Let’s be real: 2020 was the year that turned us all into readers. Whether you were working from home in sweatpants with nowhere to go on a Friday night, or just desperately needed an escape from doomscrolling through the news, books became a kind of lifeline for a lot of us. And I have to say — for me personally, it was one of the best reading years I’ve had in a long time. There’s something bittersweet about that, isn’t there? A rough year that still managed to gift us slow Sunday afternoons with a cup of coffee and a really, really good book.
I ended 2020 having read 24 books — which, for a girl in her thirties juggling work, content creation, life in New York City, and everything in between, felt like a massive win. If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I love sharing book recommendations, and I actually have two older posts with even more books I’ve loved, so make sure you check those out too.
But today, I want to talk about five specific books I read last year that I genuinely think you need to add to your 2021 TBR pile — like, immediately. Whether you’re a romance girlie, a thriller obsessive, or someone who loves a good nonfiction book that makes you think deeply about life and feelings and people, I’ve got something for you on this list. And yes, I made a whole video about it too — you can watch it right below!
Okay, now let’s get into it. Grab a snack. This is going to be a long one (you know how I feel about long blog posts) and I want to do justice to every single one of these books because they all meant something to me in different ways.
Book No. 01 — Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
If you haven’t heard of this book yet, where have you been? I kid, I kid — but genuinely, Red, White & Royal Blue was one of those reads that completely snuck up on me and left me grinning from ear to ear for days after I finished it.
Here’s the premise: Alex Claremont-Diaz is the son of the president of the United States. Prince Henry is heir to the British crown. They have been each other’s least favorite person for years — all barely-concealed eye rolls and tense public smiles. But when a photo of them actually fighting goes viral and threatens the diplomatic relationship between their two countries, they’re forced into a very public, very fake friendship. And as these things tend to go? The fake friendship turns into something neither of them expected — a real, undeniable, deeply romantic connection that they have to keep absolutely secret.
What I loved most about this book — beyond the writing, which is witty and warm and genuinely laugh-out-loud funny — is that it centers a gay love story with so much tenderness and joy. It’s not a story about suffering or shame (though there are real stakes and real vulnerability). It’s a love story that gets to be fun. And that matters. When was the last time you read a best-selling romance that celebrated a queer relationship with this much warmth? Casey McQuiston gave us something special here, and I am always going to shout about it.
The book also wrestles with bigger questions — about legacy, about history, about what we owe the world versus what we owe ourselves. At its heart it asks: how will history remember you, and are you brave enough to live truthfully anyway? That hit me hard, honestly. It’s a beach read that also makes you think, and that combination? Undefeated.
Book No. 02 — Normal People by Sally Rooney
If you were anywhere on the internet in 2020, you almost certainly heard about the Hulu adaptation of Normal People — and if you watched it and found yourself thinking about it for weeks, hi, same. But I want to make the case for reading the book first, or even reading it after the show, because Sally Rooney’s writing has a quality that’s genuinely hard to describe.
The story follows Connell and Marianne, two Irish teenagers who couldn’t be more different on the surface. At school, Connell is popular — the star football player, surrounded by friends. Marianne is smart but isolated, doesn’t fit in, doesn’t really seem to want to. And yet, privately, they have this magnetic pull toward each other that neither of them can fully explain or resist.
Fast-forward to university — Trinity College in Dublin — and everything has flipped. Marianne has found her people. She’s confident, popular, in her element. And Connell is the one struggling to find his footing. Over the years they spend at university, they circle each other, drift apart, come back together, hurt each other, save each other. It’s that kind of messy, real, deeply human love story that feels almost uncomfortably relatable.
I’ll be honest with you: I wasn’t totally obsessed with this book the way some people were. The dialogue formatting — no quotation marks, no italics — threw me off at first and kept me at arm’s length from the characters for longer than I would have liked. And the pacing is slow. Very slow. But in a way, that slowness feels intentional. Rooney isn’t writing plot — she’s writing emotional truth. And once I surrendered to that rhythm, I understood what all the fuss was about.
My honest recommendation: if you haven’t watched the show yet, read the book first. Let yourself experience the story the way it was originally told. And if you’ve already watched the show, the book still has something to offer you — a quieter, more interior version of the same story that lingers differently.
Book No. 03 — Conviction by Denise Mina
Okay, this one is for my fellow true crime girlie readers — the ones who have a podcast queued up for every walk, every commute, every time they’re washing the dishes. Because Conviction is, in a very meta and very satisfying way, a book about a woman who gets obsessed with a true crime podcast.
Anna’s life falls apart very suddenly: on an otherwise normal morning, her husband announces he’s leaving her — for her best friend — and that he’s taking their daughters with him. As her world collapses, the only thing that keeps her going is a true crime podcast she stumbles onto. But here’s the twist: she recognizes one of the names mentioned in it. And she becomes convinced she knows what actually happened in this cold case. So she does what any of us would definitely do in this situation — she decides to investigate it herself.
What starts as a coping mechanism turns into something much more complicated as Anna’s investigation begins to intersect with secrets from her own past. The concept is so clever — this idea of a woman rebuilding herself through obsession, through the act of trying to solve something outside herself because her own life feels unsolvable. I related to that in a weird way.
Full disclosure: I thought the ending lost some of its footing — things got a bit tangled for my taste right at the finish line. But the ride to get there is really compelling, and Denise Mina’s writing is sharp and dark and funny in a very specific way that I loved. It was my first book by her and it definitely won’t be my last.
Book No. 04 — Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb
This is my number one pick from the whole list. The one I press into people’s hands and say read this, trust me. I’m genuinely a little surprised by how much it moved me, because nonfiction isn’t always my first instinct — I tend to reach for fiction. But this book? I flew through it. I cried. I laughed. I texted my friends quotes. That is the mark of a really, really good book.
Lori Gottlieb is a therapist with a practice in Los Angeles. She’s built a life and a career around helping other people examine theirs. And then something happens in her personal life — something that shatters her in ways she didn’t see coming — and she finds herself doing something she’s recommended to so many others: sitting on the other side of the couch, as a patient, seeing her own therapist. His name is Wendell, and he is wonderfully, perfectly strange.
The book weaves together two storylines: Lori’s sessions with Wendell, where she works through her own grief and fear and self-deception, and her sessions with four of her own patients — a self-absorbed Hollywood producer who thinks he’s the only reasonable person alive, a young newlywed who has just received a terminal diagnosis, a woman in her sixties threatening to end her life if things don’t improve by her next birthday, and a twenty-something who keeps falling into the same painful relationship patterns over and over again.
What makes this book extraordinary is how honestly Lori writes about the work of being a therapist while also being a person who needs help. She doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. She shows you what it actually looks like to sit with hard things, to resist them, to slowly — very slowly — let yourself be changed by them. For a generation of women who grew up being told to hold it together, to keep going, to figure it out ourselves, this book is practically a permission slip.
Whether or not you’ve ever been in therapy, whether or not it’s something you’re even considering, I think this book has something for you. It’s about the stories we tell ourselves. It’s about how much we can change, at any age, if we’re willing to do the work. Please read it.
Book No. 05 — The Guest List by Lucy Foley
I saved this one for last because it is the book I want to hand to every single person I know who says “I want something I can’t put down.” The Guest List is that book. Completely, annoyingly, wonderfully unputdownable.
The setup is delicious: a glamorous wedding on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. A gorgeous, windswept, isolated venue. A guest list full of people with secrets. And then, in the middle of the festivities, someone ends up dead. Classic locked-room mystery setup — the killer has to be someone on that island. But Lucy Foley doesn’t play it straight.
The story is told from five different points of view, rotating through a cast of characters — each chapter pulling the lens to a different person, a different set of secrets, a different reason to want someone gone. It creates this incredible, mounting tension where you’re never quite sure what to believe or who to trust, and every time you think you’ve figured it out, the ground shifts again.
I read a lot of thrillers. Like, a lot. And I will tell you, hand on heart: I did not see the ending coming. I thought I did. I was wrong. That almost never happens to me anymore, and when it does, I want to throw the book across the room in the best possible way. Lucy Foley played me, and I loved every second of it.
If you’re a fan of Ruth Ware, or Big Little Lies, or any story where beautiful settings hide ugly truths — this is absolutely your next read.
So — What Are You Reading?
There you have it: five books from my 2020 reading list that I genuinely believe deserve a place in your 2021 stack. From a joyful, swoony romance that broke all the rules in the best way, to a mystery that actually kept me guessing, to a nonfiction book about therapy that I think about almost weekly — this list has something for every mood, every moment, every kind of reader.
I’m heading into 2021 with a very ambitious goal: 36 books, three per month. I’ve signed up for the Goodreads reading challenge and I am genuinely determined to stick to it this time. If you’re doing the same, I’d love to know — how many books are you challenging yourself to read this year? Are you the kind of person who sets a realistic number, or do you go big and hope for the best? (I’m definitely the latter.)
Drop a comment below and tell me what you’re currently reading, or what’s sitting at the top of your TBR right now. I read every single comment and I’m always looking for more recommendations — this community genuinely has the best taste. And if you want even more book recs, I have two other posts with 10 more recommendations between them — links are down below!
Until next week ✨
Follow me on Instagram @flopereira for weekly book reviews and real-time reading updates on my stories. You can also find me on Goodreads as flopereira — add me and let’s keep each other accountable on that reading challenge!
