Few Favorite Reads of 2018

I love the structure of my book club. We use our January meeting to select ten books for the year and our December meeting for fellowship and title reviews. We had a lovely visit this month and were even blessed with a musical offering from one member who has taken up the dulcimer. Sadly, the year wasn't one to write home about. Apart from two books that stood out as excellent reads (and indeed, made my blog favorites list), the other books were less-than-stellar. We ended up observing that 2016 was a far better year for book club selections (indeed, that year, I wrote this favorites post where I couldn't narrow them down to fewer than 16 excellent reads).

As  I perused my list from 2018, I could only come up with three young adult titles, two adult fiction titles, and one adult non-fiction title billed as highly-recommended. I'm hoping I make better use of my time and reading energies (flagging at the moment) in 2019. Here are the 2018 favorites I CAN highly recommend (for reviews, simply click on the title):

Young Adult:

Trouble by Gary D. Schmidt

Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Adult Fiction:

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Adult Non-fiction:

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

In looking back over my list of titles, I would give honorable mentions to two middle grade novels:

Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Nayor

Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm

one adult fiction title:

The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce

and three adult non-fiction titles:

The Genius Factory by David Plotz

I Can Only Imagine by Bart Millard with Robert Noland

She Has Her Mother's Laugh by Carl Zimmer

What were your favorite books read in 2018?

May your 2019 be a stellar reading year! If you add any of these books, it will certainly boost it along.