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A running ranking of the year's best books


The Names
★★★★★ A mother debates what to name her son, and her three choices create three parallel timelines in this mature and solidly composed debut.

Greg Barlin
Aug 312 min read


Night Watcher
★★★☆☆ A serial killer returns to Portland after almost twenty years to terrorize a local radio host, targeting the one person who saw him and lived.

Greg Barlin
Aug 242 min read


Finding Grace
★★★☆☆ A difficult novel to review without spoiling the story, it focuses on a family trying to have another child before a shocking event disrupts everything.

Greg Barlin
Aug 133 min read


The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest
★★★★★ A children's book about life's most difficult subject—death—told with compassion, humor and grace at a level on par (or above) any adult literature.

Greg Barlin
Aug 84 min read


The Ghostwriter
★★★★☆ A woman returns home to ghostwrite her estranged father's memoir while trying to unravel if he was responsible for the 50-year-old murder of his siblings.

Greg Barlin
Aug 83 min read


A Marriage at Sea
★★★☆☆ A British couple decide to sail from England to New Zealand in the 1970s, only to be stranded in the middle of the Pacific after a whale destroys their boat.

Greg Barlin
Aug 32 min read


My Friends
★★★★☆ Told mostly via flashbacks about four childhood friends, the novel focuses on resiliency and found family in the face of domestic violence and neglect.

Greg Barlin
Aug 24 min read


One Golden Summer
★★★★★ A photographer spends a summer at a lake house where she meets a cocksure man whose charms threaten their mutual vow of friendship.

Greg Barlin
Jul 313 min read


The Silverblood Promise
★★★★★ A strong start to a new fantasy series that can also be enjoyed as a stand-alone novel, a roguish young man travels to a distant city to solve the mystery of his father's death.

Greg Barlin
Jul 272 min read


When It All Burns
★★★☆☆ Part memoir, part history of fire, author Thomas recounts his time with the Los Padres Hotshots while positing ways to deal with megafires.

Greg Barlin
Jul 203 min read


Death at the White Hart
★★★★☆ A local publican is found dead with a crown of antlers on his head in this multi-layered mystery taking place in a small English town.

Greg Barlin
Jul 172 min read


Three Days in June
★★★★☆ A woman must set aside losing her job the day before her daughter's wedding as she navigates the intricacies of the wedding weekend.

Greg Barlin
Jul 132 min read


My Next Breath
★★★★☆ Actor Jeremy Renner recounts the harrowing events of an accident that left him with 38 broken bones and clinging to life by a thread.

Greg Barlin
Jul 113 min read


Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
★★☆☆☆ A serial killer targeting Asian women during the pandemic combines with a ghost story to form one of the more racist books I've read.

Greg Barlin
Jul 83 min read


The Three Lives of Cate Kay
★★★★★ An author who has fiercely protected her anonymity—despite writing the biggest book series on the planet—finally tells all in a memoir.

Greg Barlin
Jul 63 min read


Heartwood
★★★☆☆ The search for a missing hiker in Maine serves as the backdrop for this novel more focused on the complexities of human relationships.

Greg Barlin
Jun 303 min read


King of Ashes
★★★★★ Edgy, violent, and dark, Cosby's latest sees a successful money manager sucked into working for a sadistic gang in order to save his brother.

Greg Barlin
Jun 274 min read


Atmosphere
★★★★★ Filled with tragedy, perseverance, and love, the novel focuses on the fictional first women in the NASA space program in the early 1980s.

Greg Barlin
Jun 204 min read


Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride
★★★★☆ An Atlanta cop with a secret terminal brain tumor attempts to orchestrate his death in the line of duty to help his family financially.

Greg Barlin
Jun 204 min read


The Medusa Protocol
★★★★☆ Our assassins hell-bent on *not* killing return in a sequel to Assassins Anonymous that is satisfying but falls short of the original.

Greg Barlin
Jun 173 min read
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