Books that didn’t quite make it to my ‘Top 10 of 2021’ list

All of these were good read, but didn’t make it to my best of 2021 list for one reason or another. You can see my list of best books of 2021 here.

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Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Castle Book 1) by Diana Wynne Jones – great audiobook and movie, but the other candidates on my best 10 list were stronger.

Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) by Frank Herbert – I was skeptical, this ended up being quite the surprise. I’m looking forward to reading the next book.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters – not the biggest fan of the plot and characters, but the writing is good, I didn’t even complain of the book’s length, not even once!

Malamander (The Legends of Eerie-on-Sea) by Thomas Taylor – a fantastic middle grade series, I highly recommend it to any middle grade fans. However, the competition with Nevermoor was fierce, so here we are.

The Thursday Murder Club: A Novel (A Thursday Murder Club Mystery) by Richard Osman – I wasn’t actually interested until it came highly recommended by a friend. Love the dynamic of part mystery solving, part revealing things about the characters.

Jade Legacy (The Green Bone Saga Book 3) by Fonda Lee – what a finale this was! My preorder arrived way too late though, I’d already done my top 10 countdown. This is it’s honorable mention.

The Sandman (Audible Original) by Neil Gaiman – might very be the best audiobook I’ve ever listened to. I’m looking forward to listening to Act II.

Project Hail Mary: A Novel by Andy Weir – the human / alien dynamic, communication, languages, etc was all fantastic. But I think my expectations were set too high after how much I loved The Martian.

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel by Amor Towles – simply because I didn’t to feature one author twice in m top 10.

The Rose Code: A Novel by Kate Quinn – I thought I’d exhausted myself on Word War II historical fiction, but turns out I just wasn’t reading the right books this year. Definitely reading more Kate Quinn next year.

What books were good but didn’t make it to your list?