The 2024 Book Awards
- Kendall Carroll
- Jan 1, 2025
- 14 min read
Welcome to the 2024 Book Awards! I'm your host, Kendall, and I'll be bringing you through all of my favorite books and story elements of the year. I started this tradition as my own sort of "reading wrapped" a few years ago, and I think it's a fun way to look back on all the books I read throughout the year. Hopefully, for you, this can be a place to get some recommendations. Or you can just enjoy my ramblings.
The Rules
Books only get a spot in one category when possible (Remember, this is a recap. I want to try to include as many books as possible, not just That One Book. Of course, this isn't a perfect system, so some things may show up a couple times.)
Awarded books are new books, not rereads (If I only included my favorite books of all time, there'd be no point to this, because the same books/characters would win every year. If I'm using repeating characters, the author has to have released a new book with them.)
Table of Contents
Book of the Year:
Everyone On This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson
This award is based on my Book of the Year Bracket (you know, like March Madness brackets). It's really no surprise that Ernest Cunningham would take the win for this competition. I love everything about these books and always have fun reading them. This book was February's top book, and when put against the other months' books, it was a clear winner.
Favorite Book:
The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton
This actually isn't one of my official 5 star books of the year, but as I was looking back on the books I read this year, I had really fond memories of this one. Immediately after I read it, I wanted to dive right back in and reread it again. The characters are charming, and the mystery is thrilling.
Favorite Book/Book of the Year Runner-Ups:
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (Review)
Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead by Emily Austin (Review)
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
Wrath of the Triple Goddess by Rick Riordan
Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Ernest Cunningham (Review)
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire
Best Book Club Pick:
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield
This book was an early win for the book club. I used to love those weird and slightly-morbid short stories that you read in English class, and this book embodies that perfectly. It's a little weird for sure, and maybe not the flashiest book that we read this year, but it was truly beautiful.
Best Re-Read:
The King of Infinite Space
by Lyndsay Faye
This was the easiest award to give this year. I think about this book on a daily basis, and could probably reread it weekly and be perfectly happy. I'm working on a crochet flower set based on Lia's flowers. I named one of my sims legacy generations after it. I love this book, even though it's maybe not the most technically perfect book ever. My beloved Hamlet retelling.
Best Series Pick:
The Darkest Minds
by Alexandra Bracken
I haven't fully finished this series yet (as of writing this, I'm about half way through the third book in the trilogy), but it is still a very good series. The first book especially was such a standout, especially for the early-2010s dystopian genre.
Best Amazon First Reads Pick:
The Real Deal
by Caitlin Devlin
This is the very first book I read this year, and it was by far the best Amazon First Reads book that I picked up. The story was very compelling, and I really cared for the main character. It's such an interesting (although not particularly unique) perspective on reality TV and child stars, and it was written very well.
Breakout Book of the Year:
The Gameshouse
by Claire North
I never expected to like this book as much as I did. It was a bit of a rocky start, but ultimately I found this to be a very beautiful story that really tugs on the heartstrings. The writing style was weird, but I think it was ultimately done well and I enjoyed the uniqueness of it.
Top 2024 Release:
The Last Murder at the End of the World
by Stuart Turton
I loved reading this book. The setting was fascinating, and I loved the perspective through which the book was written. It was such a good experience, especially when put against the other newest releases of the year.
Best Main Character:
Red (Five Survive by Holly Jackson)
This book was really good (I have it 4.5 stars), and it was largely because of Red. Her scattered and panicked narration was unique and a little confusing at times, but gave the book so much life. The depth of her feelings for her mother and her friends was very sweet, and I found it very easy to root for her. She made this book everything it is.
Best Supporting Character:
Chubs (Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken)
I think this book had a lot of flaws, particularly in the way it writes interpersonal character dynamics, but not with Chubs. He's the reason I look forward to continuing the series. Watching him develop both individually and alongside the main character is almost the best part of the book, and he definitely has the best one-liners.
Best Love Interest:
Augustus (Such Charming Liars by Karen M. McManus)
The best love interests, to me, are the ones stuck in some mystery/thriller book who are a little confused and out of their element but ultimately down to help do whatever, and no one embodied that in 2024 more than Augustus. I also liked that he got a decent amount of development/plot relevance on his own, which a lot of other love interests suffer from a lack of.
Best Antagonist:
Old Tom (The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton)
Obviously, in a book that is (in many ways) a murder mystery, The Killer is an important role. But I loved the mysteriousness around Old Tom in this book. Is it human evil, or is it something supernatural? All of the uncertainty that surrounded this character elevated this book from a fun mystery to a great story; he's truly everything you want a killer to be.
Best Romance:
Percabeth (Wrath of the Triple Goddess by Rick Riordan)
It's impossible to get through a year without Percy getting a favorite spot in the recap. A new book means they're eligible, and I can't help but continue to love Percy and Annabeth. They're iconic for a reason, and I like seeing them evolve into the pre-college years. Call me nostalgic if you must. It's not like you'd be wrong.
Best Plot:
The One
by John Marrs
I love the idea of taking a premise and exploring a variety of story trails within that new universe. The idea of "an algorithmically-determined Soulmate" is nothing too crazy, but the author did a good job of setting up a variety of storylines that are all engaging. Plus, there's a twist that the end that I think would make the book a lot of fun to reread.
Best Twist:
My Favorite Terrible Thing
by Madeleine Henry
It's hard to write an explanation of why this book wins this award without spoiling the book. In fact, I'd argue it's inherently a spoiler. But the twist was really well set-up, and is a good example of how to change the entire context of the story.
Most Likely to... Recommend to Others
Worst Case Scenario
by TJ Newman
I'm so glad I got this book because it is really phenomenal. The amount of tension and suspense baked into this book is crazy, which made it easy to just devour. It's fast-paced, it's got great characters, and it balances science and fiction really well. I think a lot of people could find something to love in this book.
Most Likely to... Immediately Re-Read
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
by Gregory Maguire
I knew this book wouldn't be anything like the musical, but I was surprised by just how different it was. It's so rich and expansive and I can't wait to dig into it again. This is the kind of book where I think you could reread it a million times and still find something new to get out of it each time.
Most Likely to... Make Me Cry (Most Emotional)
Everyone in This Room Will Someday be Dead
by Emily Austin
Gilda was a really endearing main character, and I connected really strongly with her anxiety. It was a beautiful book that was constantly tugging on my heartstrings. Her internal monologue was funny, profound, and so natural.
Most Likely to... Stand Out (Most Unique)
Murder in the Family
by Cara Hunter
This book was different than every other book I read this year. Told through a documentary-style script and newspaper clippings, I found the delivery to be quite engaging. I don't think the book was perfect by any means, but it was still a fun and unique read.
Most Likely to... Stick With You (Most Memorable)
The Answer is No
by Fredrik Backman, Translated by Elizabeth DeNoma
This short little story was so sweet and thoughtful. You don't often see a lot of good satire these days, but this story was so well written. I loved the characters and their silly little apartment woes, and the overall message was lovely. I love stories about human connection, and this one is no different.
Disclaimer: This is the hater section. I'm going to be a little mean here. If you don't want to see me being mean about books that were badly written, maybe don't read this section. If authors don't want bad reviews they should write better books. Read my reviews to get the full thoughts.
Least Favorite Book:
Red Rising by Pierce Brown
I don't even like to think about this book now. After today, I intend to fully leave it behind in 2024. This book was bad. The characters were bad, the plot was bad, the message was bad. I'm tired of seeing it recommended online as if it's not the most soul-crushingly terrible book.
Least Favorite Book Runner-Ups:
The House by the Cemetery (Review)
(This book got really lucky that Red Rising was as bad as it was.)
Uglies (Review)
In Our Likeness (Review)
Worst Main Character:
Dunia (Almost Surely Dead by Amina Akhtor)
It's important that, in a mystery novel, the main character is engaged with the plot. It's important in every genre, but in mystery books, your main character is usually a detective-like figure. So they should be solving something, or at least getting into some messy situations. Dunia didn't do that. She didn't so anything. I didn't have a single reason to care about her.
Worst Antagonist/Villain:
Roux (Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson)
First of all, Roux is an absurd name and I won't forgive the author for it. Second, Roux was a bad counterpoint to the main character, who was literally worse than Roux for the entire book. It's hard to root against the antagonist when the main character's actions are worse. But don't worry, Roux did some horrible things by the end of the book, but it felt like it was only written in to make her completely unjustifiable. It's lazy writing, which makes Roux an awful antagonist.
Most Disappointing Book:
Such a Bad Influence
by Olivia Muenter
I have said it before, I'll say it a million times in the future, and I'm going to say it now: mystery books where the "big twist" is that the main character was just blatantly lying to the reader are bad and lazy. This book was so disappointing because I was engaged with it through the ending, even though I didn't think it was perfect. Only for the twist to just completely undermine the whole thing.
For those of you who are nosy, like me, and like the numbers and to listen to me yap: this part is for you. There's no specific books here, but if you're curious how my year wrapped up, feel free to check it out.
Total Books Read:
I read 74 books this year, which equaled 21,874 pages. My book total goal was 52 (that's one a week), which was low on purpose. Last year my goal was 70 books (which had been steadily increased from the years prior), and I found that it sort of took some of the fun out of reading. I became more focused on consuming the most amount of books possible rather than reading and enjoying books. I made the goal, but at what cost? So I decided to bump the goal down for this year, and I think it proves my point since I did end up reading more books than in 2023.
That being said, it's worth acknowledging that 10 of those books were Short Stories (in this case, this means a complete published work that is less than 100 pages). Short Stories are not not reading (that's some great writing there, Kendall), but it does mean that some of these "extra" books came in easier. More books isn't inherently more reading, which is further evidenced by the fact that I read about 3,000 less pages than I did in 2023. And this isn't even getting into word count, which would be a pain to track.
The point here is that a "reading goal" isn't real. You could read a thousand short stories, or you could read five books that have a thousand pages each. Engaging with literature is what matters, not the made-up metric we've decided to measure your ability to do so.
Total Ratings:
For the sake of this graph, each point is half a star. So, a 10/10 book is 5 stars, 9/10 is 4.5, and so on.
My average rating for the whole year was 6.93/10, which is actually lower than last year (which came in at a 7.57/10). This wasn't too surprising to me, honestly. As I was going through assigning winners to each category, I had a significantly harder time using different books for each of the good categories, so I knew that I had overall worse options to pick from.
What's really interesting to me is that I had more 8/10 reads than last year, and the other high numbers were also pretty similar. Thinking about it, I read roughly the same amount of books (4 more this year), and you can see that particularly in the 2-4 range.
And I know what you may be thinking: well, sure. Maybe you shouldn't be reading just whatever Random Free Amazon book you can get your hands on and should instead prioritize books that you actually gravitate to and enjoy. And I'd half agree with you: I should do a better job of reading with intention and work on finding books I'll actually enjoy.
That being said, I knew I had read more Random Free Amazon books this year, so I worked those facts into my data collection. Of the 74 books I read this year, 51 were "free." This means that I didn't pay for the book in 2024, which includes purchases made 2023 and earlier, gifts, Amazon Free Reads, Prime Reads, Goodreads Giveaways, and books that I otherwise didn't have to pay for. Interestingly, the free books have an average rating of 7/10, and the "paid" books have an average of 6.78/10. So without doing a full statistical analysis, I don't think the Random Free Amazon books are my problem.
Other Interesting Facts:
My top genres of the year were detective/mystery (18), thriller/horror (15), and fantasy (12). These are the same as last year, just shuffled. For someone who claims that I'm not a big fantasy reader, I apparently do enjoy fantasy books. Who knew!
Of the 74 books I read, 16 were read with my friend in our Book Club. This was down from a whopping 24 last year. Unironically, part of the reason for this was Red Rising.
I also re-read 12 books. This is my greatest accomplishment, down from 21 re-reads last year. As fun as it is to re-read beloved books, I really wanted to read new stuff this year. You can't find beloved books without branching out, and there's so much good literature out there. That being said, my re-reads are usually used as either rewards or tools. If I'm in a reading slump, you can guarantee I'm turning to something like the Percy Jackson series (the original one). Re-reads make reading fun again so that I can venture out. The point here is that I'm not trying to fully eliminate re-reads, but I am proud that I was able to limit them.
I read a grand total of 33 books digitally, which is up significantly from last year (14), and listened to 3 audio books. My attention span is shot from social media, so reading on my phone is difficult, but I think getting digital books helps save money and space and is ultimately for the best. As far as audio books go, I'd like to try that more. I play a lot of video games (I play a lot of Sims), and I'd like to get better about listening to books while I do that rather than just some random YouTube videos or something.
Last year, I read an almost even amount of Young Adult (defined as anything not Adult — Percy Jackson may be middle grade to Rick but it's YA in my statistics) and Adult books. Given that I am 23, I wanted to read more Adult books this year. I was successful and ended up reading 56 Adult books (leaving 18 YA books).
The longest book I read was Never Fade by Alexandra Braken (the second book after Darkest Minds) at 506 pages. In case you're wondering, this is too many pages and would've been a better book if it were shorter.
The shortest book (not Short Story) I read was technically not a book, it was a play, and it was Romeo and Juliet at 115 pages. However, I'm not sure if this really counts, because the amount of "pages" varies a lot based on how you're reading it. So the shortest book I actually read was Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson, the Christmas special in the Ernest Cunningham series (read the review here). And in case you're wondering again, this was too few pages, and I would read a billion pages of Ernest Cunningham if Stevenson would write it.
The average length of book I read was 295 pages, including the short stories. The average was 330 pages without. This checks out, and I would argue that's, in most cases, the acceptable amount of pages for a book. There are some really great books that are longer than 300-400, and there are some really great books that are less than 300, but I don't think everyone can do it successfully. I'm comfortable with this average, and I don't expect it to change much.
As I've already explained, I don't want to put too many rules on reading because I think it makes something that's supposed to be a fun hobby into a chore. That being said, if you're looking for reading ideas, here's what I'm vaguely establishing for myself moving forward.
I'm once again going to try to read 52 books. However, I'm also going to be doing unrelated things to work on that attention span problem. One thing I'm going to try to do is read at night rather than mindlessly scroll to help me fall asleep. I'm hoping this sort of naturally increases the amount of book I read, but if it doesn't, that's okay too.
I want to increase my average ratings. I don't like my average being under 4 stars. I'm still going to be reading my free books every month, but I'm also going to be more intentional with the books I pick up. I'm not reading TikTok garbage just because it's popular, I'm reading books in the genres and styles that I like. I will probably not start to DNF books, though.
I'm going to try to listen to more audiobooks while I'm Simming. However, I think I'm going to use that time to try to listen to some of the Classics that I've somehow not read yet. Can you believe I haven't read The Great Gatspy? Or The Picture of Dorian Gray? I think that needs to be corrected, and I think I have the time to do it if I multitask.
Really, my goal is just to continue to enjoy reading. Hopefully this part if no longer relevant a year from now, but I'm very worried about the future of creative writing. In a world where people prefer the ease and high market value of things like AI, I think it's important to seek out genuine stories of all genres and styles and engage with them as the creative arts that they are. So that's the plan. No numbers, just human enjoyment of human stories.
Happy New Year, and Happy reading my friends!
From yours truly,
Kendall
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