Even More Books to Look Forward to in 2024
Even though the year is coming to a close and we’re starting to think about the holiday season and the start of 2025 (yuck—how is it so late in the year already!?), I wanted to touch on some more books that I’m excited about and think you should check out.
If you missed the first two posts like this I did this year, you can find them here and here.
Note: WD uses affiliate links.
Romance
Not Here to Make Friends by Jodi McAlister
Published: June 4, 2024
Back of book description: In this “full-on villain romance” (The New York Times) a group of women on a reality dating show should be vying for the love of their Romeo, but it turns out one of them only has eyes for the showrunner.
Murray O’Connell is standing on the greatest precipice of his career. As showrunner of the reality dating show Marry Me, Juliet, Murray is determined to make this season a success.
Nothing and nobody will stand in his way.
Except perhaps Lily Fireball, the network’s choice for this season’s villain. Lily has classic reality TV appeal: She’s feisty, dramatic, and never backs down from a fight. She also happens to be Murray’s estranged best friend and former co-showrunner.
What was once a perfectly planned season turns to chaos as the two battle for control. Working in reality television, they’re used to drama, secrets, and romance. But what happens when suddenly they’re at the center of the storyline?
What I loved about it: What makes an unlikable character? How can you take two people who the reader would probably hate in real life and make that same reader root for them to fall in love? These are the questions that McAlister tackles in the third installment of her Marry Me, Juliet series.
This series is fascinating to me because all three books are set on the same season of the fictional reality show Marry Me, Juliet, but while they all touch on the same scenes, none of them feel boring or overdone. This story explores the set from a totally different perspective, and the series as a whole is made better for it.
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
Published: July 9, 2024
Back of book description: Kiela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.
But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.
What I loved about it: I have my own preconceived notions of what makes a romantasy—it’s probably overly angsty, full of hot dudes growling as their eyes grow dark, and could be described with three chili peppers emojis in the group chat.
This is not that book.
Instead, Sarah Beth Durst shows us a gentler, more comedic side of the romantasy genre, a cozy story that shows that you can be a detailed world-builder while still focusing on the emotional aspects of storytelling. If you love genre work but you’re intimidated by the kind of Tolkien world-building that dominates the conversation, be sure to pick up this book. You might be surprised at what you’ll find!
A Werewolf’s Guide to Seducing a Vampire by Sarah Hawley
Published: August 13, 2024
Back of book description: Werewolf Ben Rosewood is happy with his life. One hundred percent. Everything is fine. His business, Ben’s Plant Emporium, is thriving, and he’s even expanding the shop. His anxiety disorder is…well, it’s been better, but that comes with the territory of running a business and having beastly urges every full moon, right? As for romance—who has the time? Though his family is desperate to see him settled, Ben is fine approaching forty as a single werewolf. But after drunkenly bidding on and winning a supposedly-possessed crystal on eBay one night, he finds himself face-to-face with a beautiful yet angry vampire.
Eleonore Bettencourt-Devereux is a rare breed—a vampire succubus born from two elite European bloodlines during medieval times. Thanks to an evil witch, she’s been stuck in a crystal since she was thirty, forced to obey orders from the possessor of the rock. Eleonore’s been dreaming of breaking the spell and severing the witch’s head for centuries. But did this witch really sell her to someone new, and for only ninety-nine cents?
Eleonore would claw this werewolf’s heart out and eat it, if only the binding spell would allow her to. But Eleonore and Ben soon realize they can help each other with both vengeful and less hostile needs. And why not have a little fun along the way?
What I loved about it: This is the third in the series (though you don’t need to read the other two to really understand the world-building or plot), but this is the book where I felt like the world-building itself was really able to be explored. It was very interesting to see the way that Hawley balanced the main steamy romantic plot with the extensive world-building that this plot needed to explain the character’s fantastical races.
Horror
Horror Movie: A Novel by Paul Tremblay
Published: June 11, 2024
Back of book description: A chilling twist on the “cursed film” genre from the bestselling author of The Pallbearers Club and The Cabin at the End of the World.
In June 1993, a group of young guerilla filmmakers spent four weeks making Horror Movie, a notorious, disturbing, art-house horror flick.
The weird part? Only three of the film’s scenes were ever released to the public, but Horror Movie has nevertheless grown a rabid fanbase. Three decades later, Hollywood is pushing for a big budget reboot.
The man who played “The Thin Kid” is the only surviving cast member. He remembers all too well the secrets buried within the original screenplay, the bizarre events of the filming, and the dangerous crossed lines on set that resulted in tragedy. As memories flood back in, the boundaries between reality and film, past and present start to blur. But he’s going to help remake the film, even if it means navigating a world of cynical producers, egomaniacal directors, and surreal fan conventions—demons of the past be damned.
But at what cost?
Horror Movie is an obsessive, psychologically chilling, and suspenseful feat of storytelling genius that builds inexorably to an unforgettable, mind-bending conclusion.
What I loved about it: I don’t normally love narratives that bounce back and forth between the past and present, but Tremblay mastered the art of using the past to create suspense in the present: Instead of true flashbacks, the reader is given pieces of the original script, revealing the mysteries of the past by giving the present context piece by piece. This allowed for the reader to have a more dynamic and horrifying experience.
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
Published: July 16, 2024
Back of book description: From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Adam Cesare and Grady Hendrix.
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
What I loved about it: At this point, I think it’s really hard to reinvent the wheel on slasher fiction. But here comes Stephen Graham Jones, determined to prove me wrong. With a story that is equal parts sorrowful and gruesome, readers are so in love with Tolly’s character that they’re not sure if they want him to stop his killing spree … or see it through. This is one of those books that you’ll want to read and reread and read it a third time just to pick up on all the subtle shifts in character as the story unfolds.
Sacrificial Animals by Kailee Pedersen
Published: August 20, 2024
Back of book description: Inspired by Kailee Pedersen’s own journey being adopted from Nanning, China in 1996 and growing up alongside her family’s farm in Nebraska, this rich and atmospheric supernatural horror debut explores an ancient Chinese mythology.
The last thing Nick Morrow expected to receive was an invitation from his father to return home. When he left rural Nebraska behind, he believed he was leaving everything there, including his abusive father, Carlyle, and the farm that loomed so large in memory, forever.
But neither Nick nor his brother Joshua, disowned for marrying Emilia, a woman of Asian descent, can ignore such summons from their father, who hopes for a deathbed reconciliation. Predictably, Joshua and Carlyle quickly warm to each other while Nick and Emilia are left to their own devices. Nick puts the time to good use and his flirtation with Emilia quickly blooms into romance. Though not long after the affair turns intimate, Nick begins to suspect that Emilia’s interest in him may have sinister, and possibly even ancient, motivations.
Punctuated by scenes from Nick’s adolescent years, when memories of a queer awakening and a shadowy presence stalking the farm altered the trajectory of his life forever, Sacrificial Animals explores the violent legacy of inherited trauma and the total collapse of a family in its wake.
What I loved about it: The use of description! Every time I opened the book, I felt like I was there on the farm, experiencing the brutality of life inside and outside the home. Pedersen has a way of drawing the reader in with beautiful language even when what she’s describing is grotesque or horrifying. It adds to the feeling of being a fable, making the reader unsure if what the characters are experiencing is real or not.
Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker
Published: September 3, 2024
Back of book description: On the set of a kitschy reality TV show, staged scares transform into unnerving reality in this spooky ghost story from multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Sarah Pinsker.
“Don’t talk to day about what we do at night.”
When aimless twenty-something Mara lands a job as the night-shift production assistant on her cousin’s ghost hunting/home makeover reality TV show Haunt Sweet Home, she quickly determines her new role will require a healthy attitude toward duplicity. But as she hides fog machines in the woods and improvises scares to spook new homeowners, a series of unnerving incidents on set and a creepy new coworker force Mara to confront whether the person she’s truly been deceiving and hiding from all along—is herself.
Eerie and empathetic, Haunt Sweet Home is a multifaceted, supernatural exploration of finding your own way into adulthood, and into yourself.
What I loved about it: You don’t need to write an epic to get your story across—you can have tight, dynamic world-building that brings your reader in and makes them think even in smaller bites like a novella. Haunt Sweet Home is a quick read with an interesting voice, and it proves that sometimes, less is more.
Poetry
Fat Girl Magic by Kat Savage
Published: June 25, 2024
Back of book description: Fat Girl Magic is a unique dissection of the truly powerful journey from the way others perceive, label, and judge our bodies to our own discoveries, acceptance, and love we find for ourselves.
This beautifully presented edition invokes a witchcraft framework to explore the journey to self-love and acceptance in a uniquely honest way. Intended to be thought provoking and insightful, this collection will pull you from your loneliness, help you realize the magic within yourself, and welcome you into a coven of healing and the shared ideal that all bodies deserve respect, love, and space within our society.
What I loved about it: This collection straddles the line between personal essay and poetry, exploring different aspects of the author’s experiences while focusing on vivid description and imagery. If you’re not a poet but you want your voice to jump off the page, studying works like this one will help you to nail that in your own work.