Welcome to the Love Bytes Reviewers’ Best of 2020
Here at Love Bytes, we reviewed everything from contemporary romance to fantasy, paranormal, historical, adventure, mystery, comedy and everything in between in 2020. Each day for the next few weeks, we will feature one of our reviewer’s top picks from books and audio books published in 2020. With thousands of fantastic new books each year, written by hundreds of creative and talented authors, it’s so difficult to narrow our lists down. We all have many favorite authors not featured here and wish we could acknowledge them all.
Jay’s 2020 Favorites
I think it’s now a mantra I repeat every year – I just don’t have enough time in the world to read all the books! I know I missed a bunch of great books but I want to highlight what stood out with books I did get to read:
House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
T.J. Klune is now taking the larger world at storm with this release. It is showing up on ‘2020 best of’ lists outside of the MM genre. Major bookstore chains are featuring it in their stores and on major display tables. We can all say we knew him before he was popular.
Even though he wrote this novel a year before, he somehow knew we’d all need a beautiful comfort fantasy story this year: Linus is a lost soul, who doesn’t know it. And getting assigned to monitor a house for exception children and their caretaker, Arthur, turns his life-view upside down.
I also have to say Klune had another banner year with his completion of the Green Creek series with the incredibly well-written Brothersong & his start of the YA series The Extraordinaries.
Demons Do It Better (Hidden Species #1) by Louisa Masters
I love a good comedic writer and Masters has the timing down. Becoming an assistant in a very unusual office leads Sam on a crazy ride. The less you know going in, the better the story – love, comedy, mystery, and action, it is a fun romp. I’m excited to read the upcoming books in this new series.
Four Bears Construction series: (Caulky, Nailed, Hardwood, Screwed) by K.M. Neuhold
As many other reviewers have agreed, these were a great escape & fun stories. To pick a favorite out of them would be a crime.
The Hitman’s Guide to Tying the Knot Without Getting Shot (The Hitman’s Guide #3) by Alice Winters
Winters continues to create great comedic novels this year, producing quite a prolific amount of books. But this one goes back to the bones that really spring-boarded her with more people having a greater awareness of her writing and the humor is top notch as always. Sometimes not the humor everyone gets, it’s just enough over the top but not bonk you over head.
There’s still several authors that are my go-to & I’m still working on getting to their books – talking about Kim Fielding, Lane Hayes, Rhys Ford, Amy Lane, Charlie Cochet and a few others who continue to put out good books this year but I didn’t get a chance to read all their releases – they are always quality writing. As likely for each of you, my TBR list grows constantly from these lists.