5 Year's Worth Of Books & Reading...
/Top 5 Book Picks Across 5 Fav Genres Over 5 Years…
September 7th, 2023 will mark the 5th Anniversary of Cracking The Spine.
Over these years I have shared an abundance of content with my readers. Profiling 1,500+ books through innovative and in-depth features as well as reviews of the books I have read during this time.
To honor this moment of celebration, I will share my five-fav reads in the last five years under each of my five-fav genres.
I hope you have found as much joy in my bookish wanderings as I have in sharing them! More to come…
5 Fav’s: Horror
…slashers, sociopaths, supernatural beings, monsters, madmen & more
The Institute – Stephen King
This magnificent book is bursting at the seams with malevolence, brilliantly terrifying and cunning characters, and an impending battle for good versus evil.
Not only is this King at his best; sleepy small-town setting that is seething with something beneath the surface, adults at war with their demons and a boy who will make your heart ache as he tries to save the day.
It’s also King at his most nostalgic, which is where many of his Constant Readers reside already. I counted no less than eight references to other works, all gems, which provided wonderful glimpses back to his greatest hits.
Final Girls Support Group – Grady Hendrix
Take slasher movie adoration, wicked satire, flawed characters, full tilt plot twists and what do you get? A fiendishly good book that grabs you by the throat and won’t let go until it’s good and ready.
The Final Girls, for those of you less well-versed in the horror genre, are the ones left standing as the credits roll at the end of a slasher film. She fought back, outran, or otherwise defeated the killer, often avenging her dead friends. Because there are always dead friends. Usually, a veritable slew of them.
This book opens at the latest therapy session of a group final girls, each with a different story of serial murder that brought them there. Then one of them misses a meeting and soon it’s revealed that all their deepest fears, born of the stuff of nightmares, are being laid out for all to see in a tell all book.
Survive The Night – Riley Sager
On a snowy night in 1991, Charlie, a movie obsessed college student, finds herself in a car with a man who might be a serial killer. The longer she sits next to him, the more she believes that he is acting suspiciously and may in fact be guilty of the murder of her best friend. Dread and panic begin to seep in as she uncovers holes in his story.
But here’s the thing, Charlie has these episodes where she shifts into a deeper level of her imagination, where real life happenings begin to look like scenes from a movie. So, is what happening real? All in her head? And what about the waitress at the diner in the middle of nowhere and the boyfriend she left back at college? What role do they play?
The reader will be left to wonder who’s gaslighting who here.
Hidden Pictures – Jason Rekulak
A creepy as hell and wildly inventive ghost story that delivers a read perfect for the heat of long summer days or the early chill of fall.
Fresh out of rehab, Mallory takes a job as a summer nanny for five-year-old Teddy. A sweet boy with a vivid imagination and a love of drawing. As the drawings Teddy brings down after his daily quiet time grow steadily more sinister and unsettling, Mallory is determined to figure out why. When Teddy declares that his invisible friend is the one drawing the pictures, she has no idea that this is just the beginning of strange incidents careening her way.
As Mallory starts to feel someone, or something, watching her at night, she will find herself questioning what is real. She has a history of delusions, and she may be spiraling. And then there’s the fact that no one believes what she’s uncovered, least of all Teddy’s parents.
The Violence – Delilah S. Dawson
If you thought that COVID was a bad pandemic, think again.
There’s new virus in town, one that makes people act funny. Out of character. Violent. Okay it sends seemingly harmless folks into blinding rages, emerging to find that they have possibly beaten someone brains to an oozing pulp with a Yeti. One that has no symptoms until it materializes. What fun right?
Chelsea has suffered under the thumb of her controlling and slyly abusive husband for years but when she finds out that they are locking up those infected until a vaccine is ready, she sees an out for her and her daughters. Whipping her husband into a frenzy of anger, she locks them all in the bathroom he’s beating in with a baseball bat and calls the cops, claiming her husband has the Violence. It’s brilliant and works, but not for long. After seeking shelter with her estranged mother, she soon finds herself separated from her kids and on the run.
5 Fav’s: Mysteries
…whodunnits, howdunnits, locked rooms, unreliable narrators, ingenious puzzles & more
Eight Detectives – Alex Pavesi
If you are looking for a mystery that is not a full-frontal assault on your intellect, look elsewhere! This stellar contribution to the genre is a mystery within a mystery, a nesting dolls level of unpacking will be required.
An ambitious editor comes to a secluded island to review the work of a reclusive author with the intent to republish his one and only book. As they sit and read through his seven murderous tales, he educates her on the key ingredients of the mystery. Each of these seven stories has its own intricate stand-alone puzzle, all will engage the reader in an utterly unique battle of wits with themselves as they attempt to navigate the endless misdirection.
And then there are the conversations the editor and the author engage in between the readings, where further twists and complex word play await the unsuspecting reader.
The crafting of this book was a stroke of genius!
Woman In The Library – Sulari Gentil
Four strangers sitting around a table in a library reading room are inexorably bound when they hear a woman’s terrified scream. Asked to stay put while security investigates, they break a cardinal rule of library etiquette; they start to chat.
Once told by security all is well, they decide to go for coffee and thus new friendships are swiftly formed. However, they soon discover that all is not well; a woman was found dead in the library. Turns out that each of them has a particular reason to be there that day and that one of them might be the killer.
Our narrator, Winifred, is an author who was at the library seeking inspiration for her next book. While awaiting an epiphany, she began to sketch out backstories for each of these strangers. As she fleshes them out, she realizes this is the perfect plot for a book and casts her new friends as characters.
Reader be warned, you may never know what is real or imagined.
Everyone In My Family Has Killed Someone – Benjamin Stevenson
“Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once. I’m not trying to be dramatic, it’s just the truth.”
Sometimes it only takes a single sentence, like this one, well placed, in this case as the first line, for a book to grab you hook, line and sinker!
Our narrator is also our author, telling his story directly to the reader. But you will be left to wonder whether he is the Sherlock or the Watson. I mean let’s face it, in every crime novel you only see the motives of the suspects through the eyes of their inquisitor.
The book teases out the backstory of an ensemble of potential reprobates, locks them in an inaccessible location, and then presents a body that can be linked to every one of them. Fun times.
Eight Perfect Murders – Peter Swanson
A book set in or on the periphery of the book world, in this case a starring a bookstore owner, is extra special. Our main character Malcolm finds himself embroiled in a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings outlined in his eight perfect murders in books blog post.
A mystery lover will especially relish this read as they revisit the intricately written details of the crimes in these other novels. It’s a homage of the finest kind!
An exceptionally cleverly penned book that summons the plots of unsolved homicides from the greats of yesteryear to unravel its own whodunnit.
Enigma Of Room 622 – Joel Decker
After a break-up our main character, novelist Joel, flees to a luxury resort in the Swiss Alps, intent on rest and relaxation. He never imagined that he would be spending his vacation unraveling a crime committed in the hotel many years earlier. In a room that no longer seems to exist.
The reader soon becomes acquainted with several key characters, or maybe suspects is a better word, and is set on a path of intricate intrigue and out of frame machinations.
This is a novel of a writer who is writing a novel, so we as the reader never really gain our footing as to which, and who’s, story we are in.
5 Fav’s: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
…the unimaginable, once upon a times, upside down worlds, unlikely heroes & more
Fairy Tale – Stephen King
This novel is a love letter to the fairytales and storybooks of our childhood, the ones that left the deepest impression and endure the most retelling. The ones that assured us our happily ever after. That is what King has given us in Fairy Tale. With a twist of course.
King takes the curses we imagined from those youthful treasures and gives them substance. Inflicting new horrors on beloved characters and then giving them a savior, Charlie.
Charlie made a promise that if his alcohol father, driven to the bottle by the devasting loss of his wife and Charlie’s mom, stopped drinking he would do something for whatever deity made it happen. He swore it, no matter what.
After saving a curmudgeonly old man living in a mansion crumbling down around him, Charlie discovers a portal to another world, one with magic that can save his dying old dog.
On his quest Charlie will discover that the magic of the fairy tale realm has been lost. The characters that Charlie meets on his journey have become blurred, as if someone, or something, is trying to erase them.
Recursion – Blake Crouch
Mind. Blown. This tightrope of a novel accomplishes one of the things that I love the most in my reading. but is a rarity. It plucks you up from the humdrum banality of your day-to-day life and drops you smack into a big ol world of what the f*ck is happening and where the f&ck am I? I fluctuated between wanting to devour this book like a whorish glutton on the clock or savor it like a well-bred lady. I found a happy medium.
What if you could get a do over? Live a portion of your life for a second time? Sounds like a dream, right? Well at least until it’s not.
Dead Silence – S.A. Barnes
Claire was leading her last mission when she and her crew stumbled upon a long-lost luxury space vessel that hasn’t been seen or heard from since its maiden voyage, more than twenty years before. It was presumed all souls on board were lost.
Deciding to attempt a salvage claim, they risk missing their rendezvous with the vessel set to take them home. Turns out they risked a hell of a lot more than that.
As they move through a ship dripping with excess and luxury, looking for treasures, they find a hellscape. They expected to find the dead of course, but the manner of these deaths, not so much.
People having beaten each other to death with anything not bolted down, others strapping knifes to their arms and slashing anything in their paths, and some clawing out their own eyes and stabbing out their own ears. What happened here?
Echo Wife – Sarah Gailey
Our main character knocks on the door of what she believes to be the home of the women her husband is cheating with. Things get a lot more perplexing than expected when the door opens, and she sees…herself.
Evelyn is a brilliant scientist who has made unprecedented strides in human cloning. Never in her wildest imaginings did she expect that her husband would steal the technology to make a version of her that was more palatable to him. Someone he could dominate and be superior to. As the saying goes, the best laid plans…
The author spins the extramarital and domestic strife tropes in some intriguingly unique directions. This book has a lot to love; weird science, murder, bad romance, and the unspooling of enough twists to leave the reader with a serious case of whiplash.
Lunar Chronicles – Marissa Meyer
The Lunar Chronicles are futuristic retellings of classic fairy tales. In Cinder, a teenage cyborg, half human, half machine, must deal with a wicked stepmother, start a rebellion against the evil Queen, and decide how she feels about a handsome prince. As the series continues, Cinder forges alliances with Scarlet, a spaceship pilot who is determined to solve the mystery of a missing loved one with the help of a magnetic street fighter named Wolf; Cress, a computer hacker who is imprisoned by Queen Levana; and Winter, a princess who's in love with a commoner, and who discovers that Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress may hold the key to saving her kingdom and the world.
This author does a brilliant job of luring the reader into a world unknown to them while giving them the comfort of keeping company with characters that evoke a comforting sense of nostalgia. If you are looking for a read that can transport you to another world and make you cheer for some badass women, these books will not disappoint!
5 Fav’s: Thrillers
…crime noir, mind games, gaslighting, sleight of hand & more
He Started It – Samantha Downing
Beth, Portia, and Eddie haven’t seen each other in years, for very good reasons. But when their wealthy grandfather dies and leaves a cryptic final request, the siblings and their respective partners must come together for a cross country road trip to fulfill the conditions of their inheritance. Despite the fact that I didn’t believe a single word or deed from any of these characters, I loved them all. Vividly drawn, they were complicated, droll, and utterly unique.
This author layers twist upon twist with a relentless pace that leaves the reader in wonderous freefall for the bulk of the book. My advice, buckle up, you are in for a bumpy ride!
Every Last Fear – Alex Finlay
A family made famous by a true-crime documentary is found dead, leaving their surviving son to uncover the truth about their final days. If that were the only burden left to him this would have been a quicker, and far less impressive read. But he also has to unearth the truth of what happened the night of his brothers’ girlfriends murder. A murder his brother is currently imprisoned for.
This brilliantly written and structured debut novel reveals new plot elements with each chapter, adding more layers to the story with the turn of every page, compelling the reader to ceaselessly adjust whatever theory’s they may be congratulating themselves on having sussed out.
How To Kill Your Family – Bella Mackie
It’s not often in crime fiction that you may find yourself rooting for the murderer, but I defy you to resist the particular, let’s call them charms, of killer queen Grace.
In an understatement of epic proportions, Grace has some issues. Putting pen to paper while falsely imprisoned for a murder, she delights in teasing us that that doesn’t mean she isn’t a murderer. She has in fact creatively, sometimes brutally, dispatched several members of her family while executing a rather crooked set of life goals. All while avoiding any reflection on her own moral fiber.
But it’s not her fault. Certainly not from her perspective. She is avenging her mother, who was cruelly rejected by a millionaire playboy who left them to live a life of poverty. That would be Dad, not a top pick if consulted, but this is where we are. Grace’s plan for vengeance results in a killing spree, picking off all those close to Daddio. The description of each murderous act reads almost like a novel within a novel, a brilliant technique on the author’s part.
Dear Child – Romy Housman
This is the story of a woman who has been held captive in a windowless cabin deep in a remote forest along with her children, or at least someone’s children. She has somehow managed to escape with the older of the two but finds herself on the way to the hospital and potential freedom after being hit by a car.
The end.
Nope, only sounds like a happy ending but is only the beginning of a sinister and intricate narrative of predators and their prey.
The author’s depictions of the unwitting victims in this book are palpable on the page. Their suffering is so finely wrought that it is at times a difficult book to read, but it’s worth it to follow the glimmers of hope to see where they may take you.
The Good Son – You Jeong-Jeong
This tautly woven thriller takes on one of the standard tropes and twists it every which way with the intent to keep the reader tantalized. And that you will be in this intricate, unique, and at its best moments, diabolical, novel.
Early one morning our main character wakes up to a strange metallic smell and a panicked phone call from his brother asking if everything was okay. Every moment that follows is an unflinching revelation for the reader. Most of the action takes place with this one character in a small apartment. The limited physicality only ratchets up the sense of the walls closing in and keeps us turning the pages to see what happens.
5 Fav’s: Fiction
…all the feels; heartfelt, heart wrenching & more
We Begin At The End – Chris Whitaker
This is a story of how tragedy seeps into a small town and lingers like a poison for generations. It is a story of actions and their consequences, of love and loss, of sadness and sorrow, of bad choices and second chances and of remorse and regrets, revenge and redemption. It is also a love story, a story of hope and selflessness and compassion. It’s about people haunted by the certainty that they will leave no mark on the world, as if they never existed in the first place.
Bookended by mysterious deaths, the beating heart of this novel is without question its lead characters. Walk, a forty something Sheriff hanging on for dear life to a past that may have only existed in his imagination and Duchess, a foul-mouthed, fierce, and furious thirteen-year-old that refuses to cower from the misery’s life has seen fit to throw at her. The author imbues them with such longing for a life outside their grasp that your heart will lay torn and tattered on their behalf.
The best book I have read in these five years…one of only 3 ten out ten ratings I have given.
Lessons In Chemistry – Bonnie Garmus
Elizabeth was resolute in her vision of where her life was going to go; PhD in Chemistry, a lauded position in her field, a career peppered with groundbreaking innovations; and absolutely, positively, no romance or children.
You know what they say about best laid plans…
Elizabeth is a woman in the 1960’s, trying to succeed in a field rife with misogyny. She is blunt, impatient with small talk and niceties and does not suffer fools well. She stays laser focused on her work until she has the temerity to fall in love with a fellow scientist. And then gets herself knocked-up to boot!
Laugh out loud funny, shrewdly observant and cast with characters so engaging that they jump off the page!
Malibu Rising – Taylor Jenkins Reid
It’s August 1983, the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party at her Malibu home, no surprise there given the title. This story is about one unforgettable night for the members of a family that will irrevocably change who they are to each other and who they thought they were to themselves.
Nina and each of her three siblings prepare for the bash by letting the reader catch glimpses of their backstory and their present-day. Slowly unfurling the secrets all four of them are keeping, secrets that won’t survive the night.
This book reminded me of the gripping and sprawling reads I would devour in the summers of my younger years. An absolute gem!
Miss Cecily’s Recipes For Exceptional Ladies – Vicky Zimmerman
The charming story of Kate, a young woman on the cusp of forty who is disillusioned and desperate to find meaning in her life. She dreams of being in a relationship where she does not at some point have to put pen to paper to make facts seem less unpalatable.
Besieged by men who don’t know what they want and have no idea when they might figure it out, she decides that’s enough indecisiveness for her. With a boyfriend flip flopping on commitment and a dead-end job meant only to pay the bills she finds herself keeping company with a cantankerous Cecily, a senior citizen with no shortage of opinions.
As she becomes absorbed in a cookbook Cecily gives her, she slowly emerges into a life full of promise both in work and love. The book pairs life’s moments, both poignant and ridiculous, with the proper meal.
The One Hundred Years Of Margot & Lenni – Marianne Cronin
This book was so sweet and so sad, and I was utterly charmed by it.
Seventeen-year-old Lenni is in a specialty hospital with “life-limiting” health issues. There she meets eighty-three-year-old Margot when she crashes a seniors art class. They become fast friends, each finding in the other a balm for their loneliness. They start sharing stories of their pasts with each other, and soon comes an epiphany. To paint one hundred paintings. One for every year of their combined lives. A tangible testimonial to their existence and who they were.
In between classes Lenni decides to visit Father Arthur in the hospital chapel. Given that people claim that when you die, it’s because God is calling you back to him, she figures she should get the introduction over and done with ahead of time. The chat’s these two unlikely friends engage in are hilarious. In one such conversation Lenni describes God as a cosmic wishing well. She’s not wrong.
