My favorite books of 2024

Once again, I have completely failed to keep this Substack going on a consistent basis. Reasons include (but are not limited to) being busy raising one kid, pregnancy and then caring for a second kid, running Run for Something, the election, and finishing writing my book — more to come on that very soon.

But first: My favorite books of 2024!

For context: I read 116 books for fun this year — which is a lot, but also the fewest I’ve read in years, which makes sense given everything else going on.

I started-but-didn’t-finish a ton (especially a lot of the critics’ faves — looking at you, Intermezzo) because (a) my brain was mostly liquid this year and (b) I think reading should be fun, and whenever a book stops being fun to read, I stop reading it.

I couldn’t pick just one, or ten, or twenty — so instead, I pulled together a list of the 23 books I liked that I think nearly anyone else might enjoy, along with quick one-sentence summaries, in alphabetical order by title.

These are 100% fiction — I suspect that’s because most of the non-fiction I read in 2024 was research-related and aren’t on my spreadsheet, nor did I particularly love most of them. Proceed accordingly.

Anita de Monte Laughs Last - Xochitl Gonzalez - A famous artist’s also-artist girlfriend is killed and erased from the history books; decades later a grad student tries to resuscitate her story (and is possibly haunted by her ghost.)

Beautyland - Marie-Helaine Bertino - Aliens are real and one of them lives in Philadelphia, is faxes back to her home planet, and turns those faxes into a book.

The Ex Vows - Jessica Joyce - Exes have to work together after five years apart to plan a friend’s wedding and whoops maybe they’ve changed.

The Familiar - Leigh Bardugo - Magic is real and Luzia, a scullery maid/secret Jew in Spain during the Grand Inquisition, can’t let the nobility know she has it or they’ll doom her.

Fang Fiction - Kate Stayman-London - A sexy funny feminist vampire novel for people who love Buffy and/or fan fiction and/or healing love stories.

Five Star Stranger - Kat Tang - The gig economy comes for “hiring people to be your kid’s father, or the best man at your wedding, or our brother” and actually it’s pretty emotionally traumatizing.

The God of the Woods - Liz Moore - A teenager goes missing from summer camp in August 1975, fourteen years after her brother disappeared from the same place — this book is so good and somehow not overhyped in the slightest.

Good Material - Dolly Alderton - Andy can’t figure out why his relationship ended so he goes on a mission to learn his ex-girlfriend’s side of the story (and by the end, we learn it, too).

The Great Divide - Cristina Henriquez - Zooming in and out on people living/working/dying around the building of the Panama Canal.

How to End a Love Story - Yulin Kuang - A sad/hot/sweet romance about grief and writing in Hollywood.

I Hope This Finds You Well - Natalie Sue - Being able to read other people’s emails and DMs is both a blessing and a curse in this workplace rom-com .

Interesting Facts About Space - Emily Austin - A true-crime & space-obsessed woman afraid of bald men who spirals out with paranoia as she grapples with her own trauma in a funny sort of romantic story that surprised me.

James - Percival Everett - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn but from the perspective of Jim, who has a funny/smart/incisive interiority.

The Lost Story - Meg Shaffer - A beautiful, queer, magical love story with Chronicles of Narnia vibes but in a non-Jesus-y way.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe - Motherhood + OnlyFans + professional wrestling + class conflict + deeply funny + beautiful writing.

The Ministry of Time - Kaliane Bradley - One part sci-fi, one part romance, one part climate change dystopia about time-traveling expats that is absolutely captivating.

One Star Romance - Laura Hankin - What if you had to become friends (or maybe more??) with the guy who gave you book a one-star rating on Goodreads???

Real Americans - Rachel Khong - A family story about family/money/race/identity/science/destiny but told in a way that doesn’t feel heavy-handed in the slightest.

Sandwich - Catherine Newman - A multi-generational family stays in a beach house together for a week and as it turns out, aging/parenting/middle age is both very funny and very sad.

The Storm We Made - Vanessa Chan - Historical fiction about Malaya in the 1940s and 1950s, with spooky spy stuff, sad generational trauma, and a woman who will do anything for her family

Summer Fridays - Suzanne Rindell - You’ve Got Mail, kind of, in 1999 NYC that feels like historical fiction and is sweet, cozy, and sad.

Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange - How trauma and addiction has deep consequences across generations of Native families (and all families.)

The Wedding People - Alison Espach - Phoebe was going to kill herself at a fancy hotel but instead she gets caught up in the drama of a wedding — this book is funnier and more lovely than that sentence conveys.

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As for the book I wrote: It’s done! (Or most of the way done.) I turned in the big final manuscript a week before the baby was born at the end of September, then after Thanksgiving, I spent some time reviewing and incorporating changes from the copy editor, made more edits now that I’d had some time away from it, and got to review it as laid out like a book in what’s called “the first pass.”

The cover is in the works 🤝, the title is finalized 😉 — my hope is that in January, we’ll be able to announce everything and start taking pre-orders before it comes out on May 13th, 2025!

I don’t want to (again) make promises I can’t keep about consistency, but I’m going to try to send updates to this email list from time to time with both updates on the book itself as well as broader thoughts related to next-generation leadership and the topics I wrote about.

In the meantime: Let me know what you’re reading over the final days of 2024, and happy holidays!