2020: My Year in Reading—A Retrospect

“Read!” is the number one tip I give aspiring writers, and, in 2020, I managed to follow my own advice. With our social lives non-existent, this year was a good year to escape into a great book, and I hit my goal of reading 50.

For the full list, check out my Goodreads profile. I read 43 novels to seven works of non-fiction and 42 books by women to eight books by men. And 11 of the books were by authors of colour.

In this post, I’m not going to summarise everything, but to highlight some of the best—the books that have stood out most to me from the year.

Favourite Fiction

It was so tough to choose my favourite reads of 2020, as different books are great for different moods. But there were three that I’ve been raving about to anyone who will listen. 

Mary Toft; Or, The Rabbit Queen, by Dexter Palmer is the novel I would recommend to everyone, despite its slightly strange synopsis. The book is based on the true story of an eighteenth-century Englishwoman who claimed to be giving birth to butchered rabbits. But it’s so much more than that. A book about fake news, the nature of truth, and the dangers of partisan hysteria, this piece of historical fiction couldn’t have felt more 2020.

I also couldn’t go without mentioning The Mirror and the Light, the third novel in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on Thomas Cromwell. Mantel is probably the best living historical novelist and the final book in the series more than delivers. 

I’ve been reading lots of books set during the French Revolution (check out a recent summary here), and Edward Carey’s Little, an imaginative look at the childhood of famous waxwork artist Madame Tussaud, is a standout. Like Dexter’s novel, this one isn’t for the squeamish, with Carey’s own illustrations bringing a visual dimension to a lively, gruesome, and original novel.

Non-Fiction Favourite

As you can see from my stats, I read much more fiction than non-fiction, but I did read some great non-fiction this year, on everything from ballet to millennial politicians, and Napoleon’s mistresses to Queen Victoria.

My favourite non-fiction read was, unsurprisingly, one of the most fiction-related—How the French Invented Love, by Marilyn Yalom. This book takes readers on a whirlwind tour through French literary history, charting how the country and its capital have become synonymous with romantic love.

Top Nineteenth-Century Read

I didn’t read as many books as usual this year actually written during the nineteenth century, probably because the publication of my own debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, brought me into contact with so many talented living authors.

My top pick of those I did read is decadent novel The Marquise de Sade, by Rachilde. Check out my full review here and venture into this scandalous story of late nineteenth-century depravity if you dare.

Top Neo-Victorian Voices Read

I also continued to review books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, for my Neo-Victorian Voices series. Of those I blogged about this year, The Confessions of Frannie Langton, by Sara Collins was my favourite. The story of a woman formerly enslaved on a Jamaican sugar plantation and now on trial for her London employers’ murders, this book is written in a compelling first person.  

Top Reads for Bronte Lovers

If you follow my blog and me, you might very well be a lover of the Brontes. So, as well as recommending you read my Bronte-inspired novel, Bronte’s Mistress, I wanted to suggest some other Bronte-related reads. 

The Mother of the Brontes by Sharon Wright, a biography of Maria Bronte (nee Branwell), is my non-fiction Bronte pick (review here). And novels I recommend you check out are The Vanished Bride, by Bella Ellis (review here), The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Bronte, by Syrie James (review here), and Mr Rochester, by Sarah Shoemaker (review here).

Self-Published Pick

My reading skews heavily towards traditionally published books, but I also wanted to give you an indie pick—The Best Man on the Planet by C.G. Twiles. This genre-bending modern Gothic is exactly the kind of gem non-traditional publishing gives us. Check out my interview with Twiles here.

Debut Novels

Finally, the best part of 2020 for me has been the support and community I’ve enjoyed from and with other debut novelists. You might have noticed that none of them were mentioned above, but that’s because I didn’t want to pick between them! I still have plenty more novels to read by the other debuts, but here’s a list of the ones I got to this year.

Historical fiction lovers should read Fifty Words for Rain, by Asha Lemmie (set in post-WWII Japan), and regency rom-com To Have and To Hoax, by Martha Waters. I’m also shouting out The Jane Austen Society, by Natalie Jenner, which I actually read in 2019, but reviewed in 2020, its publication year.

Both contemporary debuts I have to recommend deal with grief. In Lindsey Rogers Cook’s How To Bury Your Brother, a woman discovers undelivered letters from her dead brother and takes a journey to the past. And in The All-Night Sun, by Diane Zinna, a young orphaned college professor develops an inappropriate relationship with her female student.

Love thrillers, mystery and suspense? Sisters are pitted against each other in The Better Liar, by Tanen Jones, and family drama is also at the heart of A.H. Kim’s A Good Family. While Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden is a dark and violent tale of a vigilante tracking down drug dealers on a Native American reservation.

What did you read in 2020? I’d love to hear your recommendations! If you did read and enjoy Bronte’s Mistress, please consider reviewing the book on Goodreads and Amazon—every review helps. Wishing you a very happy 2021 and beyond. To stay up to date with books, news and reviews from me, sign up to my email newsletter below.

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Review: The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick, Sharon Wright (2019)

Three sisters living at the edge of a Yorkshire moor, with their widowed father and troubled brother—this is the legend we’re used to hearing about the Brontës. But in her wonderful recent biography, The Mother of the Brontës: When Maria Met Patrick, Sharon Wright shines a light on that other member of the family—the mother, who gave Branwell Brontë (the Brontë sibling most central to my forthcoming novel) his name.

Maria Branwell, who was, from 1812 until her early death in 1821, Mrs Brontë, has always been a shadowy figure. Anne Brontë, the youngest of the famous siblings, had no memory of her. Charlotte, Branwell, and Emily were, respectively, five, four, and three at her death. But here she comes to life, as does her sprawling, successful family, enterprising business people from bustling Cornish Penzance.

In the early chapters of her biography, Wright charts the fortunes of the Branwell family (who shared with Patrick Brontë an unfortunate habit of frequently changing the spelling of their last name). Later, our focus is more securely on Maria—on her move from Cornwall to Yorkshire, her whirlwind romance with the Reverend Brontë, and her life as a young wife, giving birth to six children within seven years.

I rate my knowledge of the Brontës pretty highly (I did a LOT of research into the family, especially Branwell and Anne, for my novel, Brontë’s Mistress), but the biography still taught me lots I didn’t know. I’d never, for instance, spent time with Maria’s surviving letters (published here in full in the appendix), or realised that she had writing aspirations of her own, even as she went through multiple pregnancies in quick succession.

More than anything the book left me with an impression of how connected the Brontës were—to a large family of Cornish relatives, and to middle class society in Thornton, where the young couple set up their first family home. Our prevailing view of the Brontës is often one centred on isolation. The Brontë parsonage, sited as it is at the edge of Haworth, gives us the impression of the family as having existed on the outskirts of the world.

There’s a romance to isolation that many of us might have believed in (at least until the last few weeks). The Brontës’ physical distance from the (publishing) world and their motherlessness are both factors that have contributed to the establishment of the Brontë myth. But Maria existed, and her influence on her children—on their friendships, reading taste, and personalities—seems to have extended long after her death.

If you, like me, love the Brontës, I’d highly recommend checking out Sharon Wright’s book. And if you’re a reader of fiction, as well as non-fiction, you might want to read more about my novel, Brontë’s Mistress, here.