While I enjoyed many of the 30 novels I read during 2024, only three received my highest rating of five stars. All markedly different from each other, my three favorite novels of the past year include a glamorous mystery, quirky contemporary fiction and a literary classic.

‘The Lion’s Den’
My first read of the year, Katherine St. John’s “The Lion’s Den,” remains one of my favorites. While reading the dramatic mystery filled with “sex, betrayal and intrigue,” I was in a trance — I simply could not put St. John’s novel down.

“The Lion’s Den” follows struggling actress Belle as she embarks on what was supposed to be a dream vacation with her best friend, Summer, and her wealthy older boyfriend. Before their private jet touches the ground, the rules surrounding the trip and Summer’s behavior feel off. While yachting along the Italian coast, their wealthy host becomes more and more controlling, leading to a tension-filled mystery that exposes the sins of those Belle once considered her best friends.

In “The Lion’s Den,” death, lies and luxury create a perfect mystery read, filled with satirical takes on “rich people problems” and the bloody side of ambition. I found St. John’s novel to be a fast-paced, incredibly entertaining read, and I believe it has the power to pull the reader into Belle’s story immediately. Amidst the novel’s glamour and lies, readers will not want to put her novel down.

‘Big Swiss’
“Big Swiss” by Jen Beagin stands out amongst my 2024 reads for its dark humor, emotional honesty and utter weirdness (in the best way possible). “Big Swiss” centers around Greta Work, a middle-aged woman who has recently moved to Hudson, New York. Working as a transcriber for an eccentric sex therapist, Greta becomes quickly obsessed with one of her patients, a tall, married, Swiss woman Greta appropriately nicknames “Big Swiss.” After meeting Big Swiss in person, Greta cannot stop her obsession from growing, and Beagin’s novel gradually becomes a sapphic tale, filled with secrets, dark pasts and an overall sense of humorous oddity. Beagin’s writing style is marked by its quirkiness and will have readers engrossed in Greta’s invasive, vulnerable affair.

‘Persuasion’

Although “Pride and Prejudice” is my favorite of Jane Austen’s novels, I consider “Persuasion” her most underrated work and truly a Regency-era gem. After reading all six of Austen’s novels in 2024, “Persuasion” stood out to me among her books. Regret and longing take center stage in the web of emotions between the novel’s two main characters, Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. After being persuaded by a family friend to end her engagement with Captain Wentworth due to his lack of status, Anne spends the next eight years single and looks back on her engagement with Wentworth as one of the happiest periods of her life.

Anne longs for the past and for the one man she has ever loved, scanning newspapers for years looking for a glimpse of Wentworth’s name and bracing for a marriage announcement from the naval captain. When fate brings the two to meet again almost a decade later, memories from the past bring both pain and joy to the surface, creating a perfect blend of tension, regret and longing.

Anne’s decision regarding Wentworth pains her all the same eight years later, and while facing the fact that she will never love another man as she does Wentworth, Anne has to witness Wentworth flirt and court other girls, including some of her friends.

Austen’s writing style focuses on realistic, everyday occurrences, causing the tremendous love and tension-filled past between her two main characters to hang heavy over the novel’s scenes. Amidst the routine of regency England’s upper-class society, Austen crafts a relationship that bridges the pain and regret of the past with the possibility and hopes of a second chance in the couple’s future. “Persuasion” could be read as a classic version of what romance fans today call the second chance romance trope.

In my opinion, even though “Persuasion” was published 207 years ago, Austen’s novel will move readers just as much as any romantic comedy published in 2024. But is this all that shocking, considering Jane Austen’s novels are amongst some of literature’s most timeless?