For those who need fantastic book suggestions…
If anything good came out of the COVID-19 quarantine that began in March, it was having enough time to practice old hobbies and discover new ones.
My favorite passion that I rediscovered? Reading.
Reading is so underrated. I used to hate it as a kid, but finding a book you can’t put down has got to be one of the best feelings in the world. Over the last year or so, I made it a personal resolution to read more, so in March, I started to really conquer my reading goals.
I’m proud to say that I’ve fully read 15 books since the beginning of quarantine in March, and 18 total in 2020 so far.
So, without further ado, I present my favorite quarantine reads, broken down by genre:
Romance / Drama / Feel-Good
1. Can You Keep a Secret? – Sophie Kinsella
2. The Nest – Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
3. Untamed – Glennon Doyle
If you want a simple read that may not be the most captivating, but can be picked up and put down for weeks at a time, I recommend these. They’re great if you need a distraction from real life, taking you inside the miniscule troubles fluttering inside someone else’s mind. Ah, don’t we all love that? Can You Keep a Secret? And The Nest are just plain goofy and fun, and Untamed is something every female should read. Period.
Mystery / Drama
1. The Breakdown – B.A. Paris
2. The Last Mrs. Parrish – Liv Constantine
3. The Party – Robyn Harding
4. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – Taylor Jenkins Reid
5. Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens
I could NOT put any of these books down. Again, these stories are great distractions, but they’re also thought-provoking, never failing to blow my mind after I finished each book. Although they were all fantastic, my favorites were probably The Breakdown and The Last Mrs. Parrish, simply because the stories were so creatively f*cked up that it made me question the author’s sanity, and also the world around me. If you like The Breakdown, check out the rest of B.A. Paris’s stories – she’s one of my favorite authors and writes the craziest stories.
Fantasy / Mystery (it’s just Harry Potter)
1. HP & the Sorcerer’s Stone – J.K. Rowling
2. HP & the Chamber of Secrets
3. HP & the Prisoner of Azkaban
4. HP & the Goblet of Fire
5. HP & the Order of the Phoenix
6. HP & the Half-Blood Prince
7. HP & the Deathly Hallows
Yes, I did just read the Harry Potter series for the first time this summer (honestly, a lot less people have read it than you’d think). Obviously, these books are just fantastic – I love the fantasy genre because the stories carry you away to another world. These books are dense, but keep you reading, and have so many twists and turns you’d never see coming. Even though most people my age read them as kids, the stories are pretty mature – at age 20, I feel like it was written for adults. Seriously, if you’ve never read Harry Potter, just jump on the bandwagon and do it – they’re so much better than the movies. You’re only kidding yourself.
Those are my favorite reads from quarantine! Next, I’m planning on reading Big Little Lies, then watching the show – I’m a big fan of Reese Witherspoon’s book club titles if you couldn’t already tell.
Feel free to drop any suggestions in the comments below, I’m hoping to continue my intense reading this semester with any free time I have. Happy reading!
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