The holiday season is almost here. While we may not be able to gather together to celebrate this year, there are still plenty of ways to remind our loved ones we’re thinking of them. If you’re looking for a little gift inspiration, we believe there’s nothing like finding a book perfectly tailored to our friends’ and family members’ interests. There's a book out there for every person in your life. Here are some of our favorites from 2020.
For the rom-com lover: Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
Tweet Cute is the most deliciously readable book published this year. Tweet Cute follows Pepper and Jack as they navigate the stress of college applications, co-captaining their Upper East Side high school’s swim and dive teams and a viral Twitter war between their families’ competing food joints.
While Pepper secretly runs her family’s thriving fast food chain Big League Burger’s Twitter account, Jack occasionally checks into the dwindling account for his family’s local New York City deli Girl Cheesing. When Jack accuses Big League Burger of stealing Girl Cheesing’s secret grilled cheese recipe, their IRL feud is suddenly the internet squabble du jour. As Pepper and Jack try to one-up each other with sassy comebacks and pitch-perfect memes, people following the feud start shipping them online. Much to their dismay.
Little do Pepper and Jack know, though, they’re also falling for each other on an anonymous chat app designed by Jack.
What could possibly go wrong?
Buy Tweet Cute: Bookshop.org, Indiebound or Barnes and Noble.
For the horror movie fan: The Return by Rachel Harrison
After vanishing during a solo hike without a trace, everybody has given up hope that Julie will ever be found. Well, except Julie’s best friend Elise, that is. Despite all evidence suggesting otherwise, Elise believes—no, she knows—that Julie is still out there somewhere.
Exactly two years after Julie’s mysterious disappearance, Elise is proven right when Julie returns home without any memory of where she's been for all that time.
In an effort to heal and reconnect with each other, Elise and Julie plan a girls’ trip with their college friends Molly and Mae at the remote Red Honey Inn. As soon as the four women reunite, however, it's obvious that something is wrong with Julie. She's emaciated, with sallow skin and odd appetites—like craving raw meat after years of vegetarianism.
As the weekend unfolds (with a number of odd and disturbing occurrences at the Inn), Elise, Molly and Mae must come to terms with the fact that the Julie they know and love is not the same Julie who came back. But then who—or what—is she now?
Buy The Return: Bookshop.org, Indiebound.org or Barnes and Noble.
For the friend who bought too many house plants during quarantine: Plant Inspiration by Mary Rose Amoresano
In Plant Inspiration, Mary Rose Amoresano finds abundant inspiration in the care and beauty of house plants. Packed with stunning illustrations and words of wisdom, you might just find yourself buying one—or five—house plants of your own when you’re finished reading this delightfully charming book.
The best part? Each gorgeous page in Plant Inspiration doubles as a pop-out print you can use to brighten up your home. There’s even a cardboard frame included in the back of the book to help you get started, too.
Equal parts bright and whimsical, Plant Inspiration shows its readers the many lessons to be learned from taking time out of our busy lives to care for plants.
Buy Plant Inspiration: bookshop.org, IndieBound, or Barnes & Noble.
For the friend who loves a good page-turner: When No One Is Watching by Alyssa Cole
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing.
To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
Buy When No One Is Watching: Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, or IndieBound.
For the royal watcher in your life: The Heir Affair by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Five years after their beloved debut novel The Royal We hit shelves, Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan are back with the highly anticipated sequel The Heir Affair. Loosely based on the courtship of Kate Middleton and Prince William, They Royal We left readers wanting more of Bex and Nick’s complicated royal fairytale. In The Heir Affair, readers will finally find out what happens after 'happily ever after.’
Following the scandal that ruined their royal wedding, Nick and Bex are in self-imposed exile. The public is angry. The Queen is even angrier. And the press is salivating. Cutting themselves off from friends and family, and escaping the world's judgmental eyes, feels like the best way to protect their fragile, all-consuming romance.
But when a crisis forces the new Duke and Duchess back to London, the Band-Aid they'd placed over their problems starts to peel at the edges. Now, as old family secrets and new ones threaten to derail her new royal life, Bex has to face the emotional wreckage she and Nick left behind: with the Queen, with the world, and with Nick's brother Freddie, whose sins may not be so easily forgotten—nor forgiven.
Buy The Heir Affair: Indiebound, Bookshop.org, or Barnes & Noble.
For the person who wants to get lost in another world: Hush by Dylan Farrow
Seventeen-year-old Shae has led a seemingly quiet life, joking with her best friend Fiona, and chatting with Mads, the neighborhood boy who always knows how to make her smile. All while secretly keeping her fears at bay… Of the disease that took her brother’s life. Of how her dreams seem to bleed into reality around her. Of a group of justice seekers called the Bards who claim to use the magic of Telling to keep her community safe.
When her mother is murdered, she can no longer pretend.
Not knowing who to trust, Shae journeys to unlock the truth, instead finding a new enemy keen to destroy her, a brooding boy with dark secrets, and an untold power she never thought possible.
From Dylan Farrow comes Hush, a powerful fantasy where one girl is determined to remake the world.
Buy Hush: bookshop.org, IndieBound, or Barnes & Noble.
For the music lover in your life: More than Maybe by Erin Hahn
Growing up in his punk rocker dad’s spotlight, eighteen-year-old Luke Greenly knows fame and wants nothing to do with it. His real love isn’t in front of a crowd, it’s on the page. Hiding his gift and secretly hoarding songs in his bedroom at night, he prefers the anonymous comfort of the locally popular podcast he co-hosts with his outgoing and meddling, far-too-jealousy-inspiringly-happy-with-his-long-term-boyfriend twin brother, Cullen. But that’s not Luke’s only secret. He also has a major un-requited crush on music blogger, Vada Carsewell.
Vada’s got a five-year plan: secure a job at the Loud Lizard to learn from local legend (and her mom’s boyfriend) Phil Josephs (check), take over Phil’s music blog (double check), get accepted into Berkeley’s prestigious music journalism program (check, check, check), manage Ann Arbor’s summer concert series and secure a Rolling Stone internship. Luke Greenly is most definitely NOT on the list. So what if his self-deprecating charm and out of this world music knowledge makes her dizzy? Or his brother just released a bootleg recording of Luke singing about some mystery girl on their podcast and she really, really wishes it was her?
In More Than Maybe, Erin Hahn’s swooniest book yet, Luke and Vada must decide how deep their feelings run and what it would mean to give love a try.
Buy More Than Maybe: Indiebound.org, Barnes & Noble, or Bookshop.org.
For fans of modern historical fiction: The Black Kids by Christina Hammonds Reed
Los Angeles, 1992
Ashley Bennett and her friends are living the charmed life. It’s the end of senior year and they’re spending more time at the beach than in the classroom. They can already feel the sunny days and endless possibilities of summer.
Everything changes one afternoon in April, when four LAPD officers are acquitted after beating a black man named Rodney King half to death. Suddenly, Ashley’s not just one of the girls. She’s one of the black kids.
As violent protests engulf LA and the city burns, Ashley tries to continue on as if life were normal. Even as her self-destructive sister gets dangerously involved in the riots. Even as the model black family façade her wealthy and prominent parents have built starts to crumble. Even as her best friends help spread a rumor that could completely derail the future of her classmate and fellow black kid, LaShawn Johnson.
With her world splintering around her, Ashley, along with the rest of LA, is left to question who is the us? And who is the them?
Buy The Black Kids: bookshop.org, Indiebound, or Barnes & Noble. Happy reading!
For that one person who’d always rather be on a beach somewhere: Summer Longing by Jamie Brenner
In Summer Longing, Jamie Brenner brings the magic and beauty of Provincetown, Massachusetts—as well as a side of intrigue—right to you.
Ruth Cooperman is ready for a change. A big one. At 58-years-old, she’s sold her successful beauty business and her home in Philadelphia in the hopes of starting over in Provincetown. Not close with her adult daughter, Olivia, or her ex-husband, Ben, Ruth is prepared for a carefree summer on her own. Once she arrives in her new home, however, she finds fate has other plans for her.
On her first night in Provincetown, Ruth discovers a newborn baby girl on the doorstep of her rental home with no note or information about where she came from. The tight-knit community quickly comes to her aid, accepting both the baby and Ruth as one of their own.
As the summer unfolds, there’s only two questions on everybody’s mind—who left the baby on Ruth’s doorstep and why?
Buy Summer Longing: Bookshop.org, IndieBound, or Barnes & Noble.
For the gothic novel fan: Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.
Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.
Buy Catherine House: bookshop.org, Indiebound, or Barnes & Noble.
For more holiday gift ideas, check out all the other books we highlighted this year on Sit Down & Write.
Happy holidays!