Favorite Books of 2020

hey guys it's sam and these are my favorite books of 2020. so i do want to mention that i am going to be doing this list video and then later this month i'll be doing like a book awards for 2020 video because on this list i only have 10 books your girl is very picky this year and the reward show video will give you like a little bit more varied some books that like didn't really make like the favorites but were a favorite like a specific theme or category so i think they'll be fun and when i asked you guys on a video recently you kind of said like both like some people were like i love the list and some were like i love the awards so you're gonna get both i love new year's content so might as well but let's get to the list and this year i just tweeted about it that i decided i was gonna do this um i ranked them yes none of that like oh these are no particular order they're in order like i ranked them because there were so few that i kind of could i don't know i didn't read many books five stars and even not all of these on the list are actually five stars like it's wild anyway let's get into it oh and i know i said let's get into it i'm just not getting into it but three of these three of the ten are romance books i know i keep saying on my channel over the last year like oh my gosh i like romance books oh my god there's favorites and all of you were like we know but i'm still shocked because i was never this person and three of my favorite books of the vr are romance books i'm happy about it i'm just surprised so speaking of number 10 the list is the bromance book club by lisa k adam this is the first book in like technically the bromance book club series but i haven't liked the next two books in the series just this one this is going to be a theme with some of the romance books i talk about but this first book features is it gavin and tessa i didn't write their names down for this i'm just going off of memory and he's a pro baseball player and they're married and they are going to get divorced because of like just growing apart over time and like all the stuff and identity and whatever and so this is a second chance lovers like married couple book and so in order to like try to understand her and when her back his friends bring him into their book club where they all all these straight men read romance novels as like manuals to dating and it sounds that would make it very like it's not they're not like players they use very like eloquent emotionally intelligent language and this first book is fantastic i loved them as a couple gavin is like so sweet and wonderful he has a stutter which is a part of the plot and just he's that representation was really good and this first book did such a good job of keeping the story very focused on them in the later couple of books she's gotten the author's gotten very focused on like putting a lot of plot points and issues in there that just get very distracted from the story this first book so so good like they're dynamic so so good so i love this one i still think about it a lot then at number nine we have the start of a series that is completed but i just started it that is theft of swords by michael j sullivan the first book in the area revelation series this was a book that i didn't immediately add to my favorite shelf but i just went back before filming this video was like are there any more because when i first was gonna film there's only seven books on my list i was like there has to be more than seven and i only got to ten but this was one that i was like i've still thought about this a lot like i still think about royce and hadrian a lot this is the first book in a fantasy series i think i did a review for it so i'll link that on the screen but it's a very classical fantasy like swords and sorcery kind of type series there's like elves there's dwarves there's wizards these guys are thieves and they're two very famous thieves in this world and they get assigned like a gigger or a task whatever they call them and it's almost like too good to be true and it is and they get pulled into like the political machinations of this world and i just adored this first book this book felt like so homey and great and just like i don't there's just something about it that felt so nostalgic even though i didn't necessarily grow up reading like high fantasy but these kinds of tropes feel so nostalgic to me so i really love this one then at number eight another romance book we have well met by jen de luca and pretty much the same as the romance book club i've read on this series and the third book i think i'll really like but it's not out yet but this first book was fantastic and i didn't like the second book as much but anyway this is an adult contemporary romance takes place in a rent fair and our main characters are like an enemies to lovers thing like they they don't like each other and they're like she's new in town and she's they're helping her sister with something and he's in charge of this like run fair and he like kind of is just like a colder like very strict with the rules kind of guy and there's like kind of a misunderstanding about them not liking each other but their characters in the ren fair her being a bar wench and him being a pirate like each other so there's all this tension do you see i i like still really love this book so much obviously it's on my favorites list there's all this tension when they're in character and then there's all this like okay but we don't but we hate each other when we're oh it's so good and so like the banter and stuff and then one of my favorite sex scenes in here i think i talked about this was a book i read earlier in the year when i was still getting used to there being like sex scenes and romance books and now i'm just like whatever it's fine but this scene was written in a way that was so not jarring to me as someone who's not like i don't read like erotica or anything because a lot of times when i read romance books the sex scenes will like change all of the like the writing style and just like it feels like someone else is writing that scene but here it still felt like it flowed with the rest of the story i just thought that was really well done and made for like a really good romance book so i really like this like series this book and i think i'm like the third book like i said that's coming out this year so we'll see but this one still sits in a nice place in my heart there's a little bit of a a road bump at a point in there i think i did a review for this if i did i'll link it on the screen that didn't quite make this a five stars for me but was like a 4.5 and i obviously really liked it i'm gushing about it now months later then we have a recent read and a huge shocker at number seven the invisible life of addie larue by v.e schwab i i didn't expect it i didn't expect it this was a five-star read for me this is a adult standalone like sort of fantasy the fantasy element is that our main character eddie larue made a deal with like death the devil who knows what he actually is darkness to live a life of freedom well she wasn't really specific and he twisted that and basically she's immortal she can't die but she can't leave a mark on the world of any kind and no one will remember her so we follow her in the like past timeline but then also the present and in the present eventually in the story she meets someone who does remember her and we follow that but really we're just following her life and this story was so it was so good i did a review for it so i'll link that on the screen it was just so atmospheric it's the story of very character driven of following this woman and how she does try to make a mark how she lives her life in this way you know what no one remembers you so you can't like you can't do anything traditional as far as like have a place have a job have fun none of that so like how do you survive and then the dynamic between her and the like the villain guy the guy that like took her soul basically it's very interesting and compelling there's a lot of just like themed stuff in here that is very interesting and i loved it it was a book that i would honestly reread and ve schwab typically has not been a favorite of mine and this was five stars adored it then we have two books in a series that are ranked back to back so number six is dark dawn by jay kristoff and number five is god's grave by jay kristoff both in the never night series so i finished up the never night series this year i do like book two a little bit more than book three but i did love this series if you don't know this is an adult fantasy series of how's the main character of mia who's becoming a assassin and the series is very dark and twisty and i will link my reviews on the screen but i loved both of these i still think about mia i still think about the world i still think about the world building i think about everything and it's super good i don't know what to say then at number four we have the city of brass by essay chakraborty this is the first book in an adult fantasy series this falls main character of nagri and she lives in 18th century cairo and something happens where she gets pulled into the magical world of the gin and so we follow her perspective but also the perspective of one of the gin like political families political like leaders and stuff and it's just wonderful the world building is fantastic the political machinations and everything the magic who she is all of that this is a series that i really want to continue soon in 2021 because i don't want to forget all of the like just intense world building that i got in here and all the characters and just everything going on so good i'm going to be linking reviews either on the screen or down below because i'm going to run out of cards you can only have five per video and i don't know if i'm at my five yet but anyway i will be linking reviews somewhere for you to check out on my end of thoughts on all these because i obviously just don't have words for this video to talk about all these books that i love that's too much for my brain to do in this video just know how much i deeply care then at number three we have the poppy war by rf quang this is another adult fantasy series this follows the main character of rin and she is taking a test to go to this military academy which is like the most prestigious schools she can get out of her like small town and basically become like a warrior and we follow her path this book is so epic but also so dark this is based on some actual historical events so watch my other video for all the trigger warnings because there is some like really gruesome stuff in this that like shook me to my core however it's so well done and the whole story is just so good like i'm like flashing back to like reading and i think over the summer it is just mind-blowing i mean i could i had a very hard time ranking between the poppy war and city of brass because i feel very similar about them in their like scope and the characters and like the brutality of the worlds and things like that this one is more brutal than that one but like there's still there's still stuff and both of them are just like so epic and they're both series that i really want to continue in 2021 and stay like in them because if i take too much time away i'm gonna like forget and lose some of the momentum because you're so masterful and complex and wonderful so yeah number three poppy war and number two is a romance book and then it's beach read by emily henry this is the romance book that has stuck with me the most from this year this is a adult contemporary romance and our main character's father just died and she found out that he was having an affair and he had a house like a beach house with this woman and her like mom is like really devastated and she goes the main character goes to this house and not only does she get there and she like she's a writer so she like is feeling like writer's block there's a lot of emotions about her dad's situation and then next door is actually her like college writing rival who has always kind of been like her nemesis and she's like hated him and he's a jerk and whatever and they end up talking and basically challenging each other like he needs to write a romance book because that's what she writes and she needs to write a literary fiction book which is what he writes and they form this like relationship but it's much more than just a romance book it has like that romance element but it's one of the only books i've read that manages to have that and stay focused on that while also having other stuff going on in the background and not getting bogged down and turning into like plot soup which is something that tends to happen with some romance books that take on too much and this did not this handles like grief and loss and you know figuring out things about your parents and your parents being like real people and like the dynamic between her and the guy gus i'm forgetting her name right now but his name is gus is so good like it just oh my god it is so good and they are so good together and it's just great i mean i have not heard a bad thing about this book like i read it right before it came out i'm pretty sure and then everyone that's read it since like i have not heard a bad thing i'm sure there's people that don't like it one in the comments is gonna be like i hated it and that's fine that's fine however i think it's fantastic it is the romance book that sits the highest in my heart it is my favorite romance book that i've read thus far and then my number one book of 2020. can you guess it i hope you can guess it this is basically why i ranked the books one because it was actually fairly easy for me to do but two because this book was number one and i had to be like no they're ranked because this book is number one and that is the winter of the witch by katherine arden this is when i should have known the rest of 2020 was gonna go downhill not that these books aren't fantastic but i think i read this book in like january maybe february but i think it was january and nothing can compare to how perfect this book is i mean this is definitely like my top three books like this is like the night circus is probably is still my favorite book but like this is right underneath it possibly like this is perfect i i can't even i can't even describe to you i still like very vividly remember this book and i am not always good with remembering books like after i read them you know but it's been like months it's been you know almost 12 months oh no i vividly remember this book i want to reread this book and i very rarely want to do that you guys know me i very rarely want to do that this is the third book in the winter night trilogy i should probably get to that point and because of that i can't talk about like the plot much about this however this is an eastern european inspired fantasy fowzer main character the whole series through her entire life vasalisa and she is basically this character we follow her like i said through her entire life she starts as a child in the first book and she's a character who is basically like we notice is the bridge between like the magical world and like the folklore elements of the story and the real world and this takes place during like historical events that happen in like eastern europe and russia and there's a dynamic with her and like a god of like death slash winter and i cannot convey to you how perfect this book is i know i'm yelling at you and i'm sorry but like if y'all don't read this series i swear to god i know some people haven't liked the first book that's fine that's fine that's okay you need to keep reading it to get to this book like i the perfection that this is with the relationships of the like overarching plot of the themes like everything ties together for this series beautifully i have never read a more perfect finale ever there is no parts out of place there it is it is perfect i mean i want like art pieces of like multiple scenes in this book like this book just sits so highly in my feelings will i reread the entire series maybe at some point yes will i reread this this one book because it's perfect and i have the context for the rest of the series and like i don't need to reread them all yes this this i mean again what the character goes through everything is like so earned everything is so good everything is so atmospheric and poetic and beautifully written and all the magic and all the history it's perfect i know i'm shouting at you and i don't mean to but it's so good and i don't think i've ever felt have i ever felt this passionately about like a favorite i mean besides like the night circus and like this really see i don't know this is so good this is like one of the books of my heart you know what i mean like what like your top three books that you love the most they're like a part of your soul like they change you as a person that's this book i know it's dramatic i know i love it i need to put it down and stop talking about it but like it's so good y'all like it's it's so good all right that is it for my favorite books of 2020. 10 books 10 books like i said i will be doing my like book awards or some of these books will pop up in the book awards but you'll also get some additional ones it'll be more fleshed out beyond just me squealing and being like i love it because i'll be in the book awards saying like what element i love the books for you know i'll be hopefully a little bit more contained just bring it down a couple notches yeah hope you enjoyed this hope it was informative comment down below and let me know your favorite books of 2020. thank you all for watching and i'll see you guys soon [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Thoughts on Tomes

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Keywords: booktube, book, review, goodreads, book haul, thoughts on tomes, thoughtsontomes, favorite books of 2020

Id: -EkdpvdokC0

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 06 2021