Top 5 Books I Read in 2020

I’m working on my December reading wrap up, and calculating my 2020 reading stats. While I do that, I thought I’d share my top five favorite books I read in 2020.

My favorite books read in 2020 were (in no particular order):

• Sweep of the Blade by Ilona Andrews
• Network Effect by Martha Wells
• Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst
• Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
• Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

I’ve already gushed about all of these in previous blog posts, so if you haven’t read those, go check out my monthly reading recaps.

Genre-wise, these books represent a little bit of everything that I like to read: contemporary (Such a Fun Age), contemporary fantasy (Sweep of the Blade), secondary world fantasy (Return of the Thief and Race the Sands), and sci-fi (Network Effect), but I think it’s a little unusual that they are all adult fiction. I have to go back and look, but I feel like previous years’ lists must have included at least one or two young adult books.

Another odd thing they have in common is that all but one of these books were published in 2020 (Sweep of the Blade was published in mid-2019). Technically, Such a Fun Age was published on the last day of 2019, but I’m counting it as a 2020 book. This was a little surprising, because I don’t usually read so many new releases.

And finally (and possibly most unusual for me), all of these books feature parent-child and/or caregiver-child relationships that play very important roles in these stories. Sweep of the Blade and Race the Sands both have badass mothers as main characters. The main character in Such a Fun Age is a nanny. Murderbot is put in charge of protecting a surly teen (Dr. Mensa’s daughter) in Network Effect. And The King of Attolia takes on a new, very young attendant in Return of the Thief.

Did any of these make it onto your favorites list? If not, what was your favorite read from 2020?