My 2020 Reading Wrap-Up

Over the past couple of years, I have documented every film that I have watched and reviewed them all using Letterboxd. As a way to motivate myself to read more, I thought I would do the same for what books I have been reading, using Goodreads as a way to set myself a reading challenge every year.

I initially set my target as 25 books this year, but a few things happened that meant I reached this goal quite early on. Firstly, I had a baby, so this meant that I was awake at silly hours with plenty of time to read. Then, there was lockdown. Because of lockdown, I decided to join Bookstagram and NetGalley and get more serious about reviewing books. So now, instead of reading two books at most a month, I’ve been reading up to ten.

I upped my goal to 60 around halfway through the year, and still managed to pass that by reaching 74 books. This year has really rekindled my love of books, and I can’t wait to start 2021 with this new passion.

Here’s how my 2020 challenge went:

Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

“You know, one of the hardest things to admit is that we weren’t loved when we needed it most. It’s a terrible feeling, the pain of not being loved.”

Published in 2019 and written by Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient follows Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist who begins to work with a famous painter, Alicia, who has refused to talk since being sentence a secure forensic unit in North London after shooting her husband five times in the face. Alicia’s muteness is a mystery that captures not only the public’s imagination, but also Theo’s curiosity. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations — a search for the truth that threatens to consume him.