My 2024 Book of the Year

2024 for me was, undoubtedly, the year I got back into historical fiction.

For a long time, years even, I was stuck in a rut of reading non-fiction.

Sure, I dabbled in historical fiction, especially on audiobook as I drove or cycled the 5 mile journey too and from work.

But it was non-fiction that I turned to when relaxing. Each evening I’d settle down in bed with a weighty tome chronicling the life and times of some famous individual, or detailing the impact on scholarship of the latest archaeological finds, or even sharing the story of a place throughout time.

And I had fun, for a while.

Some books I loved were:

• Building Anglo-Saxon England, John Blair

• Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England, Sarah Semple

• The Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule, Katherine Pangonis

But 2024 was the year when I no longer had fun reading non-fiction for pleasure.

I wanted, rather, to escape the mundanity of day-to-day life. I wanted to read through a book in three days because I couldn’t put it down. I wanted to fall so in love with a writer’s storytelling that I’d buy their next book as soon as I finished reading their last one.

I dipped my toe into the water of fiction reading, and fell for it.

Here’s all the fiction I read, though not all is historical fiction:

• Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

• Yellowface, R F Kuang

• Tom Lake, Ann Patchett

• The Story Spinner, Barbara Erskine

• The Dream Weavers, Barbara Erskine

• The King’s Messenger, Susanna Kearsley

• Cuddy, Benjamin Myers (not yet finished)

• Open Up, Thomas Morris

• Glorious Exploits, Ferdia Lennon

I am in love.

Don’t get me wrong: I still read a lot of non-fiction in 2024:

• Crypt, Alice Roberts

• Weathering, Ruth Allen

• Time on Rock, Anna Fleming (not yet finished)

• Rootbound, Alice Vincent

• The Wordhord, Hana Videen

• Saints, Amy Jeffs (not yet finished)

• Bede and the Theory of Everything, Michelle P Brown (didn’t finish)

• Normal Women, Philippa Gregory (didn’t finish - read more about that here)

• Winters in the World, Eleanor Parker

• Mother Tongue, Jenni Nuttall

Plus a number of lifestyle/parenting books I won’t bore you with…

You can read my reviews for a couple of these books here:

• ‘Crypt’, Alice Roberts

• ‘Glorious Exploits’, Ferdia Lennon

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What did you read in 2024?

Were you more fiction or non-fiction focused? What were your top reads? Any surprises?

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My history book of the year, however, had to be fiction.

After all, it’s fiction that’s captured my heart in 2024.