As an avid reader, there is nothing more intimidating than a reading goal. Like most people who love to read, I set my reading goal at the beginning of the year, and then I find myself stressing to meet it. In the past, I used to set unrealistic goals for myself, wanting to read as many books as possible and forcing myself to get through them even if I wasn’t enjoying them just so they would count towards my reading goal. I realized that this was turning reading into a chore instead of something I loved to do, so I changed my approach. I started to set low reading goals, usually a number that I knew I could achieve, and it helped me prioritize quality over quantity. Ever since I started doing this, I’ve found some of my favorite books and have been able to enjoy myself instead of always rushing to get through to the next one. In this article I will be recommending twelve books that I’ve read and loved to add to your reading list. If you’re like me and reading goals seem kind of intimidating, this list provides you with at least twelve books to add to your TBR that you can read throughout the whole year.
January: Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Discovering Clap When You Land was a happy accident. It was part of my assigned reading for a class, and I ended up signing up to write an essay on it without knowing anything about it. What I found was a story about two sisters, Yahaira and Camino, who were separated most of their life, being reunited by the grief of losing their father during a plane crash. Written completely in verse, the novel offers insight into how the two girls deal with grief and how people define identity and culture. Due to my fear of flying, I usually steer clear of anything that has to do with planes, but Clap When You Land was different. We never read about the actual crash, but we do get to follow the girls’ journeys as they deal with the aftermath, creating one remarkable story about family and acceptance.
February: A Caribbean Heiress in Paris by Adriana Herrera
If you’re like me, and you’re constantly waiting for the next season of Bridgerton to drop, A Caribbean Heiress in Paris is the book for you. This is the first book in Las Leonas, a trilogy about three friends who travel from Latin America and the Caribbean to Europe to pursue different career opportunities. I prefer the second book to this first one, but I do recommend you read them in order even though they work as interconnected stand-alones. Luz Alana, our main character, wants to broaden her family’s rum business into the Parisian and European market. During her quest, she meets Evan Sinclair, the Earl of Darnick, and their love story begins to blossom between business deals and family schemes. This is such a great place to start if you’re just getting into historical romance and want more recs to keep you entertained during what I like to call “The Bridgerton Drought”.
March: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
There haven’t been many books that made me as angry as Yellowface did. I think R. F. Kuang is a genius and I’ll read literally anything she writes. I read Babel and was so utterly destroyed by that story that the moment she announced another novel, I had to pick it up. Yellowface is a satire, told from the perspective of June Hayward, an author who steals her best friend’s manuscript about the Chinese labor corps after her tragic death and passes it off as her own. Yellowface touches on topics of cultural appropriation, cancel culture, prejudice, and racism within the publishing industry. What makes this story so interesting is that we are being told this story by the queen of unreliable narrators. This leaves the reader to wonder how much of what June is saying is the truth, and what is told to make herself look better and excuse her terrible behaviour.
April: Flirting With Disaster by Naina Kumar
I will admit, second chance romances didn’t use to be a trope I sought out, but after this book, I might have to look out for more of these. Meena and Nikhil’s relationship had me hooked from the very first page. When Meena goes back to Texas to settle the last stages of their separation, she ends up staying longer than she planned when a hurricane hits the state. What follows is a walk down memory lane for Meena and Nikhil and one of the most tragically beautiful love stories I’ve ever read. These two are the very definition of “right person, wrong time” while also showing why they are perfect for each other. This is a very raw representation of a relationship, since Meena and Nikhil have several conversations about what made their marriage work and also what made it fall apart. Even if you don’t gravitate towards second chance romances, this is one that deserves a shot.
May: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
If you know me, you know that I’m not the biggest fan of horror. It speaks to Isabel Cañas’s talent that I completely devour her books, even though she only writes in this genre. What I love about Cañas’s books is that the supernatural element is never the true monster of the story. In The Hacienda, we follow the story of Beatriz, a woman who has just gotten married and, when her husband takes her to their new home, she starts to hear voices and experience terrifying visions within the house. Desperate for any sort of reprieve from the nightmare that she lives every night, she looks to the town’s young priest, Andrés, for help. Apart from being a priest, Andrés is also a brujo, who, upon learning of what is happening at Hacienda San Isidro, vows to use his talents to help Beatriz and the people of the town. This novel kept me guessing right up until the very end. Just when I thought I knew where the story was taking me, a curveball came out of nowhere and I was left staring at the pages in shock. Cañas has quickly become one of my favorite authors and I will shout out her books to anyone who listens.
June: Between Friends and Lovers by Shirlene Obuobi
I have to admit, I was skeptical going into this book because I’m not a big fan of love triangles, but that is not what this book was about at all. Even though we meet Jo, our main character, when she is struggling with her crush on her longtime best friend, this isn’t their love story. This book is about Jo and Mal’s relationship, and how something as simple as stepping into the wrong room can change the trajectory of their lives forever. I think everyone deserves someone who loves them as boldly and profoundly as Mal and Jo love each other, even if it does take them a little while to fully settle into this new relationship. Jo and Mal face a lot challenges within their careers and their personal lives during the course of this novel, but, through it all, they make it work, and they continue to show up for each other even when things get hard. I loved Jo’s character because of how familiar she felt to me. I could relate to a lot of her emotions when it came to relationships and letting people get to know her. I hope that everyone who decides to read this book gets to see how amazing she is as a character.
July: A Proposal They Can’t Refuse by Natalie Caña
A Proposal They Can’t Refuse is the first installment in the Vega Family series and my favorite book out of the three. We follow Kamilah and Liam who enter into a fake engagement to try and fool their scheming, meddling grandfathers. Kamilah and Liam’s grandparents have been best friends for a long time, and they want to see their grandchildren happy and settled down, which is where their matchmaking scheme comes into play. Even though it starts out as them faking, Kamilah and Liam do have history, and their feelings for each other start to resurface as they start spending more and more time together. The Vega family is full of fun characters who make for a great cast, and the grandparents are truly the highlight of this book. Kamilah and Liam are my favorite couple from the series, and if you end up loving them as much as I do, I really recommend you read the rest of the books, which follow Kamilah’s brothers finding their happily ever after.
August: Not Another Love Song by Julie Soto
I can’t think of a word that best describes this novel other than “cinematic.” Julie Soto describes the setting, the characters, and the musical aspect of it in a way that made me feel like I was watching a movie play out before me. Gwen and Xander are two young musicians, part of a New York pops’s orchestra, who are drawn to each other after Xander sees Gwen perform at his friend’s wedding. This book is so fascinating to me because Gwen and Xander’s story is so intricately tied with their love for music that the whole story feels like one big musical piece. Another thing I absolutely adore is the irony that the title carries. Even though it’s called Not Another Love Song the story is one big love song from Xander to Gwen and from Gwen to Xander. I have been obsessed with this book since I read it, and I can’t stop recommending it. If you want a steamy and unforgettable love story, do yourself a favor and pick this up.
September: Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
I had to add another book by Isabel Cañas, because they are just that good. Vampires of El Norte takes us to 1840’s Mexico, where Nena and Néstor have been reunited after a childhood accident that led Néstor to believe she was dead. Since Nena hasn’t forgiven him for abandoning her, tensions are high between them as they work together to keep the ranch safe from the bloodsucking monsters that roam the night. However, this is an Isabel Cañas book, so even though we have the vampires as monsters, we also have the American colonizers as the monsters. This book takes place during the 1846 US invasion of Mexico and we get to see the repercussions this had on Mexico and its citizens. This is my favorite book from Cañas, from the questions of who the true monsters are and Nena and Néstors romance, to the depiction of Mexican culture in the 1840’s, she crafts an incredibly vivid story that just sucks you in.
October: The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
Ashley Poston is one of my all time favorite romance authors, and if you’re just getting into her books, The Dead Romantics is a great place to start. All of Poston’s stories have elements of magical realism and have grief as one of the central themes. This book follows Florence, a ghost writer who can actually see ghosts, as she travels back to her hometown for her dad’s funeral. While she’s there, she gets a visit from Benji, her new editor who she’d just met a few days before and is now on her doorstep as a ghost. Florence has to face many challenges throughout the book: learning to accept her abilities, coming to terms with her father’s death, and trying to figure out what to do about her developing crush on her ghostly editor. This book describes life, death, and the way that we deal with sudden loss in such a beautiful and thoughtful way that I found myself tearing up at the end. Florence and Benji’s love story is so captivating, and Poston proves that you don’t need physical touch to create intimacy between two characters.
November: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna
This is the perfect cozy fantasy romance book to just absorb while curled up with a bunch of blankets. We follow Mika, a witch tasked with teaching three young girls, who are also witches, to use and control their magic. When Mika arrives at Nowhere House, where the girls live, she meets their other guardians. It’s here that we are introduced to Jamie, the house’s librarian, who takes a while to warm up to Mika since he views any outsider as a threat to the girls’ safety. This book is just filled with love. We have Mika and Jaime’s budding relationship, but we also see Mika form a real connection with the girls as she continues to teach them about the beauty of magic. If I could sum up this book with one word it would be “family.” Mika finds a real family in Nowhere House and, even though she was there to help the girls, they also ended up helping her grow in unimaginable ways. Mika and Jamie create a great bond as their relationship slowly builds, which makes for a memorable romance.
December: How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang
To end our list, it seemed only fitting to add How to End a Love Story. This book taught me that you should truly never judge a book by its cover, because I almost didn’t pick this up because I didn’t like the cover. Helen and Grant are two writers whose lives have been tied together in the most tragic way possible and find themselves working in the same writers room for a TV show adaptation. What follows is one of the most intense and beautiful love stories ever written. Helen and Grant may have lived separate lives for thirteen years, but they were always meant to find each other again. Yulin Kuang takes us on their journey, first as writers and then as partners who are dealing with a shared grief and shows us how they have to learn to heal from it before they can truly be together. I really like books that talk about grief, and I especially like when they also navigate how this affects the characters’ relationships. Grief is something that we will all experience at some point in our lives, and books like this help us understand that we are not alone in our struggles and that we are deserving of love even when life gets a little difficult.
This list has a wide variety of genres in the hopes that, no matter what you like to read, you could find at least one book in here that would catch your attention. While I love all the books on this list, and highly recommend them, if you’re thinking about picking one of them up I also advise you to look further into the synopsis and trigger warnings of each book. Some of them deal with sensitive topics such as grief, loss, violence, mentions of SA, among others. While these are all great novels and the topics they discuss are important, nobody should be taken by surprise by content that has the ability to make them uncomfortable. That being said, if after you’ve done this you decide to pick up one of these novels, I really hope that you love them as much as I do and that they gain a special place in your bookshelves.