Features | January Reads

Features | January Reads

• Wednesday, 5 February 2020

I had such a great reading month that I found two five-star reads within the first couple of weeks of the year, which is completely unheard of for me! The first was my book club pick for our January prompt 'written by an author you love', where having loved three of her books in 2019, I chose to read another Taylor Jenkins Reid novel. As you can guess, I thoroughly enjoyed After I Do and was so happy to kick off a new year of our book club by finding a book to add to my favourites list! My second five-star read of the month was Just Mercy (Bryan Stevenson), a non-fiction title which follows the author's work as a lawyer and is a tough yet inspiring read. I'd highly recommend this one if you haven't read it yet.

Whilst I won't be including every single book in this roundup, another one I have to mention in is Meat Market (Juno Dawson). I really enjoy Juno's books and this one was no exception! The story follows teenager Jana as she unexpectedly becomes a model and has to navigate the world of fashion and is formatted like a documentary which was an element I really loved.

As Anjali mentioned in a recent episode of Rants & Reviews, the key to success with our yearly vow to read challenge is selecting books you're hoping to read anyway and avoiding titles that have been sat unread on your shelf for a long time. I selected my 2020 list carefully and managed to cross off two titles in January; The Evidence Of The Affair (Taylor Jenkins Reid) and Friday Black (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah).

I was kindly gifted my copy of short story collection Friday Black by Ria last Christmas after it made her 2019 favourites list and I'm so glad I finally got to read it. This was such an interesting read, and as with every collection there were some stories I enjoyed more than others, but there are certainly a few stories that will stick with me for a long time. Definitely one to add to your 2020 TBR if you haven't already!

Another short read, The Evidence Of The Affair is a novella told entirely through letters which made it perfect to pick up on a lunch break. Whilst it wasn't my favourite Taylor Jenkins Reid title, the format worked well for this particular story and I loved that there was a Daisy Jones reference snuck in there too!