How do you decide your favorites of the year? I have several things I look at. First, I look at my Favorites by Month. Then I try to narrow down my Top 15 Books of the Year. There were others that were so good, I had to mention them Honorable Mention. Next, I wanted to find My Favorite Series of the Year — I had many. And finally, I listened to quite a few audios this year, but none were as good as my Favorite of the Year.
FAVORITES BY MONTH
January
The Golden Dynasty (Fantasyland, #2) by Kristen Ashley
Fighting Solitude (On the Ropes, #3) by Aly Martinez
The Unwanted Wife (Unwanted, #1) by Natasha Anders
Adore (Spiral of Bliss, #4) by Nina Lane
Arrive (Spiral of Bliss, #3.5) by Nina Lane
The Paper Swan by Leylah Attar
Happily Ever Ninja (Knitting in the City, #5) by Penny Reid
February
Target on Our Backs (Monster in His Eyes, #3) by J.M. Darhower
Torture to Her Soul (Monster in His Eyes, #2) by J.M. Darhower
Low (Low, #1) by Mary Elizabeth
March
Paper Princess (The Royals, #1) by Erin Watt
Love, Chloe by Alessandra Torre
April
Seeds of Iniquity (In the Company of Killers, #4) by J.A. Redermeski
The Empty Jar by M. Leighton
Sidebarred (The Legal Briefs, #3.5) by Emma Chase
May
Ricochet (Vigilantes, #1) by Keri Lake
Grin and Beard It (Winston Brothers, #2) by Penny Reid
Behind the Hands That Kill (In the Company of Killers, #6) by J.A. Redmerski
The Spiral Down (The Fall Up, #2) by Aly Martinez
The Black Wolf (In the Company of Killers, #5) by J.A. Redmerski
June
Always (Spiral of Bliss, #5) by Nina Lane
July
Midnight Soul (Fantasyland, #5) by Kristen Ashley
Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino
Steadfast (True North, #2) by Sarina Bowen
August
Unbreak My Heart (Fostering Love, #1) by Nicole Jacquelyn
All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
September
The Silent Waters (Elements, #3) by Brittainy C. Cherry
The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1) by Suanne Laqueur
October
Beard Science (Winston Brothers, #3) by Penny Reid
Thief of Hearts (Hearts, #5) by L.H. Cosway
November
From Sand and Ash by Amy Harmon
FAVORITE SERIES OF 2016
The Royals series by Erin Watt
Fantasyland series by Kristen Ashley
Spiral of Bliss series by Nina Lane
Winston Brothers by Penny Reid
The Fish Tales series by Suanne Laqueur
Vigilantes series by Keri Lake
Monster in His Eyes series by J. M. Darhower
In the Company of Killers series by J.A. Redmerski
Low series by Mary Elizabeth
FAVORITE AUDIO OF 2016
The Golden Dynasty by Kristen Ashley
HONORABLE MENTION
The Paper Swan by Leylah Attar
Low (Low, #1) by Mary Elizabeth
Sidebarred (The Legal Briefs, #3.5) Emma Chase
Grin and Beard It (Winston Brothers, #2) by Penny Reid
Broken Prince (The Royals, #2) by Erin Watt
Steadfast by Sarina Bowen
The Silent Waters (Elements, #3) by Brittainy C. Cherry
The Unwanted Wife (Unwanted, #1) by Natasha Anders
Unbreak My Heart (Fostering Love, #1) by Nicole Jacquelyn
Thief of Hearts (Hearts, #5) by L.H. Cosway
FAVORITE 15 BOOKS READ IN 2016
❝ I wonder sometimes what would happen if everyone without a choice had made a choice anyway. If we all chose not to participate. Not to be bullied. Not to take up arms. Not to persecute. What would happen then?❞
#1 From Sand and Ash by Amy HarmonItaly, 1943—Germany occupies much of the country, placing the Jewish population in grave danger during World War II.
As children, Eva Rosselli and Angelo Bianco were raised like family but divided by circumstance and religion. As the years go by, the two find themselves falling in love. But the church calls to Angelo and, despite his deep feelings for Eva, he chooses the priesthood.
Now, more than a decade later, Angelo is a Catholic priest and Eva is a woman with nowhere to turn. With the Gestapo closing in, Angelo hides Eva within the walls of a convent, where Eva discovers she is just one of many Jews being sheltered by the Catholic Church.
But Eva can’t quietly hide, waiting for deliverance, while Angelo risks everything to keep her safe. With the world at war and so many in need, Angelo and Eva face trial after trial, choice after agonizing choice, until fate and fortune finally collide, leaving them with the most difficult decision of all.
❝There’s no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.❞
#2 It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover
Sometimes the one who loves you is the one who hurts you the most
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up – she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, and maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily, but Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing.
As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan – her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
With this bold and deeply personal novel, Colleen Hoover delivers a heart-wrenching story that breaks exciting new ground for her as a writer. It Ends With Us is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.
This book contains graphic scenes and very sensitive subject matter.
❝He smelled like love.❞
#3 All the Ugly and Wonderful Things by Bryn Greenwood
As the daughter of a meth dealer, Wavy knows not to trust people, not even her own parents. Struggling to raise her little brother, eight-year-old Wavy is the only responsible “adult” around. She finds peace in the starry Midwestern night sky above the fields behind her house. One night everything changes when she witnesses one of her father’s thugs, Kellen, a tattooed ex-con with a heart of gold, wreck his motorcycle. What follows is a powerful and shocking love story between two unlikely people that asks tough questions, reminding us of all the ugly and wonderful things that life has to offer.
❝I could not dream a better you.❞ ❝A better wife, a better queen. Not even in a dream could I create better than you.❞
#4 The Golden Dynasty by Kristen Ashley
Circe Quinn goes to sleep at home and wakes up in a corral filled with women wearing sacrificial virgin attire – and she is one of them. She soon finds out that she’s not having a wild dream, she’s living a frightening nightmare where she’s been transported to a barren land populated by a primitive people and in short order, she’s installed very unwillingly on her white throne of horns as their Queen.
Dax Lahn is the king of Suh Tunak, The Horde of the nation of Korwahk and with one look at Circe, he knows she will be his bride and together they will start The Golden Dynasty of legend.
Circe and Lahn are separated by language, culture and the small fact she’s from a parallel universe and has no idea how she got there or how to get home. But facing challenge after challenge, Circe finds her footing as Queen of the brutal Korwahk Horde and wife to its King, then she makes friends then she finds herself falling in love with this primitive land, its people and especially their savage leader.
❝You’re all I have left. You’re holding my world together, Em❞
#5 Swear on This Life by Renee Carlino
When a bestselling debut novel from mysterious author J.Colby becomes the literary event of the year, Emiline reads it reluctantly. As an adjunct writing instructor at UC San Diego with her own stalled literary career and a bumpy long-term relationship, Emiline isn’t thrilled to celebrate the accomplishments of a young and gifted writer.
Yet from the very first page, Emiline is entranced by the story of Emerson and Jackson, two childhood best friends who fall in love and dream of a better life beyond the long dirt road that winds through their impoverished town in rural Ohio.
That’s because the novel is patterned on Emiline’s own dark and desperate childhood, which means that “J. Colby” must be Jase: the best friend and first love she hasn’t seen in over a decade. Far from being flattered that he wrote the novel from her perspective, Emiline is furious that he co-opted her painful past and took some dramatic creative liberties with the ending.
The only way she can put her mind at ease is to find and confront “J. Colby,” but is she prepared to learn the truth behind the fiction?
❝You’re my beginning, middle and end.❞
#6 Beard Science by Penny Reid
Make a deal with the devil and you might get what you want, but will it be what you need?
Jennifer Sylvester wants one thing, and that one thing is NOT to be Tennessee’s reigning Banana Cake Queen. Ever the perpetual good girl and obedient daughter, Jennifer is buckling under the weight of her social media celebrity, her mother’s ambitions, and her father’s puritanical mandates. Jennifer is officially desperate.
And desperate times call for Cletus Winston.
Cletus Winston is a puzzle wrapped in a mystery covered in conundrum sauce, and now he’s in a pickle. Despite being convinced of his own omniscience, extortion by the exalted Banana Cake Queen of Green Valley has taken him completely by surprise. So… what’s a maniacal mastermind to do?
Likely, the last thing you expect.
‘Beard Science’ is the third book in the Winston Brothers series, is a full-length romantic comedy novel, and can be read as a standalone.
❝Evan Roth had just become my favorite drug of all and I hadn’t even tasted him yet.❞
#7 The Spiral Down by Aly Martinez
I was afraid to fly.
He made me soar.
After years of climbing the ladder of success in the music industry, I finally had everything I could want.
Yet I still found myself wandering through life alone.Captain Evan Roth was the one man I never saw coming.
Tall, dark, mysterious… Straight.We were both damaged beyond repair and searching for something so elusive we weren’t sure it even existed.
But, when two broken souls collide in midair, falling is a given.
I just never expected to crave the spiral down.
❝Like it or not, she made you the man you are. And you never got over her. You just left.❞
#8 The Man I Love by Suanne Laqueur
The man is Erik “Fish” Fiskare, a student of technical theatre at a Philadelphia university. At twenty-two, he is the lover and soul mate of Daisy Bianco, a beautiful and talented ballerina. His best friend is William Kaeger, Daisy’s charismatic, free-spirited partner.
While deeply in love with Daisy and astonished by their physical passion, Erik is fascinated by Will’s bisexuality. But when Will embarks on a disastrous affair with a dancer named James Dow, it pushes Erik’s tolerance and trust to the limit. Rejection soon pushes James over the edge of sanity, taking Will and Daisy with him and leaving Erik in the ruins.
The young stagehand soon discovers that in the face of heartache, grief and betrayal, love is not always enough to make you stay. And sometimes, it’s the only thing that can bring you back.
Spanning fifteen years and following a man’s thrilling emotional journey back to the truth of himself, Laqueur’s debut novel explores the complexities of sexual passion, the dark side of devotion and the futility of running from one’s past. The Man I Love is an epic tale of love and forgiveness that will linger long after the last page is turned.
❝Together we’ll always be a white knight and his beauty who battled monsters and won.❞
#9 Always by Nina Lane
Without darkness, there can be no light.
Dean has always been Liv’s white knight. Not once has he retreated from battle. Not once has he failed to keep his wife safe. Not once has he broken his promise to slay monsters for her.
Then Dean encounters a monster he can’t destroy. A monster he can’t even face. And for the first time ever, there is nothing he can do to protect the woman who owns his heart.
The love story of Liv and Dean West that started with AROUSE and continued in ALLURE, AWAKEN, and ADORE now comes to a breathtaking conclusion as the professor and his beauty fight the battle of their lives.
❝Reed Royal, my very own dragon slayer.❞
#10 Paper Princess by Erin Watt
From strip clubs and truck stops to southern coast mansions and prep schools, one girl tries to stay true to herself.
These Royals will ruin you…
Ella Harper is a survivor—a pragmatic optimist. She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone.
Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.
Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals.
He might be right.
Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.
❝…death would’ve been easier. Living … now, that’s where the bullet hides its poison.❞
#11 Ricochet by Keri Lake
The only sure way to destroy a man is to take what he cannot live without.
Three years ago, I had everything.
A beautiful wife.
A son.
A reason for living.Until a ruthless task force, assembled under Mayor Michael Culling, with a brutal strategy to make the streets of Detroit ‘safe’, ripped away everything I loved in a deadly hunt called The Culling.
They tried to kill me, too. I wish they had. Now I’m cursed by the memories of that night, and the words I whispered to my dying wife.
A promise—to avenge the wrong and set it right.
I’m no longer Nick Ryder. I’m a masked vigilante. Faceless. Loveless. Fearless. A man with nothing left to lose—one who’s seen the dark and violent truth behind the city’s flawless veneer.
Michael Culling doesn’t know who I am. Or what I want. All he knows is that I’ve kidnapped his beautiful wife.
An eye for an eye—isn’t that how the saying goes? And Aubree Culling is the perfect pawn to destroy him.
If she doesn’t destroy me first.
❝You love me.❞
❝Every. Single. Day.❞
#12 Fighting Solitude by Aly Martinez
I was born a fighter. Abandoned by my parents, I spent my life forging my own path—one guided by my fists and paved with pain.
Untouchable in the ring, I destroyed everyone who faced me, but that’s where my victories ended. Outside the ropes, I repeatedly failed the few people who loved me. Including my best friend, Liv James—the one person I’d die to protect.
Even though I didn’t deserve her, Liv never stopped believing in me. Never gave up. Never let go. After all, she understood what I’d lost, because she’d lost it too.
Liv was everything to me, but she was never truly mine.
That was going to change.
I lost my first love, but I refused to lose my soulmate.
Now, I’m on the ropes during the toughest battles of my life.
Fighting to be the man she deserves.
Fighting the solitude of our pasts.
Fighting for her.
❝We share a kind of love that picks you up when you stumble, the kind of love that catches you when you fall, the kind of love that rescues you when you need saving,. The real kind of love.❞
#13 The Empty Jar by M. Leighton
Three months touring Europe.
Romantic. Dazzling. Unforgettable.
The trip of a lifetime.But some lifetimes are shorter…
We couldn’t have known it would work out this way.
No one could. No one could’ve guessed that something so beautiful could be so tragic.But it is tragic.
Yet so, so beautiful.
That’s what sacrifice is—beauty and tragedy.
It’s pain and suffering for something or someone you love.And this is the ultimate sacrifice.
One stunning act of true love.This is our story.
Our true love story.
❝I’ll always come back for you.❞
#14 Target on Our Backs by J.M. Darhower
The best way to keep your word is never to give it.
Not long ago, in a chapel in Vegas, I swore to love Karissa for the rest of my days. But nobody’s promised an infinite number of tomorrows. Nobody’s promised forever. Sometimes, all we have left is today.
Carpe Diem
Seize the day.It should’ve been over, we should’ve been happy, but people are making it hard for me to live in peace. I’ve got so much blood on my hands they’ll never be clean, and somebody out there seems to want me to pay for it. Happily Ever After always comes at a cost, one any real man would be willing to pay. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to roll over and accept these consequences.
Because when it comes to the woman I love? The life I’ve fought for?
Nobody is safe.
❝The stars will die before we do, Izabel…❞ She smiles. ❝I know they will,❞ she whispers.
#15 Behind the Hands that Kill by J. A. Redmerski
Even professional killers need vacations, but for Victor Faust, his vacation in Venezuela is about more than relaxation and time alone with Izabel Seyfried. It is a chance for him to come clean to Izabel: to tell her the truth about why he sent her to Italy with his brother, the truth behind his interest in Nora Kessler, and about his knowledge of Izabel’s child with her former captor. But before Victor can spill his soul, reality proves that for some killers, vacations are just pipe-dreams.
Attacked and kidnapped, Izabel finds herself stuffed in a suitcase, while Victor later wakes up imprisoned in a cage. In any other situation, Victor would find a way out and save himself and the woman he loves—but not this time. When the identities of their kidnappers are revealed, Victor loses all hope, and begins the mental process of accepting his and Izabel’s last moments together. And Izabel’s final moments of life.
As if his circumstances are not complicated enough, members of Vonnegut’s Order are finally closing in on Victor. And when they do, he comes face-to-face with someone else he once knew and loved, who could either help him, or make a grave situation much worse. Victor’s past has finally caught up with him: the women he has cared for, loved, and killed; the families he has destroyed; the unforgivable crimes he has committed. And now he must face the consequences, and pay the ultimate price for absolution.
But when it is all over, Victor may not have the strength to pick up what is left and move on. Because the event changes him. Because love changed him. And because, unlike before when he thought it is was for the best, he cannot imagine a life without Izabel in it.
WANT MORE FAVORITES?
Head over to relentless romance ✯ Dirty Girl Romance ✯ Stacey is sassy ✯ THE CRAZY WORLD OF A BOOK LOVER ✯ rachel reads ravenously ✯ smokin’ hot book blog ✯ read more sleep less ✯ the racy lit reader ✯ vanilla and spice books ✯ smokin hot book blog ✯ i love book love✯ night owl reader and read their Favorites of 2016 (Keep checking as more will be added soon)!
Such a great List, Angela!
Thank you, Geri! So many great books!