Nov 2

Nov 2 If You Only Read One: October 2020

#SFOL Recommends, If You Only Read One, Fun Stuff

We know that we read — and review — a lot of books. It definitely helps that there are three of us, in that regard. So with this feature, we want to tell you our favorite read of the month - if we only recommend one book to pick up, what would it be?

Moira

Though I’ve already reviewed this, nothing quite holds a candle to Tana French’s “The Searcher” (Bookshop | Kindle). This story of a retired American police detective moving to rural Ireland and accidentally becoming involved in investigating a local young man’s disappearance, is the rare literary mystery that is as suspenseful as a pulpier read. French’s finely drawn characters are believable and ultimately human, and you’ll finish feeling unsettled but better for having read it.

Elizabeth

My review on this one will be up later this week, but the best book I read in October (and up there for one of my favorites this year) is “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E. Schwab (Bookshop | Kindle). I know this is the time of year for spooky-scary, but give me an atmospheric book about dark magic, and you’ve made my Fall. This sweeping story tells us about the never-ending life of Addie LaRue, a girl who wants to get out of her small life in 17th century France, and ends up living for centuries but having no one remember her. It’s an amazing and thoughtful look about what makes life worth living, combined with a demon, multiple curses, and some truly epic love.

Shannon

This was a lighter month of reading for me (although I realized when I was trying to pick a book for this feature that I still read 7 books)—election anxiety has really set in these past few weeks and I haven’t been able to focus on reading. That said, “The City We Became” by N.K. Jemisin (Bookshop | Kindle) was absolutely the best book I read in October. It’s a moving, finely drawn world in which each borough of New York (plus the city itself) comes alive as a human avatar and defend the city against an attack from another creative in the multiverse. My full review is here, but I highly recommend this one even if you aren’t usually drawn to fantasy (I am not). It was a beautiful portrait of New York City, with enemies manifesting themselves as police brutality, gentrification, and white supremacy—enemies that we’re fighting IRL.

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