These five favorites were chosen out of the forty-something books I read this fall, and there were some incredibly hard decisions to be made within that list! But if I had to choose five books to recommend, they would be…

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern 

The imagery in this book was excellent, and I loved the little touches of magic imbuing every surface of the circus. Magic is a tricky element  for an author to get right, but Erin Morgenstern’s magic feels totally natural in the novel’s world. Like any physical or mental activity, it takes its toll on the user. The worldbuilding was incredible, and I really enjoyed its narrative structure: it’s told from multiple perspectives in alternating timelines.  

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

If I had to choose just one of these books to recommend, it would absolutely be this one. The novel  follows a young woman through 300 years of her never-ending life, beginning in 1691, in a tiny village in France, and ending in 2019 in New York City. She can live forever–but there’s a catch. No one remembers her. It’s an incredibly well-written book, and Addie is such a complex character. I’ve re-read it about nine times, and every time I’ve noticed new details and understood Addie more as a person than a protagonist. 

Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby

This book was unlike any other novel I’ve read in a while. It’s narrated by both a ghost and the young orphan girl she protects. Set in WWII America, but with flashbacks to the ghost’s experience in Victorian America, the novel was beautifully written, and I loved the almost whimsical horror of it. The ghost has some moments of amnesia as to where and who she is, but the writing in those scenes is well done, and isn’t too hard to follow.  

Autobiography of A Face by Lucy Grealy

This memoir really shocked me, because I don’t usually enjoy memoirs as much as fiction. But Lucy Grealy is a wonderful writer. She writes about her experiences going through cancer and countless surgeries clearly and directly. She’s telling her story exactly the way she experienced it, no edits involved. The memoir was written almost like someone telling you about their favorite book. They’ve read it many times before, they know precisely how it ends, and now they add their own insight on its events. The writing matures in a noticeable way throughout the text, from her experiences as a child going through chemotherapy, to her experiences as an adult in college, finding that she doesn’t need other’s approval to love herself.  This book made me think, and I adore books like that. 

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

This was one of the only non-fiction books I’ve ever read that I can confidently say I enjoyed. It was amazing. However, spoiler warning, it’s about dead bodies. So if you tend to get squeamish, stay far, far, far away from Stiff. But Mary Roach’s writing is spectacular. It’s comedic, with moments of commiseration about the icky side of history surrounding cadavers. I will absolutely re-read this, and would highly recommend it to writers. 

Honorable mentions: House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby, and The Queen’s Rising by Rebecca Ross.