Another year of reading in the books! In 2021, I read and listened to 82 titles, expanded my usual genres (less historical fiction and classics, more nonfiction, romance, and sci-fi!), and also DNF’ed a lot more books than usual. No more wasting time on books I’m not enjoying.

December kind of was a mix of no time to read (wrapping up work for the year) and all the time to read (when I finally took time off). I saved some of the best titles of the year for last (find the two 5-star reads below!) and also started re-reading one of my all-time favorite books, The Grapes of Wrath. I’ll let you know what I think the second time around when I finish it in January. As for now, here are my last reads of 2021!

The Donut Trap by Julie Tieu

3/5 Stars

Jasmine Tran has landed herself behind bars—maple bars that is. With no boyfriend or job prospects, Jasmine returns home to work at her parents’ donut shop.

Help comes in the form of an old college crush, Alex Lai. Not only is he successful and easy on the eyes, to her parents’ delight, he’s also Chinese. He’s everything she should wish for, until a disastrous dinner reveals Alex isn’t as perfect as she thinks.

This book started out strong. It was easy to feel sympathy for the main character and her strict yet hardworking immigrant parents. The writing is solid and easy to follow, making it a quick read. However, I did feel like the plot was too safe. The reveal of the main character's secret past was kind of a "that's it?" moment, and the two side characters with potential for drama (Alex's mom and Jas's ex Michael) were dead ends. It seemed like the book spent too much time on the daughter-parent tension and the surface-level flirting of a new relationship, and not enough on deeper stuff like Alex's past or Jas's college problems.

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

5/5 Stars

Franny Stone has always been the kind of woman who is able to love but unable to stay. She talks her way onto a fishing boat to follow the last Arctic terns in the world on what might be their final migration to Antarctica. But as Franny’s history begins to unspool—a passionate love affair, an absent family, a devastating crime—it becomes clear that she is chasing more than just the birds.

Stunning. This book strikes the perfect melancholic tone for climate change and more specifically species extinction. There's obviously the grief and anger and frustration from the main character and her powerlessness to stop the destruction of the planet, but there is also gratitude for having known animals, and I was very touched by the main character's love and admiration for birds.

Along with the right emotion, this book has action and adventure to go with it. The story is scenic, and the cast of characters offer a lot of tension to keep the plot tight. Combine all this with some stellar writing, and it's a 5-star read for sure.

Lily and the Octopus by Steven Rowley

4/5 Stars

A man grapples with letting go of his beloved aging dog, Lily.

I enjoyed this, and it got a tear out of me. The characters are very easy to root for, and it perfectly encapsulates what we love about dogs. It is absolutely sappy, but I allow sap for the sake of dogs. If this were a dog-free story, it would have me rolling my eyes. Even the real-world parts of this book are unbelievable, but this book leans into the magical aspects of life.

There aren't many side characters, no side plot, and there isn't much main plot either; the book's main selling point is the imaginative premise of the octopus. It's unique and fanciful. Pick it up if you're a dog lover and want a quick read.

Say You Still Love Me by K. A. Tucker

4/5 Stars

Piper, a twenty-nine-year-old VP at her dad’s multibillion-dollar real estate development firm, has her world turned upside down when the handsome new security guard at her office is none other than Kyle Miller, her first love from summer camp who broke her heart.

Piper may be a high-powered businesswoman now, but she soon realizes that her schoolgirl crush is not only alive but stronger than ever, and crippling her concentration. What’s more, despite Kyle’s distant attitude, she’s convinced their reunion isn’t at all coincidental, and that his feelings for her still run deep. And she’s determined to make him admit to them, no matter the consequences.

I enjoyed this a lot! The characters were flawed but redeemable, believable and realistic. I liked the summer camp setting. The plot unfolded at a steady pace, though sometimes it got a bit wordy. Lots of rhetorical questions and inner monologue from the main character, as if the author didn't trust the reader to pick up what she was putting down without the main character outlining what we should think.

The romance was believable, but it always killed the mood when the characters would say the full name of "camp Wawa." And they said the full name every time. Imagine someone whispering into your ear, "I haven't stopped thinking about you since camp Wawa." Just "since camp" would have been fine, as there's not another camp to be confused with. But the name "Wawa" was always thrown in the middle of romantic conversations, and it just doesn't have that steamy ring to it, you know?

How All This Started by Pete Fromm

5/5 Stars

Intense, haunting, and beautiful. This is a tightly drawn story of family, mental illness, and small-town aspirations.

At first I felt something lacking in the plot, as it really only involves one family with almost no outside characters, no secondary plotline. No friends, no school drama, no town events. Because of this the family seems to exist in a vacuum, and while it was frustrating to have a story so closed in, I do see how it intensifies the emotion of the book all the more.

The prose strikes the balance between raw and magical. The dread and horror of one sibling's very real descent into mental illness is contrasted beautifully with the other sibling's innocent, mythological view of his sister. Most of the language is stripped down in a way that reflects the starkness of the West Texas desert, but every once in a while, a line like "I suddenly wondered if this was what Abilene's world was like: her head filled with her very own stars; captivating at first, but finally terrifying when she realized that everything else that was light had gone dark." A few lines like that are sprinkled in at the perfect moment to hit that emotional chord.

While mental illness takes up so much space in the pages, ultimately this book is a stunning portrait of sibling devotion. I loved it.