New year, new books, new reading goals. There is no better way to kick off the new year than with a fresh TBR pile. Here are 5 picks to kick off the new year in the best way: safe and cozy curled up on the couch, a glass of wine in hand!
Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane
Thriller
Lila Ridgefield has had enough of her husband Aaron. The final straw was the discovery of video footage of him romantically involved with his students. When Lila takes matters into her own hands, she knows she cannot afford to mess it up. When Aaron’s body goes missing, Lila knows something is drastically wrong.
When you kill your husband, shouldn’t he stay dead? But when Aaron’s body is nowhere to be found, Lila is the prime suspect for all of the wrong reasons. In a race to uncover the truth about what really happened to Aaron, Lila must conduct her own investigation without attracting the attention of the police but that proves to be much harder than it sounds. In a plot twist that will leave you speechless, Lila finally finds out the truth but will she pay for it with her life? Or will she escape to live the life she so desperately fought for?
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
Fantasy Fiction
Addie LaRue made a deal with the devil. In exchange for her freedom and escape from the inevitability of being forced into marriage, Addie promises her soul to the god of darkness. With her newfound freedom, no one can remember her. They can’t remember her face or her name, no matter what she does. Addie acclimates to her new life as a vagabond, essentially going from place to place because putting down roots anywhere proves to be impossible. From 1714 to 2014, she lived this way. Until one fateful day in a New York City bookshop, a coffee date leads to something more and someone remembers her. After 300 hundred years of being forgotten, Addie is completely bewildered; everything she has known to be true has been thrown out the window. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a brilliant story of love, loss, and adventure that will inspire blissful feelings of wanderlust and transport you hundreds of miles from here.
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One by One by Ruth Ware
Suspense/Thriller
When the CEOs of a cool music startup called Snoop book a ski trip in the French Alps for its employees and shareholders, no one knows what to expect. Like every other corporate retreat, there are plenty of presentations and team-building exercises on the itinerary with ample time set aside for hitting the slopes.
However, one of the CEOs blindsides them with an extremely attractive buyout offer that anyone with a brain could not refuse. Tensions are running high as accusations and threats are made, leaving everyone on edge and wary of each other.
Outside the chalet, things are looking just as ominous. A treacherous snowstorm is threatening to ruin the rest of the trip, leaving the only opportunity to ski that morning. As the storm picks up speed, the group begrudgingly throws in the towel and decides to make their way back to the chalet. They split up, some taking the lift and some skiing down from a more advanced run. When one of them doesn’t return to the chalet, panic sets in. Not to mention, she was the same CEO who presented the controversial buyout offer that ruffled everyone’s feathers. The coincidence is too unsettling to ignore. To make matters drastically worse, a catastrophic avalanche makes escape impossible. As the Snoopers wait for the search and rescue team to save them, members of the group start turning up dead, one by one…
We Met In December by Rosie Curtis
Romance/Comedy
Fast approaching thirty, Jess finally feels like she is getting her life together. She took a leap of faith and left her cushy but soulless job for the position of her dreams at a publishing company. She’s moving out of her family home {because she had literally no say in the matter, but still} and into a share-house with one of her friends and three strangers. But when rent is cheap, you do what you gotta do.
At the housewarming party, Jess meets two of the other flatmates. Emma is gorgeous and glamorous, the type of woman we all aspire to be. Alex is a lawyer who gave up his career to pursue nursing and who just so happens to be the most handsome man Jess has ever laid eyes on. The minute Jess meets Alex she feels an instant spark and knows that there is a connection. Despite the fact that her friend/landlord made it quite clear that dating amongst flatmates would be prohibited, Jess is sure once she and Alex have truly and properly fallen for each other, everyone would be happy for them. But when Jess returns from her two-week vacation over the Christmas holiday, she is in for a rude awakening when she discovers that not only did Alex find himself a girlfriend in her absence, but said girlfriend is Emma, the other flatmate. Safe to say, Jess did not anticipate starting the new year hiding from her crush and his new girlfriend in her own home.
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The Beauty in Breaking by Michele Harper
Memoir
The Beauty in Breaking is the beautiful, poignant story of one emergency room doctor’s experience caring for patients and how it shaped her into the person she is today. Some of the difficult topics Harper discusses include the adversity she faced as an African American female in a predominantly white, male profession. and her struggle with her divorce, prompted by an enticing job offer in Philadelphia that she could not turn down. As Dr. Harper forges ahead to focus fully on her career, she has patient encounters that break down her walls and illuminate the fragility of the human condition.
She shows the reader that no matter how broken we are, we have the ability to put ourselves back together. How we handle and cope with the situations that cause these breaks are all part of the self-healing process that is unique to the individual. No one grieves the same. Harper uses her own experiences to teach the rest of us a little something about what it means to be compassionate, considerate and accepting of each other. This is the perfect book to start the new year with a fresh perspective, especially after the emotional, mental, and physical toll the past year has taken on us all.
