Gift Guide — Fiction to Fall-la-la-la-la In Love With (2019)

There’s never a better time to indulge in the purchase of a new book (or three) than the holiday season. And to help you narrow down your own wish-list and connect you with that perfect gift for someone close to your heart, I’ve made this holiday shopping guide just for you.

Featured below are some of the best books of 2019 each with their own “for the person who…” blurb. Have a scroll and let me know in the comments which books you’ll be picking up.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

For the person who seeks adventure and loves to explore fantasy worlds.

Are you lost, or are you exploring?

Get ready to be drawn into the mysteries at the heart of the Starless Sea. All those bees and keys and swords and crowns. Get ready to be swept away by the beauty of words formed into sentences and sentences formed into concepts. There are stories within stories here, each intricately connected, each building to the mystery and its eventual unraveling. You can choose whether to lose yourself within an individual story and then you can choose to lose yourself within the entire honeycomb. It’s a very Alice-like experience, much like our main character Zachary Ezra Rawlins himself notes.

If there’s one book every book-lover needs beneath their Christmas tree, it is this one. At its heart, The Starless Sea is a love letter to stories, their telling, and libraries; in its entirety, it is the bookish adventure of the year.

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

For the person who’s always got a book in hand.

Whether you already love historical fiction or are interested in dipping in your toes, The Dutch House is story magic! It’s got a little bit of Cinderella (think evil stepmother) and Paradise Lost (think banishment). At the heart of the story, as well as being the heart of the story, are siblings Danny and Maeve. It’s also the story about a house and the magnetic push-pull relationship that develops between us and the place we call home.

The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes

For the romantic who dreams of the wild.

The Giver of Stars will take you on a journey across mountains and rock-studded riverbeds. It’s historical fiction based on the real-life story of the packhorse librarians. Set in a small town in 1930s Kentucky, this story will make you feel all the feels and ultimately leave you feeling heart-warmed.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

For the person who loves drama — and their family.

Every family’s got their ups and downs — that’s what can make the fictional escape into other people’s drama so strangely relaxing. The tragedy that set the Stanhope and Gleeson families at odds in Ask Again, Yes is next level. The question is, how much can one person, one couple, one family forgive? This story is full of compassion (and forgiveness) and will make you reach out and hug the ones you love.

An Anonymous Girl by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

For the amateur sleuth.

Would you lie your way into a study on ethics and morality for some quick cash?

There is something very Sherlock Holmesian about the precision of a perfectly executed psychological thriller in which a clinical psychologist faces off against a freelance make-up artist (Jessica Farris). Who, yes, did lie to get herself into that study.

The perfect psychological thriller for puzzle-lovers.

My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing

For the genius who’s possibly hiding an evil side.

Is it wrong to root for the bad guy/gal?

I don’t have the answer, but I do know that this psychological thriller is one heck of a read. Get ready to have your head messed with in the most spectacular of ways. Think Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl meets War of the Roses, as this husband and wife team set out to put the ‘fun’ back into dysfunction.

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal

For the collector who loves to get lost in a book.

There are collectors, and then there are those whose collections include taxidermy, and somehow that (can) takes the term collector into a league all of its creepy own. The Doll Factory is a masterfully executed historical thriller that reads like literary fiction. Set in Victorian England against the backdrop of the Great Exhibition, this is a story to get lost in as much as it is one that will drive the pages forward as the threat (from the collector) grows.

Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid

For the person who loves music (almost) as much as they love books.

If you’re looking for a book that reads like your favorite TV show? Here you go. Daisy Jones & The Six is a book entirely presented as an oral history. It’s the story of the band’s rise to superstardom and their sudden split at the height of their fame. The story may be about a fake band (set in the very real 1970s), but that doesn’t mean that these guys won’t feel entirely real by the end of the novel.