18 Dec Page One Media’s Favorite Books We’ve Read In 2024!

If you were to peer behind the P1M curtain at our team, you wouldn’t find six wizards, you would find six bookworms. It is that fact that drives us to do the work we do here at P1M—working to create the best possible promotional campaigns for our authors and books. Being bookworms, though, also means that even when we aren’t reading for work, we are likely still reading! So, we thought we would bring you some of the non-P1M projects our team loved this year, and as a bonus, you might even find a book or two to fill those last-minute gifting needs.  

Sarah recommends: The Slow Road North by Rosie Schapp (Mariner, Aug. 2024) & Prophet Song by Paul Lynch (Atlantic Monthly Press, Dec. 2023)

These two books are a pair for only one reason, they both take place in Ireland. Schapp’s in Northern Ireland and Lynch’s in a near future Republic of Ireland that we hope never comes to pass. Schapp’s book is a hopeful balm. It’s the true story of the passing of her young husband, her grief, and the space to grieve that she finds in a country, seaside town on the North Coast. It’s achingly sad in moments and also expansively beautiful. The wild beauty of the North Coast is the background to rebuilding a life in a town that has, in many ways, become a shadow of itself but that you can feel is on the verge of rebirth. Lynch’s book is by far the most challenging and terrifying book I’ve read in many years. Set in an indeterminant but near future Ireland where a violent, fascist government has taken over. It shows us the small and deeply frightening steps on the path to losing our free will. To the ways in which our expectations of normalcy blind us to the realities of what’s happening around us. I’ll forewarn potential readers, I didn’t sleep the night I finished this book and recommend that you might want to only read it in daylight hours. Lynch’s prose is so real, so possible, so deeply frightening because what he is describing is  happening right now in hotspots around the world. 

Laura recommends: The Anthropologists by Ayşegül Savaş (Bloomsbury, July 2024)

The Anthropologists is a book that forced me to slow down and to savor the beauty of everyday life, something that is incredibly difficult to do in our fast-paced world, with the daily pressures to produce and achieve (often at a rapid pace). The Anthropologists follows a young couple finding their “home” in an unnamed, foreign city, and Savaş articulates ordinary, everyday routines with beauty and grace.  She deftly explores themes of identity and place, kinship and friendship, motherhood and writing, which resonates with my own life as a mother trying to balance work/parenting/friendships/creativity. Savaş asks us to pay attention to the surprising beauty of ordinary moments, and to remain engaged and curious. A welcome book in a chaotic year. 

Laci recommends:  Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (FSG, Sept. 2024)

I should offer a disclaimer before recommending Intermezzo: I’ve been a Rooney head since 2017 when Normal People was only available by special order from the UK, so this pick from me was really to be expected. Frankly, there was no way I could be asked my favorite book of 2024 without saying Intermezzo. I could go on and on about this book, but there is little left to be said about what was one of the biggest books of the year. So, I will leave you with this: I loved this book for a multitude of reasons, but chief among them were the representation of strained, age-gap, sibling relationships (which is so spot on I’m still thinking about it four months later), the examination of grief and how we wade through the world in its wake, the father/son relationship, the mother/son relationship, and how one of the main characters reminds me so much of Septimius Smith I had to pause and reorient myself when he waxed poetic quoting Shakespeare (Honestly? This book is so Woolfian in general it makes my heart flutter). I will spare you now, though, and leave you something to discover of this beautiful book for yourself.   

(I wrote a full review if you would like to read more at: https://bit.ly/3ZMcD6Z) 

Isabella recommends: The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister (Counterpoint Press, Oct. 2024)

I found this book in the fall and fell in love with it from the first page. It has some of my favorite gothic tropes —creepy houses, ancient pacts, vengeful, supernatural forces—and five wonderfully dysfunctional characters trying to rebuild their lives after the death of their father. I highly recommend The Bog Wife for fans of gothic fiction and fairytales. 

Margot recommends: We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian (Avon, June 2023)

A “He falls first, he falls harder,” friends to lovers, grumpy/sunshine, romance with a bustling newsroom for a setting, what more could you want! (A cat perhaps? Don’t worry). I have loved Cat Sebastian’s books for years, but We Could Be So Good pulled me into the not-always-great world of 1950s New York City and didn’t let go until the end of the acknowledgements. Nick Russo is a hardworking reporter from Brooklyn always grinding for the story and the promotion, Andy Fleming is the son of the newspaper owner who knows nothing about how to run it. When Andy is put at the desk to start preparing for his eventual takeover, the last thing Nick expects is to fall for him… 

Poppy recommends: Biography of X by Catherine Lacey (FSG, March 2023)

This book completely immersed me in the inner and outer world of “X.” The book is a fictional account of prolific experimental artist X, written posthumously by her late wife C. M. Lucca. Lacey creates an alternative history reminiscent of modern society, and the dystopian undertones of our political polarization. She reimagines a U.S. divided into multiple territories; each representing an alternative power structure. I found Lacey’s real brilliance in her biographical reporting: the creation of archives and interviews that include names such as David Bowie and critics like Merve Emre to contextualize American art criticism and X’s relationships within it. I loved how Lacey built this world to interrogate themes of identity, art, and politics, and in doing so, encouraged me to do the same. In short, Bio of X is a paradigm-shifting idea and a fab ode to the arts. 

Thank you all for your support this year and continuing to follow our work, we’re grateful to have you hear with us! Look out for some amazing new projects coming in 2025!