By Muhammed Hashim 
Aren’t the lists featuring the best books of 2024 exciting? I wait for them and always add a big stack of books to my TBR (to be read) piles after scouring the internet for everyone’s favorite books. Here are some standouts of the year for me. Hope you enjoy them if you haven’t picked them up yet.
Best Books of 2024
I had favorite book this year and that’s Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib, which made me think, laugh, underline. It was my constant companion this year, sometimes as a comfort book (like a cuddly comfort toy) during travel, a laptop stand over the pillow when working on the bed, on display on my night stand, and more. It is duly underlined, re-read and occupied my thoughts for several days in the year.
1. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
I’ve been recommending First Lie Wins to everyone complaining about being in a reading slump. Nothing like a juicy thriller to get you back in the game. First Lie Wins follows a con woman Evie Porter who is on a mission under a fake identity. She meets a woman whose profile and name matches Porter’s real identity. But that’s just the beginning; there’s double crossing, love, secrets, murder—everything to keep you hooked!
2. Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated by Polly Barton
Everyone and their mother was reading Butter in 2024. I read an e-copy kindly sent by the publisher, but I would highly recommend buying yourself a physical copy. It is the right size, big enough and not too short. It is ideal to keep aside when you take a break to get yourself something to eat—something that you’ll be doing very often as you leaf through this book. I was shocked to learn that Butter was inspired by a true crime (the Konkatsu killer). It follows a journalist Rika Machida and an imprisoned gourmet chef Manako Kajii who killed men after seducing them with food. A killer combo with the pleasures of food colliding with misogyny. It’ll make you crave rice, butter, food.
3. The Labyrinth House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji, translated by Ho-Ling Wong
This might be my favorite among the house mysteries (The Decagon House Murders (Read on Satchel Notes #23), The Mill House Murders) by Yukito Ayatsuji. It is cozy and plain awesome.
A legendary mystery writer Miyagaki Yotaro invites four young Japanese crime writers, his editors and detective Shimada Kiyoshi to his home for his 60th birthday party. The writers must compete with one another and write four crime stories that solve their fictional murders. Each story must feature the cast gathered for the birthday party. The winner gets Yotaro’s inheritance. Things go wrong when the writers start getting murdered in the same gruesome ways as they’ve been imagining in their stories. Chilling, twisty and worth your time. It was definitely one of my best books of 2024.
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4. The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz
The first book I read in 2024 and it was a fun ride. This graphic novel follows Lady Camembert who disguises herself as a count because the law of the land states that women cannot inherit their father’s property. But her friendship with the feisty activist Princess Brie, who has an eye for fashion, might be developing into something more. This cute YA rom com about queer love and mistaken identity is a quick read. Don’t forget to keep a bowl of tomato soup and the cheesiest grilled sandwich on the side.
5. Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
I adored this cozy murder mystery set in a small town where a new, loud, disagreeable neighbor is found murdered with a crossbow struck to his heart. If there’s something you need to know about close knit communities, it is that they hate outsiders and that they will stick up for one another. Not an easy situation to find a murderer. The author is a fictional character in this story, which makes the mystery even more delicious. Not gonna lie, I googled if this was a real incident soon after reading it.
6. Maria, Just Maria Sandhya Mary, translated by Jayasree Kalathil
A quirky novel set in the Syrian Malabar community, following Maria admitted to a psychiatric facility. It is a novel about nostalgia, surrealism, societal expectations and mental illness. But I was captured most by the enormity of the cast—a toddy shop wandering grandfather, an eccentric aunt, a talking dog, saints who visit in dreams.
7. Lost Souls Meet under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura, translated by Yuki Tejima
This book is for those who know what it is like to lose a loved one. Told in five episodes, this book is about one’s wish to meet a dead person once again. A go-between can help with the meet but the rules state that you can meet only one deceased person in your lifetime. If you are dead, you can meet only one living person. This is a book about love, memories, yearning. More than the characters, it is how they remind you of yourself or someone special that make this book a winner.
8. Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib
This was my favorite book read in 2024. It is also a book I carried with me on several plane rides, reading a few pages or none at all. Somehow it felt comforting to me that this book kept me company in my backpack even when I wouldn’t read it on a trip.
I first read Airplane Mode as a non-interacting, distracted reader. I found it to be a very good book. But on my second read, it became a deeply personal experience—I found myself underlining long passages, taking photos of paragraphs and sharing it. I lost track of time once and almost missed my cab, and back home, I continued reading it over a solo candlelit dinner, and then early in the morning before having my coffee.
Airplane Mode is a book about travel from the lens of a woman of color. It gives us a history of travel, the eliteness of early travel and the rise of the modern traveler, the phenomenon of #wanderlust, and most of all, visa problems that keep you out from exploring a world demarcated by man-made borders. Brilliant!
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9. There are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
Those who are familiar with Elif Shafak would know that she is an expert in weaving together multiple plotlines into one spectacular novel. There are Rivers in the Sky is no different. Shafak brings together the ancient city of Ninevah, London in 1840, Turkey in 2014 and London in 2018 together. The prose is river-like—poetic at places, slowing flowing at others, and still at a few places. We read about dreams of people, history, cultural theft, heavy weight issues like the rise of ISIS, and climate change.
10. Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly
Greta & Valdin is one of those books that leave you satisfied when you finish reading. It is chaotic, funny, fresh and eccentric. This novel follows two Maōri-Russian-Catalonian siblings in the unconventional Vladisavljevic family in New Zealand. Queerness, secrets, and dinner table drama come together in this debut novel pitched for fans of Schitt’s Creek and Sally Rooney.
Also Read : 70+ Asian books to read in 2024
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