The runners-up:

Children of Time - Empathy for the Buggers. Alternates between a nature documentary and the sad life of a historian in space.

Harrow the Ninth - This is the book that actually delivered the weird, lesbian necromancers in space.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone - Australian family drama with plenty of dark humor. And murder. The first pages notes that “deaths will occur on pages 14, 46, 65, 75, 174, 208(ish), 218, 227, 249, somewhere between 243 and 250, 262, and 355.”

Favorite books I read in 2024:

My Murder - Serial killer victims support group. The best _secretly_ sci-fi book.

To Kill a Mockingbird - I guess I only read the Spark Notes of this in high school. I wish I had actually read it back then. I think I’ll end up reading it a few more times in my life.

A Gentleman in Moscow - The shenanigans of a charismatic count, ordered to live the rest of his life in a luxury Soviet hotel.