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The 5-Star Club: My Absolute Favorite Books
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items I read a lot, but it takes something truly special to earn a perfect rating from me. These are the rare, unforgettable books that absolutely blew me away and earned an easy 5 stars. If you’re looking for a book you won’t be able to put down, start ri...
This book absolutely shattered me in the best way possible. It follows the Joad family’s heartbreaking journey during the Dust Bowl, and the emotional weight of their struggle stays with you long after the final page. It is a haunting, beautifully wr...
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The blueprint for modern psychological thrillers! I still remember the absolute whiplash I felt the first time I hit that mid-book plot twist. It is dark, deeply messed up, and utterly unputdownable. If you want a book that will completely manipulate...
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Set in Nazi Germany, it follows a young girl who finds comfort in salvaging books and sharing them with others. The narrative voice is completely unique, and the story is poetic, haunting, and profoundly moving. Keep the tissues close for this one!
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
I completely lost myself in the glamorous, scandalous world of old Hollywood with this one! It feels so much like a real biography that I had to keep reminding myself Evelyn Hugo is fictional. The twists are spectacular, the ambition is fierce, and t...
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Reid
This book reads exactly like a real-life behind-the-scenes rock documentary, and I was entirely obsessed. It charts the wild rise and sudden crash of an iconic 70s rock band through a series of gripping interviews. The drama is addictive, the charact...
Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This beautiful retelling of the Trojan War absolutely took my breath away. It focuses on the deep, sweeping bond between Patroclus and Achilles, transforming a classic epic into an incredibly intimate love story. The prose is pure poetry, and the end...
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
As a massive book lover, this historical fiction novel felt like a love letter to the power of reading. Set in Warsaw during World War II, it follows two best friends who risk everything to launch a secret, underground library. It is a heartbreaking,...
The Keeper of Hidden Books by Madeline Martin
This is the ultimate read for anyone who believes books have a soul. It features a rare-book dealer with a unique gift: she can feel the emotional fingerprints left behind by a book's previous owners. When she uncovers two mysterious, unpublished vol...
The Echo of Old Books by Barbara Davis
This novella is tiny, but it packs an absolute lifetime of emotion into just a few pages. It is a stunning, deeply tender look at a grandfather trying to hold onto his memories and his bond with his grandson as dementia begins to steal them away. It ...
And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer - Fredrik Backman
What a shitshow, literally! This tracks the meteoric rise and absolute debauchery of Mötley Crüe, and it does not hold anything back. It is a completely unfiltered, shocking, and addictive look into the dark side of rock-and-roll excess. You will not...
The Dirt: Confessions of Notorious Rock Band by Motely Crue
I love Taylor Jenkins Reid novels! Nobody writes fierce, complex women quite like her. Carrie Soto is a retired tennis legend who returns to the court for one final, ruthless season to defend her world record. It's a high-stakes, emotional, and incre...
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This is the textbook definition of a grip-your-seat psychological thriller! The story follows an unreliable narrator who witnesses something shocking from her daily commuter train window, spiraling her into a twisted missing-person investigation. It ...
The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Set in 1960s Mississippi, it follows three incredible women who risk everything to write a secret book exposing what life is really like for Black maids working in white households. The perspective shifts are brilliant, the characters feel like real ...
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
This one is about an agoraphobic woman who spends her days spying on her neighbors until she witnesses a horrific crime through her window—but nobody believes her. It is a brilliant, claustrophobic homage to classic Hitchcock that will have you const...
The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn
There is a reason this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic remains an absolute masterpiece. Told through the eyes of the unforgettable Scout Finch, it tackles heavy themes of racial injustice and the loss of innocence in the American South with incredible...
To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
This short story is an absolute masterclass in psychological horror and feminist literature. Written as a series of secret journal entries, it follows a woman confined to a bedroom by her husband for a "rest cure," where she becomes dangerously obses...
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
This is the ultimate sci-fi survival story, and it is a total blast from start to finish! After being accidentally stranded on Mars, astronaut Mark Watney has to use sheer wit, science, and a hilarious amount of sarcasm to stay alive. It is incredibl...
The Martian by Andy Weir
The absolute pinnacle of the Great American Novel! It perfectly captures the glittering highs and dark, hollow lows of the Roaring Twenties through the eyes of the mysterious Jay Gatsby and his tragic obsession with Daisy Buchanan. The prose is so go...
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzberald
This is a tiny short story that will completely blow your mind and permanently alter how you look at the universe. It features a brief conversation between a man who just died and God, revealing a mind-bending truth about the meaning of life and huma...
The Egg by Andy Weir
This book is an absolute masterpiece of resilience, reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. Set during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, it follows an incredible mother fighting to save her children and survive an unforgiving land. The grit, sacrif...
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
This book is an absolute triumph that brilliantly braids together history, art, and obsession. Based on the true story of Lexington, the record-breaking 19th-century American racehorse, it moves between the 1850s South, 1950s New York, and modern-day...
Horse by Geraldine Brooks
This book is a raw, breathtaking masterpiece about human resilience and the untamed Alaskan wilderness. It follows a family moving off the grid in the 1970s to seek a fresh start, only to find that the dangers inside their cabin are just as terrifyin...
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
This is the ultimate celebration of female friendship. It follows two best friends, Kate and Tully across three decades of triumphs, heartbreaks, secrets, and jealousy. Their bond is messy, realistic, and incredibly beautiful.
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
A sweeping, epic historical drama that completely absorbs you into its world. Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, it follows the fiercely ambitious and unforgettable Scarlett O'Hara as she fights to survive and save her beloved planta...
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Set in 1960s South Carolina, it follows a young girl who runs away from her harsh home life and finds sanctuary with three eccentric, bee-keeping Black sisters. The atmosphere is rich and warm, the female relationships are incredible.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
This book feels exactly like a high-drama, sun-soaked summer vacation that you never want to end! Set over the course of one single day in 1983, it builds up to an epic, out-of-control end-of-summer party hosted by four famous siblings. As the hours ...
Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
This book is a profoundly moving testament to the power of love and hope in the darkest place imaginable. Based on an incredible true story, it follows a Jewish prisoner tasked with tattooing numbers onto his fellow inmates, who risks everything to k...
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris
t follows two sisters in occupied France who fight to survive the war in completely different ways—one joining the dangerous underground resistance, and the other protecting her family at all costs. It is an absolute masterpiece about the quiet coura...
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
This is the ultimate cat-and-mouse game. It follows Evie Porter, a woman with a fake identity who pulls high-stakes cons for a mysterious boss until her real past starts catching up with her. The plotting is razor-sharp, the twists are genuinely shoc...
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
This Pulitzer Prize winner is easily one of the most gorgeous books ever written. Set during World War II, it beautifully intertwines the lives of a blind French girl hiding in a walled citadel and a brilliant, orphaned German boy forced into the Naz...
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This book is a breathtaking, multi-generational masterpiece that completely swept me away. Set in beautiful Kerala, India, it follows a family haunted by a bizarre medical mystery: in every single generation, at least one person tragically dies by dr...
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
It follows a woman who uncovers a trail of family secrets left behind by her grandmother, who is slowly losing her memory to Alzheimer's. The journey takes her all the way to Paris, unravelling a devastating World War II mystery filled with forbidden...
The Sweetness of Forgetting by Kristin Harmel
Inspired by an incredible true story, it follows a brilliant young woman who flees Paris during World War II and uses her talent for forgery to create fake identity documents for hundreds of Jewish children fleeing to safety. To ensure their real ide...
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel
It centers on an enigmatic elderly man who quietly moves into a small Southern town and begins buying up local pencil portraits of the residents just to gift them back. It is a slow, deeply comforting, and profoundly beautiful exploration of communit...
Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
Told entirely through a series of letters sent during World War I, it follows a young Englishwoman and her brother's best friend on the front lines. What starts as a promise to meet in Paris for Christmas morphs into a devastating, years-long struggl...
Last Christmas in Paris by Hazel Gaynor & Heather Webb
This beautiful story is written entirely in verse, and it packs a massive emotional punch in very few words. Inspired by the author's own childhood, it follows a young girl forced to flee Saigon during the Vietnam War and adjust to a completely new l...
Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai
This book is an absolute triumph of historical fiction and mystery wrapped into one. Inspired by the real-life diary of an 18th-century midwife, it follows her as she investigates a shocking murder after a body is found trapped in the winter ice. She...
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon
This historical fiction novel is an absolute emotional powerhouse that completely opened my eyes. Set in 1930s Virginia, it follows a young immigrant mother fighting against the terrifying reality of America's eugenics movement after being unjustly s...
The Lies They Told by Ellen Marie Wiseman
My Friends is a breathtaking, beautifully written novel that centers on an enigmatic painting and the secret history of the teenagers depicted on it. It is an absolute masterclass in exploring found family, the messy beauty of youth, and the profound...
My Friends by Fredrik Backman
This book is an absolute love letter to bookworms and the magic of local libraries. It follows a lonely, elderly widower and an anxious teenage librarian who forge an unlikely, beautiful friendship after discovering a mysterious list of novels left i...
The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams
Set in 1930s Mississippi during the Great Depression, it brings together a fiercely determined group of underestimated women—including an eleven-year-old orphan—who form an unlikely sisterhood to take control of their own fates. It is a bold, riotous...
The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett
This book is an absolute masterpiece that will make you laugh hysterically on one page and sob your eyes out on the next. It centers on Ove, the world's grumpiest neighborhood curmudgeon who strictly enforces block rules and isolates himself from the...
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman
This memoir is a gripping, mind-blowing testament to the power of self-education and resilience. Growing up isolated from society by survivalist parents in rural Idaho, the author didn't set foot in a classroom until she was seventeen. Her brutal, st...
Educated A Memoir by Tara Westover
Easily my absolute favorite book of the year so far! This spectacular historical fiction novel completely consumed me. Set during the chaos of World War II England, it tells the story of two young sisters who are cruelly separated during the London B...
Secrets of a Charmed Life by Susan Meissner
This book is the absolute definition of a sun-soaked lake romance! It follows a photographer who returns to a magical lakeside cottage with her grandmother, only to cross paths with a charming man from her past. It is a gorgeous, life-affirming, and ...
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
This book is a breathtaking, magical escape to the Amalfi Coast that made me instantly want to board a plane to Positano, Italy. Following the devastating loss of her mother, Katy goes on their planned mother-daughter trip alone only for her mother t...
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle
This is a is a breathtaking 5-star masterpiece. Probably my favorit Kristin Hannah book thus far. It follows Frankie McGrath, a sheltered California nursing student who enlists in the Army Nurse Corps during the Vietnam War. It is raw, emotional, and...
The Women by Kristin Hannah
I loved this book so much I listened to the audio twice, it's that good! It's a sci-fi masterpiece. It follows Ryland Grace, the sole survivor on a desperate space mission to save humanity from an extinction-level threat. It is brilliant, witty, and ...
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir