Best Fiction Books of 2020: 10 Standout Novels I Loved
Discover the 10 best fiction books of 2020—quick picks, what each book is about, and why they still hold up. Your cozy, skimmable guide to the year’s standouts.
The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 (Quick Picks + Why They Still Hold Up)
If you want the short list of my top ten books list, here are my 10 best fiction books of 2020-each one memorable, conversation-starting, and deeply readable:
- Deacon King Kong – big-hearted neighborhood epic with humor and grace
- How Much of These Hills Are Gold – frontier myth reimagined through grief and belonging
- Love After Love – found-family tenderness with a gut-punch secret
- Hamnet – marriage, art, and loss; luminous and devastating
- The Vanishing Half – identity, passing, and reinvention across generations
- At Night All Blood Is Black – brutal, lyrical WWI tale of friendship and madness
- What Are You Going Through – intimate, wry meditation on care and mortality
- The Bass Rock – three women, centuries apart; patriarchy’s haunting echo
- The Death of Vivek Oji – family, friendship, and the courage to be known
- Agaat – power, caretaking, and memory in late-apartheid South Africa
Short on time? Start with three: Deacon King Kong, The Vanishing Half, Hamnet.
How I Chose These (and how to use this guide)
I prioritized novels that: (1) stayed with me long after I closed the cover, (2) sparked “we have to talk about this” moments with readers, and (3) still feel relevant to today’s conversations about identity, community, grief, and care. Each summary below focuses on the main character’s journey and the book’s core pulse-so you can match the right read to your mood.
The Top Ten Book List
Deacon King Kong by James McBride
In 1969 Brooklyn, a church deacon nicknamed Sportcoat walks into the projects courtyard and shoots a young drug dealer-an act that sets off a chorus of intersecting lives: church ladies, cops, mobsters, and neighbors who know each other’s business and carry one another’s burdens. What begins as chaos becomes a generous portrait of community-the way humor, faith, and messiness can hold people together when institutions fail. I reached for this when I needed heart and left with my faith in people restored.
You can get a copy of Deacon King Kong by James McBride on Amazon or Bookshop.
Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
A widow, her son, and a gentle boarder form an unconventional household in Trinidad-until a secret detonates and exile (emotional and literal) tests the bonds that once felt unbreakable. It’s a novel of tenderness and hurt, humor and heat, capturing how home can be rebuilt with patience and care. If you love voice-driven fiction that makes you want to call someone afterward, this is that book.
You can get a copy of Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud on Amazon or Bookshop.
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
In plague-era England, a family’s ordinary day collapses into unimaginable loss. O’Farrell centers the mother’s fierce intelligence and the marriage’s private language, tracing how grief reshapes art and life. The prose is luminous without a single wasted beat. I read it slowly, then sat in the quiet it created.
You can get a copy of Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell on Amazon or Bookshop.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Twin sisters run from their small Southern town; one later passes as white, the other builds a life in her own skin. Decades ripple outward as daughters, lovers, and communities bear the weight of chosen selves and buried truths. Bennett writes with clarity and compassion, turning a multigenerational puzzle into a propulsive, emotionally precise read.
You can get a copy of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett on Amazon or Bookshop.
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At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop (tr. Anna Moschovakis)
On WWI’s Western Front, a Senegalese rifleman loses his closest friend and begins a descent that’s part ritual, part rage, and entirely human. The narration is incantatory-otherworldly and intimate-asking what grief makes of us when language and mercy run out. It’s brutal and brilliantly controlled; I had to pause, then keep going.
You can get a copy of At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop on Amazon or Bookshop.
What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez
A woman agrees to accompany a friend through a planned end of life; what unfolds is a quiet braid of caregiving, observation, and the odd ways we make meaning together. Nunez’s gift is her scalpel-clean sentence and sideways humor, so the book feels both piercing and companionable-like confiding chats at the kitchen table.
You can get a copy of What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez on Amazon or Bookshop.
How Much of These Hills Are Gold by C Pam Zhang
Two Chinese American siblings wander a myth-scrubbed American West, chasing a place to set down their father’s bones and their own fractured history. Told with fierce lyricism, the journey becomes a reckoning with belonging, inheritance, and the stories we invent to survive. It reads like a frontier ghost story and a family epic in miniature, and it made the gold-rush myths I thought I knew feel newly strange-and honest.
You can get a copy of How Much of These Hills Are Gold by C Pam Zhang on Amazon or Bookshop.
The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
Three timelines along a wind-lashed Scottish coast-accusations, marriages, and inheritances link Sarah, Ruth, and Viv across centuries. Wyld threads dread and resilience into an indictment of violence against women, while granting her heroines private pockets of defiance. Moody, elegant, and sharp as sea air.
You can get a copy of The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld on Amazon or Bookshop.
The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi
A mother discovers her child’s body on the doorstep; friends and family circle the truth of who Vivek was and what it costs to be seen. Emezi writes with tenderness and heat, mapping friendship, gender, and the ache of love with fearless clarity. The final pages bloom into something aching and beautiful.
You can get a copy of The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi on Amazon or Bookshop.
Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk (tr. Michiel Heyns)
Paralyzed and raging, an elderly white woman must rely on the Black caregiver she once ruled. Their history-love, control, language, and labor-unspools with unsparing precision against the twilight of apartheid. Demanding in the best way, this novel rewards steady reading with one of the most complex relationships I’ve ever encountered on the page.
You can get a copy of Agaat by Marlene van Niekerk on Amazon or Bookshop.
If You Want a Vibe Match
- Big-hearted ensemble, humor + hope: Deacon King Kong
- Epic feelings, lyrical prose: Hamnet, How Much of These Hills Are Gold
- Identity, reinvention, book-club catnip: The Vanishing Half, Love After Love
- Dark, compact, unforgettable: At Night All Blood Is Black
- Quiet, reflective, wise: What Are You Going Through
- Gothic coastline mood: The Bass Rock
- Tender, searching, intimate: The Death of Vivek Oji
- Layered, challenging, masterful: Agaat
Final Thoughts
2020 asked a lot of us. These novels gave me language, company, and perspective-ten different doors into empathy. If you’ve read any, tell me which one stuck with you and why. And if you’re choosing your first pick, drop your reading mood in the comments-I’ll reply with a personalized rec.
