SUYB ~ 2017 Favorites

I decided to join Steph and Jana today for the 2017 finale of Show Us Your Books in which we'll be sharing our favorite books for the year. 

I had a hard time narrowing down all my favorite books to just one for 2017. I feel like I'm a reading snob and a book has really got to be over the top for me to dish out a 5-star rating on Goodreads. I challenged myself to reading only twenty books this year (due to a sluggish book slump at the end of 2016) and as of this writing, I actually read forty-three. Go me! Out of these forty-three, I only gave out eight 5-star ratings, so then I went back and thought about those eight books and how just over the top they really were, and I declared 2017 a TIE, y'all!! What can I say? It was the best I could do because I truly LOVED these two books.

Drum roll please...

My TWO favorite books of 2017 were...

Every. Single. Time. I recommended A Man Called Ove to a friend or reader, they told me that they loved it. To all my friends on Goodreads that read it, they also gave it 5 stars (I think I may have only seen ONE 4 star rating and I was like, what the what?). Ove was one of the very first books I read in 2017 and it set the precedent for the remainder of the year when it came to rating books. Ove is a cantankerous, old man that finds love and happiness when a young family moves in next door. The transformation he makes through the friendship and kindness of others made me laugh out loud and cry, too. Even at the same time. When a book can move you like that and gives you "all the feels," it's definitely worth reading.

I mentioned before that I had taken Wonder off my To-Be-Read list about a year ago because I couldn't seem to get into it at the time and when I found out it was the Young Adult genre, I simply lost interest. Then Alise and I saw the previews in the summer to the movie starring one of my favorite celebrities, Julia Roberts, and I decided to pick it back up again for another try. And I'm glad I did. I loved how Augie's situation brought everyone together in the end. Definitely another "all the feels" book and movie. One of Alise's good friends recently won first place in our school's reading fair with this book. 

Just in case you're curious, here are the other four books that I gave 5-star kudos to during 2017. Have you read any of these? Sorry, but I'm just too lazy today to link the books. 

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams

The Identicals by Elin Hilderbrand

I'm currently reading The Last Mrs. Parrish from Reese Witherspoon's book club.

So it's December 26th, the day after Christmas and I'm writing this post the week before. At this time, I have no idea just how our Christmas Day will go, but I'm pretty sure that it will be special and then some! Stephanie is home from France and my brother is in town. I've got plans to make another green bean casserole for our Christmas dinner and all the gifts are finally wrapped. I hope your Christmas was pretty special, too!

Happy New Year, Bookworms!