My 2020 Retrospective

                                  Image courtesy of Maicyber at freedigitalphotos.net

 

 This year I decided to count the number of reads that I gave five stars to include in this annual post.  I had eighteen of them.  Since this is a new statistic, I don't know how this compares to previous years.

Shomeret: Masked Reviewer had around 12,000 views in 2020.  That's about 3000 more than last year.   So this little blog that could is continuing to expand its audience a bit every year.

My most viewed post was, as usual, on Flying High Reviews. It was a review of a YA lesbian historical novel called Silhouette of a Sparrow which can be found here. Why was there so much interest? My guess is that there aren't enough lesbian historical novels written for the YA audience. 

 The most viewed post on Shomeret: Masked Reviewer during 2020 was my review of a novel about the creation of Michelangelo's David called The Giant which can be found here.  I think that Michelangelo's David is a popular subject.  I also think that the author of this book, Laura Morelli, has a following that increased the number of readers for this particular review. 

The rest of this post will be the list of my best reads of the year in various categories.   If I don't mention a blog review, it's because I didn't review the book on my blog.  In most cases, I did review it on Goodreads. I like to call this section of my annual retrospective:

                      THE GOLDEN MASK AWARDS

 Best Read of the Year

 Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez

It's also the best non-fiction book. It deals with the lack of inclusion of women in research, and the design of things that women use.  I thought that I would never have the time to read this extremely dense and topical book. Thanks to Read Women's discussion of Invisible Women on Goodreads, I did.

Best Book Published in 2020

Rachel Maddow: A Biography by Lisa Rogak

This is also the best in the bio/memoir category that I read in 2020. Since I knew nothing about Rachel Maddow's life, I found this book surprising.  It also humanized her for me.

Best Fiction

 The Time Collector by Gwendolyn Womack

This is also the best romance that I read in 2020.  It deals with characters who are psychometrists.  This means that they can read the history of objects by touching them.  I reviewed this fascinating novel here  on this blog.

Best Young Adult Novel

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

It's also the best fantasy I read in 2020. What if all sirens were Black, and some were involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960's?  This YA alternate history fantasy swirls urgent issues with paranormal species and African American teen life.  I learned so much from reading it.  See my review on this blog here.

Best Historical Fiction

The Talking Drum  by Lisa Braxton

It's also the best indie novel that I read in 2020.  This is a novel about urban redevelopment.  I initially thought that urban redevelopment is too recent a phenomenon to be considered historical.  I did research on the subject and discovered that it didn't begin that recently.  See my review on this blog here.

Best Science Fiction

A Song For A New Day by Sarah Pinsker 

It's the music aspect that caused me to read this book, not the pandemic and certainly not the dystopia.  Though I have to say that this ends up being such a hopeful dystopian novel.

Best Contemporary Fiction

Side Chick Nation by Aya de León

"Side chick" becomes a metaphor for Puerto Rico's relationship to the U.S.  in #4 of de Leon's Justice Hustlers series involving female vigilantes. It's also the first novel taking place during Hurricane Maria and its aftermath.

Best Mystery

Songs From The Deep by Kelly Powell

If you've been scrolling down the page, you'll probably notice the titles with "song" in them. It's true that I'm very musically inclined. Yet in the case of this YA mystery, the "songs" are there because this is another book in which sirens play a role.  The sirens have been falsely accused of murder.  This made the mystery unusual enough to attract my attention.

Best Thriller

Cheater's Game by Paul Levine

This is the latest in the series about lawyer Jake Lassiter.  His nephew has unwisely involved himself in a college admissions scandal.   At the time this was written, it was ripped from the headlines.  Here's my review on this blog.

Best Net Galley

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

This is an authentic own voices novel dealing with a trans male protagonist and his search for identity.  It also deals with a Syrian American community.  My review on this blog is here.

Two thirds of the authors of these books are new to me.  The four exceptions are Laura Morelli, Bethany C. Morrow, Aya de León and Paul Levine.