveness to my Goodreads friends as these are my edited reviews from what I posted there through the year)

The Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear: I read books books #5-9 this year.  I’m inevitably sobbing by the end with so much sadness and often so much healing too. I think I liked An Incomplete Revenge (#5) the best out of the five I read this year.

A Red Herring Without Mustard: A Flavia de Luce Novel by Alan Bradley: I do love Flavia, her love of chemistry, and her quirks. (I listened to this via the Overdrive app and it was  a fun one to listen to because of the varying British accents.)

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr :  This book is terribly sad. Several times I had to skip forward to find out who had died because I couldn’t take not knowing and falling in love with the characters without warning of what their ultimate fate would be. With that warning, it’s an amazing (if quite slow) book. This was also the first time I read the Pulitzer award winner in fiction before the award was announced, which made me feel pretty smart. 😉

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty: Liane Moriarty seems to have a knack for writing fiction that sticks with me for days/weeks, helping me think through big, hard issues. This one left me terribly sad at the end (even though the ending is ostensibly happy). It was an enjoyable although sometimes difficult and certainly eye-opening read. (BTW, I also read The Husband’s Secret this year and didn’t like it nearly as much as this one. What Alice Forgot is still my favorite of hers.)

Isn’t that cover gorgeous? I need to learn how to sew myself a dress like that!

Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner: Yet again, I got sucked in by a WWII-in-England fictional novel and really loved this one (terribly sad but good too).

Come Rain or Come Shine by Jan Karon: I listened to this on audio, which was a mistake I think because the narrator wasn’t super strong and at times it was hard to tell who was talking. Regardless, this was yet another incredible, amazing, ponder-for-days (still pondering weeks later actually) fiction offering from Jan Karon. (Make sure you start with the first book if you haven’t read this series before.)

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce: I loved this one!

I also read through many classics this year and enjoyed but didn’t love the majority of them.  The exception to that was The Memory of Old Jack by Wendell Berry (my review here).

For the younger crowd:

Greenglass House by Kate Milford: I devoured this in two days. It’s so good. I love the adoption story line, the ending totally took me by surprise, and it’s just enough weird and geeky to make it fun. It would be fun to read aloud (maybe middle elementary? I’m not good at gauging age appropriateness. Definitely middle school.)

The Penderwicks in Spring by Jeanne Birdsall: I love the Penderwicks, the whole family. I’m really looking forward to reading these books aloud to Ellie and Mark.

Do you have any favorites on this list?  Any more to recommend to me? (Not that I’m allowing myself to take on any new books right now but I can still dream!)

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