The Best of 2024 – Dolly’s List

It’s been a busy year… but not too busy to read some good stuff. My typical go-to is romantic suspense, but I was surprised to discover my favorites from 2024 are vastly different from my norm, and from each other. Here they are!

Hannah Nicole Maehrer hit the scene last year with the first book in her Assistant and the Villain series, Assistant to the Villain. I read it on Kindle Unlimited the week before the second one, Apprentice to the Villain, released in August, and halfway through told my husband I was adding the series to my Christmas list. And wouldn’t you know it, two days later both print editions showed up on my desk with a hearty kiss from the mister. The series opens with Evie Sage taking a job as the assistant to the Villain, a vile and evil man who’s been terrorizing the Rennedawn countryside in his long-running battle with the King. Chapter One of the first book opens like this: “There were severed heads hanging from the ceiling again.” Come on, how can you not be drawn in? We quickly learn that Evie isn’t so innocent and fair, and the Villain isn’t so evil and dangerous. This dichotomy plays well in a very chaste romance where our main characters show their affection through action and deeds – yet it is still swoon worthy. The first book ends with the Villain being captured by King Benedict’s royal guards, profoundly changing the trajectory of Evie’s goodness (or, rather, evilness). By the time Apprentice to the Villain opens, little time has passed, and plans are underway to spring the boss. Evie’s evolution from sweet apprentice to evil apprentice in training is in full swing, and it is so refreshing to cheer for the bad guys. Because in Rennedawn, there’s a thin line between the good guys and the bad, and once you know the truth of it, the Villain is the clear hero. Maehrer displays brilliant world building and storytelling skills, bolstering them with a just… sheer fun factor. This series is so different and smart. It’s full of a robust cast of secondary characters that amplify the fun rather than bogging it down with too many PoVs. After a harrowing political season in the real world, fans of fantasy romances will find a shero in Evie Sage.

I’ve been enrolled in a certificate program at NYU for the last two years, and in the spring will complete my certificate in Television & Film Screenwriting. I think that’s why I was so drawn to Yulin Kuang’s début contemporary, How to End A Love Story. In the real world, Kuang is a screenwriter and adapted Emily Henry’s rom-com, People We Meet on Vacation, (among others) for film. I can tell you from experience, writing novels and screenplays employs completely different skillsets and storytelling methodology, and in her novel, Kuang soars. How to End A Love Story is a redemptive tale of two writers working on the same television show who know each other from childhood and shared a traumatic experience in high school: Helen Zhang’s sister stepped out into traffic one fateful night, and Grant Shepard’s was the vehicle that struck and killed her. It’s shocking, to say the least, and creates a filter through which the rest of their lives peer. They reconnect as adults in Hollywood, when Grant is hired as the showrunner for the tv adaptation of Zhang’s successful YA series. They must learn to work together professionally, which means revisiting their personal pasts. The process is very satisfying.

Since I loved Juliette Cross’ Stay a Spell series, I swept up the opportunity to read the first book in her Rise of Northgall series, The Wraith King. This gothic romantasy was way out of my norm, but it turned out to be one of my favorites. That tells me that the best part of the book was actually Cross, herself, and her creative storytelling imagination. Here’s what I said in my review: “This is a dark, sexy and epic tale of love and loss, with much at stake for everyone involved. It’s violent and brutal and in your face, and it’s filled with palace intrigue and prophecy.” And now, as I write this in November, with the future looming and counting on a new administration that distrusts and discounts anything it considers as ‘other’, you can see how it turned out for the Wraith King Gollaya Verbane, who initially discounted the strength and importance of Princess Una Hartstone of Issos. She turned out to be the badass who saved the world, vagina and all. The future is female, y’all, despite the patriarchy in place that only saw her as a pawn.