My favorite book of 2024 so far

I challenge you to challenge me

Can we all agree that this year’s releases have been some of the best books we’ve seen in years? I typically read more backlist titles than new releases, but the 2024 books I’ve read so far have all been outstanding — and I haven’t even read James or Martyr! or The Women yet.

There was Claire Lombardo’s Same As It Ever Was — an absolute stunner of a read that I don’t think has garnered enough attention or accolades.

There was Miranda July’s All Fours — a raunchy, riotous novel that compelled my bff to send me this text:

And then there was Blue Sisters by Coco Mellors. I read this book and everything changed.

If you haven’t heard her name or seen the unforgettable covers of her two books, Coco’s 2022 debut novel Cleopatra and Frankenstein was a massive hit, having been optioned by Warner Bros TV and selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Blue Sisters is her second novel, released in the US in early September. It was an instant New York Times bestseller.

When I say I didn’t want this novel to end, I mean I wanted to crawl into the very pages of the book so I would never have to face the day my first time reading it was over. I knew I was in love after the first paragraph of the prologue, which opens with the line, “A sister is not a friend,” and closes with:

“Look at an umbilical cord — tough, sinuous, unlovely, yet essential — and compare it to a friendship bracelet of brightly woven thread. That is the difference between a sister and a friend.”

It’s the perfect opener for this story about the four Blue sisters, one of whom died a year ago and the remaining three of whom are trying to learn how to live in the wake of a horrendous, surprising loss.

The book is a stunningly choreographed waltz between four very different women. It follows Avery, a recovering heroin addict turned lawyer who lives with her wife in England (“She does not know it yet, but in a few weeks, she will implode her life and marriage in ways she didn’t think possible”); Bonnie, the second sister, a former boxer turned bouncer in Los Angeles who “can get ice out of the tray without bashing it on the counter”; and the youngest, Lucky, a model living in Paris who “has said the words I need a drink one hundred and thirty-two times so far this year. That’s more than she’s said I love you in her entire life.”

Nicky came between Bonnie and Lucky before dying at age 27. We only see her in memory.

The four-page prologue is enough of a story in itself, as evidenced in the above one-liners that seem to say everything we need to know about those characters. It’s the most efficient and evocative prologue I can think of. Fortunately, Coco did not leave us there, but rather gave us 332 more pages to read about the Blue sisters.

A year after Nicky’s death, Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky reconvene in their family apartment in New York to pack up Nicky’s things and try to mend their tumultuous relationship, now an imbalanced trio after decades of being a quartet. What follows is a vulnerable story told in the most gorgeous prose I’ve read this year.

Despite the title, despite the opener, despite the premise being a story of four sisters — this is not simply a story about sisterhood. It also touches on grief and addiction. And it touches heavily on hope.

The prologue ends with this banger:

“But what they don’t know is this: As long as you are alive, it is never too late to be found.”

Author Coco Mellors is very open about her sobriety. This I learned after binge listening to every podcast interview of hers I could find. She got sober in her twenties and now, in her thirties, she writes about addiction with grace and beauty.

“Addiction whirred through all of them like electricity through a circuit,” she writes.

While I’ve read about addiction before, I’ve never read a book that talks about AA to the extent this one does, nor have I read a story with as much hope around the subject.

Take this scene with Avery mid-way through the book:

“You know what I think really makes me an addict?” she asked. “It’s not how many drugs I took or how much I drank. It’s not even the lying.”

“What?”

She inhaled so deeply that her lungs burned.

“I find what gives me pleasure and I do it until it gives me pain,” she said. “Every time.”

Charlie looked at her with his funny half smile.

“Yeah, but how else would you know when to stop?”

This feels so real, and perhaps it is. Coco’s own experience with addiction and sobriety gives her a command of the brittle subject matter such that she can write honestly, powerfully, unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

She says in an interview with The Guardian: “Addiction is a theme I never really chose to write about, but I cannot escape it.”

I wouldn’t want her to.

Something else I adored in Blue Sisters is how often Coco writes about light:

She could “trace the outline of a half-moon hidden behind a fleece of clouds” and the “streetlamps outside casting long orange streaks across the floor” and “the evening sun stretched lazily across the bed in golden bars.”

Perhaps these references are metaphors to the undercurrent of hope that runs through the story, even during the most vulnerable, ugly times.

“His face was beautiful in its contradictions,” the book reads. Blue Sisters, my favorite book of the year, is beautiful in the same way.

What are you reading? Have you read Blue Sisters yet? What has been your favorite 2024 release? Please challenge my favorite so I can add even more books to my TBR!

What I’m reading: I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris by Glynnis MacNicol.

Love,

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