Trope Machine's Faves of 2024
It's that time of year where I once again regret never writing anything down in my Goodreads reviews
This year was an embarrassment of riches when it came to new books that were my exact taste. Time travel? Westerns? Old dusty history made new and sexy? I almost didn’t have enough hands or eyeballs for everything I wanted to grab off the shelves and instantly read.
Without further ado, here are Trope Machine’s official Fave Reads of 2024!
Diavola by Jennifer Thorne
I will never stop singing the praises of Diavola. This was an easy sell for me due to the rare twin attractions of Ghosts and Italian but it did so much more with its premise of “dysfunctional family at a haunted rental” than I could have imagined. Read more of my words about it here.
Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
I’m a sucker (vampire pun?????) for a good Western and Cañas’s sweeping style and star-crossed lovers really struck the perfect chord. I talked for like a thousand years about it here but the mix of textured setting (the hoof-trampled dust practically drifts off the page!), fresh lore, and strong characters (also pluses of her earlier Hacienda) made this one an instant fave. And for real though, look at that cover.
Madwoman by Chelsea Bieker
I only got my hands on this one a couple of weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s a little darker than my usual fare (I’m not sure you could open the book without knowing it heavily involves domestic violence but here’s a content warning just in case) but everything about it gripped me instantly. A deeply empathetic portrait of a woman trying to be a good mother while trying to keep a lid on a traumatic past that is threatening to boil over into her perfectly crafted, PFA-free life. I was with the protagonist every step as she strives to Have It All and felt so thankful for the (spoiler alert!) kind, happy ending that I was as afraid to hope for as the protagonist herself.
The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
I keep forgetting to talk about The Other Valley because it is so different from anything else I’ve read. It’s about time travel, both the fantastical literal version as well as the commonplace version we all experience as time drifts past us and as we try to hang onto the past or scry the future. I feel really drawn to main characters that feel a little bit hollow on the inside (please don’t read into that) and the protagonist here has that ring to her, an emptiness that in her earlier years flows from her uncertainty about her place in the world, and later from a tragedy that seemed to scoop some vital parts right out of her. And that’s before we even get to the book’s premise, a valley that is flanked to the east by the same town two decades in the past and to the west by the town two decades into the future, passage between which is controlled by a looming bureaucratic agency. The construction of the world helps highlight realities of our relationship to time that I think would be unbearable if we spent any amount of time really thinking about them: the way that time passes around us and how we are, more or less, always living in the future or the past, the idea that everything is still happening somewhere.
Nicked by M.T. Anderson
I just talked about Nicked but it really does deserve a place on this list. I really appreciate when an author can ape old, esoteric language and then twist it in a way that radiates personality and humor. And these guys are trying to heist bones and getting chased by mobs of peasants and stuff, what more can you ask for from a medieval adventure? Here’s a quote from it that I really liked that you have to read now because it’s my newsletter:
"Relics are treated as stand-ins for saints, though once they were the saints themselves. We each own a skull that identifies us, an attribute we carry. We are all our own icon, our own avatar; an idol made in our shape, haunted by a spirit longing to intervene in the calamities we witness."
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton
As a big whodunnit guy, I really appreciated this insanely ambitious expansion of what a murder mystery can even be. In a futuristic, crime-free society perched on an island where the last of humanity is fending off an apocalyptic plague, a murder has to be solved before they’re all doomed. The post-crime, ultra-controlled society with secrets around every corner really gave Uglies (high compliment) and I was really impressed by the world that Turton was both able to build and then expose to the reader and the protagonist at a rate that didn’t feel insane.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Another time travel book this year? If you hear a dripping sound, that’s just my cup runnething over (can you tell I’m running out of steam on this newsletter? is that palpable). This novel is a really sharp mix of speculative fiction, political thriller, and historical vignette all running through what is essentially a really well-played workplace romance. Just because the workplace is the Ministry of Time and the romance is between a low-ranking bureaucrat and a “refugee” pulled from the doomed 19th century Arctic exploration that was supposed to kill him doesn’t make it less so. This year I feel like I’ve been blessed with a few reads about cogs in the system who take more than a little time to turn against the machine and while the realism that few of us get one defining moment to Defeat Evil rather than a slog of a thousand choices may be frustrating, maybe there’s a harder-earned hope there too.
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Like Vampires of El Norte, another exceptional Western set on the turbulent border between Mexico and Texas in the 19th century. I’ve basically run out of words to describe how much this book kicks ass. But it does and you should read it!
Chuck Tingle has my entire heart and after writing this and Camp Damascus I can pretty much guarantee I’ll be picking up anything Tingle chooses to write for the rest of forever. Tingle lands on this perfect combination of well-fleshed-out, compelling horror and intricate satire that never feels like it’s selling out the earnestness of the premise. If I give you more of the plot than “a veteran horror writer starts being hunted by his own creations” it’ll spoil it so I’ll just add that it’s also about the Bravery of Being Yourself, but it’s also about the slippery, distinctive evil of rainbow capitalism and how we should all get better about protecting our data. I genuinely struggled to set it down after I started reading it, and it goes places I wasn’t expecting and am still pretty stunned it pulled off.
I just want to close with a heartfelt thank you to anyone reading this right now for being a part of Trope Machine’s first year. Whether you are a friend I cajoled into subscribing or you just took a chance on a QR code scattered around the greater Los Angeles area, thank you so, so much for your interest and your eyeballs. They both mean the world to me.
Happy holidays! See you next year.
-Bex