Day two of the Bookish New Year’s Challenge!  Today’s prompt is the best and worst reads of 2019.  I’ve been seeing everyone’s top favorites and disappointments before the end of 2019, and I considered doing those posts myself until I saw it was one of the prompts for this challenge.  How perfect!

Thankfully I enjoyed a lot of books last year.  I DNF’d seven in total, and then there were two or three that I finished and didn’t care for.  However, so I don’t overwhelm anyone with my top picks of the year, I’m just going to keep both lists very short.

Best Reads of 2019

   

The Silence of Six kept me wanting to know what happened next.  It was a great YA mystery/thriller that just kept me on edge.  There were plenty of turns and moments where I felt my heart beating from the action taking place, or the sneaky-sneaks and hoping Max and Penny didn’t get caught.

What I loved about Perfect Chemistry was that it starts out with seemingly shallow characters, but you get a glimpse right away that maybe neither Alex or Brittany are shallow at all.  It’s such a good story and I feel like Alex has the best character development of any book I’ve read this past year (or at least one of the top).

Standing By is an adorable YA contemporary novel with a dash of romance thrown in.  The characters in this book were lovable, sarcastic, not without flaws, and honestly, just people I could’ve seen myself in school with.  They kind of reminded me of my old friends in high school and even some of my current friends now.  It’s definitely a book you’ll see in my Top 5 for a very long time!

Worst Reads of 2019

      

Every Moment After just wasn’t what I expected, I guess.  While the premise of the book sounded great and I got into the story right away, at some point it just fell flat.  The main redeeming part of this book though was the character, Matt.  He was just, real, and you could really feel his struggle throughout the book.  But overall, it’s not a book I’d ever pick up again.

The Last Best Story was probably the book I enjoyed the least (that I didn’t DNF).  It was full of flashbacks and because of this, it took a long time to get to the actual conflict of the book.  Then there was the whole deal with Grant being manipulative with his friends, including Rosie.  The characters just weren’t very likeable and since I love character driven stories, that was a bit of a disappointment.

What were some of your best and worst reads of 2019?