Book List: Bookish Blonde’s Birthday Blog! 🥳

Hey there, book lovers!

Can you believe it’s been five whole years since I started this blog?! Half a decade, people! But sure enough, 150 blogs later (exactly – what a perfect number for this celebratory blog!) here we are!

I started this blog originally – I won’t lie – to get free books! But over the last five years, I’ve made great friends, started a popular local book club and discovered so many authors I would never have known about otherwise! I have also been fortunate enough to receive a few free books, yes, and I am eternally grateful for all of the brilliant books I’ve been sent.

So I thought as a fifth Bookish Birthday celebration, I would share one of my favourite books from each year I’ve been writing this blog (I should point out, I’m counting the year I read each one, not the year it was published). I’d love to know your thoughts if you’ve read any of these, or your favourite books from the last five years!

Year 1: ‘An American Marriage’ by Tayari Jones

I have two vivid memories of this book: 1) reading it by the pool whilst on a fabulous girls holiday with my mum and 2) having a super thought-provoking debate with my colleagues about it when I returned to work. If those aren’t two things you want from a book – a holiday page-turner as well as a powerful social inspection – I don’t know what else you could be looking for! Through her masterful story-telling, Jones covers love, heartbreak, injustice, racism, human nature… the list goes on. I loved it then, and I still regularly think about it when I see certain news stories. A must-read!

Year 2: ‘Class of 1983’ by Victoria Maxwell

At the opposite end of the scale, something much more fun and light-hearted. Suspend your disbelief for this one as Maxwell’s ‘Class of 1983’ sees Magz travel back in time to 1983, where she becomes Peggy, finds unknown popularity, and meets heartbreaker Sammy Ruthven. Sooner or later though, Magz has to decide whether to remain in 1983 or return to her lonely best friend Jack in the present day. Full of absolutely perfect 80s nostalgia, this cross between Pretty in Pink and Back to the Future will have you reaching for those polka dot dresses and stiletto heels.

Year 3: ‘Malibu Rising’ by Taylor Jenkins-Reid

This was my first journey into TJR’s universe and I could not put it down. Again, this is set in the 80s – I’m beginning to see a theme… – and I just adored all the glamour of it all! It follows the Riva family as they prepare for their annual summer beach party, but there are tensions running high, and the re-appearance of their absent father, popstar Mick Riva, might just push them too far. It simultaneously focuses on the 24 hours leading up to their party and flashes back to the decades leading up to this moment. By the end, the tension is palpable, but in the most dramatic, fun way you could imagine – almost like watching the season finale of a 1980s melodramatic soap!

Year 4: ‘New Yorkers’ by Craig Taylor

Another holiday read, but a very different style. I read this book while I was, of course, in New York! Part of what made me fall in love with this book was the pure accuracy. I could see so many of the people Taylor had interviewed everywhere I went in New York. The single mothers struggling with their kids on the subway, the older men who’d lived there their entire lives in the local bars or diners, the Wall Street bankers storming the streets in their suits. It was just a perfect collection of unique and incredibly true stories.

Year 5: ‘The Sun Down Motel’ by Simone St. James

Simone St James has fast become one of my favourite spooky authors. Her absolute superpower is writing a dual timeline that comes together in the kind of way you never see coming! This particular book is no exception. In 1982 (yes, another 1980s moment…) Viv Delaney is working nights at The Sun Down Motel and disappears suddenly. Decades later, her niece Carly moves to the area to find out what happened to her aunt, and takes the very same job at the Motel! Of course, things begin to get very creepy and as various guests come and go, Carly races against time to find out the truth before she suffers the same fate as her aunt.

Final thoughts

I hope you feel inspired to pick up one of these absolute winners. Let me know if you do! And if you’ve read any or all of my blogs over the last 5 years, thank you so much – you have no idea how much it means to me that even one person cares about my bookish opinions!

Back soon!

Bookish Blonde x