Though a reader at heart, I have not had the time to crack open many books this year thanks to my suddenly overwhelming workload. It’s only because of AP Lang, my newfound commitment to book club, a few late nights, and sheer stubbornness that I’ve managed to read anything at all. To help my fellow readers make the best of the limited free time they do have, I’ve weeded out the books I think you should and shouldn’t read from my 2023-2024 round-up, ranked from worst to best.

(This one goes out to all the readers who are drowning in their everyday task lists and their endless TBR. I believe in you.)

Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter

I’ve never been a rom-com fan, and this book . . . did not make me one. 

The novel follows Liz Buxbaum, a hopelessly romantic high school senior whose dreamy childhood crush has unexpectedly returned to town. However, it seems like her only path to happily-ever-after with Michael is through her absolute pain-in-the-neck of a next-door neighbor, Wes, whose obnoxious pranks have exhausted her for more than a decade. When she starts to enjoy her time with Wes, though, she is forced to reevaluate her preconceptions about romance and happy endings.

It’s not quite enemies-to-lovers, it’s not quite fake-dating, and it’s not quite childhood-friends-to-lovers, either. I’m not really sure what it’s supposed to be. I guess it boils down to a rom-com about a girl obsessed with rom-coms, so if romance is your style, then this is the book for you (it even has famous rom-com quotes at the start of every chapter)!

Personally, I didn’t love it. I’ll admit it’s a cute book, but it seemed to simply fall back on predictable or cliché plot points whenever the story’s trajectory hit a wall. Because of that, there wasn’t enough substance for me to find myself invested in the characters’ journeys. The only considerable character growth in the novel comes when Liz begins to unpack her internal attachment to the hopes of her late mother—a storyline that was actually very poignant, though it wasn’t executed quite as well as it could have been. Still, this was an entertaining read while waiting at the airport and recovering from my 102° fever over February break, so I’m comfortable saying it’s a good choice if you’re looking for something light and mindless. I guess that’s just not really my style.

In conclusion, I’d recommend this book to serious rom-com lovers and . . . yeah. Serious rom-com lovers. I think that’s about it for this one.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

When this book was assigned in class, I was nervous it would be boring. To my surprise, it wasn’t.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tragic masterpiece follows the unexceptional Nick Carraway as he finds himself enamored with his charismatic, mysterious neighbor, Gatsby, and entangled in the destruction and corruption of New York City’s upper class. It’s rich with symbolism and commentary about the unattainable American Dream held on a pedestal by Roaring Twenties society, and it’s full of characters you’ll hate with a passion, whether you’re watching them succeed or fall from grace.

By the end, The Great Gatsby isn’t at all what it was in the beginning. Though the story’s exposition appears at first overly complex and Gatsby’s unsolvable peculiarity persists through countless chapters, that’s just the novel’s (and, to be honest, the time period’s) mystique. The writing, too, feels dragging in its descriptiveness at the start, but the language is deceptively beautiful and yet again matches the energy of the story and setting.

I do have some critiques, including but not limited to the strange timeline rearrangement in Chapter 6—apparently a change suggested by Fitzgerald’s editor, who believed no one would finish his book if he didn’t reveal something about Gatsby—and the persistent sexism, racism, and antisemitism that seems to haunt the book throughout. Still, Fitzgerald’s haunting critique of Jazz Age corruption, waste, and immorality continues to ring true today, and although there is much wrong with his execution, the novel’s language, core message, and status as a classic made it worth the read for me. If you choose to read this book, though, I would advise using it as a chance to not only evaluate the flaws of the 1920s, but also to call out the shortcomings of this period’s authors and the problematic viewpoints they maintain.

Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who loves literary classics, gets lost in description, or who enjoys reading through a lens of critique—not only alongside Fitzgerald, but also of him.

Normal People by Sally Rooney

This book was incredibly heavy, but also well worth it.

The story follows popular, kindhearted Connell and lonely, proud Marianne from their high school years in Carricklea, where every misstep shakes their small world, to their time at Trinity College in Dublin, where the pressures of depression and anxiety cause them each to veer toward self-destruction. They are two “normal people” who feel anything but normal and whose paths cross at every turn, no matter how much they hurt one another. It’s a haunting exploration of mental health, growing up, the intensity of young relationships, and the thin line between hope and hopelessness—and at times it does feel painfully hopeless. Please note before reading that the book discusses self-harm, abuse, and suicide, and contains quite a bit of explicit content.

First of all: this book contains no quotation marks. I hated it at first, but as the story unfolded, it grew on me. Rooney’s unique voice, alongside this unusual detail, truly made me feel as though I were living in the characters’ heads and experiencing firsthand their gut-wrenching decline.

The characters—especially Connell—occasionally break into thoughtful inner monologues about literature or vanity or social class, pushing us to confront our deepest motivations and our impact on those around us. They’re both relatable in a terrifying way. It’s as if the two of them are walking a tightrope, hundreds of feet in the air, with no support system. Their story is honestly one of the most raw, vulnerable ones I’ve ever read; Rooney turns the characters inside out and utterly strips them down to their very worst selves.

This book is for anyone who likes dark realistic fiction or is willing to dive into extremely difficult topics. If you choose to read this book, make sure you take breaks, and remember to take care of yourself.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold by John le Carré

Wow. I couldn’t put this book down. 

This spy thriller follows the journey of Alec Leamas, head of the Berlin Station for British Intelligence at the height of the Cold War, who has just watched his last undercover agent get shot in an attempt to return to West Berlin. Though he expects retirement, he instead faces an unusual proposal: play the part of the bitter, dishonored ex-agent, trap the deputy director of the East German Intelligence, and seize his chance at revenge. 

Le Carré himself was an agent for both MI5 and MI6 during the Cold War, so his elaborately woven tale truly embodies the espionage, duplicity, and tensions of the time. The story unfolds slowly at first—so slowly, in fact, that I was unsure for a time if Leamas was playing a drunk ex-agent or if he had really become one—but the novel’s hair-raising conclusion is well worth the time it takes to get there. 

Much like The Great Gatsby, though, this book does suffer from a case of subtly (or not-so-subtly) misogynistic female characterization. Liz Gold, though she plays a key role in the story’s biggest twists and turns, does not appear to have any true motivations other than her love for Leamas and her communist loyalties, and she is repeatedly painted as naive and sensitive by the male characters around her. Some characters in the novel also express antisemitic viewpoints, though Le Carré fortunately uses many of these moments to dispute antisemitism on a broader scale.

Le Carré does a great job illustrating the agents’ disillusionment with espionage itself—not only Leamas, who narrowly missed his window of opportunity for retirement, but also the communist German characters like Fiedler and Mundt. They are tired of playing pawns in their superiors’ game, clearly disposable and always replaceable, and of having their lives weighed against the irreconcilable causes they fight for.

If you love espionage and political thrillers, you’re a fan of historical fiction or history in general, or you’re interested in unpacking the ideological differences between capitalists and communists, you should absolutely pick up this book. It poses the age-old question: when is the “greater good” worth the sacrifice of human lives?

Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

Whoa. This was unparalleled.

Susanna Kaysen’s melancholic memoir breaks down the stigma surrounding mental illness through its reflection on her teenage years in the dynamic sixties, interrupted by an eighteen month stay in the “parallel universe” of Boston’s McLean Hospital. She lays bare her own struggle with depression and borderline personality disorder and, through empathetic accounts of her fellow patients and the ward staff, she does what nobody set out to do during her time at McLean: she humanizes people with mental illness.

I loved this book. It’s an absolutely stellar dive into the mind of someone written off as “insane” at a time when mental illness was more stigmatized and less understood than ever. Kaysen’s writing is insightful, her nonlinear storytelling perfect when paired with her message about the singular strangeness of the human mind. The kaleidoscopically jumbled events of her adolescence are broken up by real documents from her time at McLean, and she balances uncomfortably confrontational scenes with captivating inner monologue. The parts of the memoir that I most loved were those that were more about what was happening in her head than out—the times she paused to weigh what “insanity” really is or decipher the viscosity of human thoughts or describe the worlds she sees in something as mundane as a floor tile.

In short, this book was my favorite I’ve read this year. It does a wonderful job humanizing the patients at McLean and challenging readers to break down their own stigmas, while also conducting a plotless yet engaging exploration of the true definition of “insanity.” It’s a heavier read that requires thinking, but it’s an amazing fit for anyone who loves nonfiction or realistic fiction, appreciates unique or nonlinear writing, or enjoys posing philosophical questions and addressing important societal issues.

*DISCLAIMER: I have not read the following books.

If you want another tragic classic: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

If you want another rom-com: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

If you want another psychological memoir: Boy Erased by Garrard Conley

If you want another spy thriller: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carré

Happy reading!