Calendar Girls: Best Contemporary Novel

Calendar Girls is hosted by bloggers, Flavia the Bibliophile and Melanie Noell Bernard – both have amazing blogs full of fun, bookish posts. Calendar Girls is a brand new monthly blog event inspired by Neil Sedaka’s 1961 song Calendar Girl. Just like in the song, we decided to use a specific them for each month and choose a book based on these themes! The event is meant to incite discussions with other bloggers about books we’ve read and loved, is meant to help bloggers meet other bloggers, and also for bloggers and readers to find out about blogs which they normally may not have come across! Want to know more? Click on the links above! And it’s not too late to jump on the Calendar Girl train (and it’s not just for girls)! Join now!

LOOK AT ME. I’m actually back on time again with Calendar Girls. Can we please just give a round of applause for myself because I’ve been failing for the last two months or so. BUT I AM BACK IN ACTION. But they gave me a hard one this time around! How on earth am I supposed to pick just one great contemporary?

Best Contemporary Novel

Okay, there was a LOT – A LOT, A LOT – of contemporaries for the picking. I absolutely love contemporaries. They bring so many feels, have some many fantastic ships, and I just get so happy from them. My favorite contemporary novel of all time is The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller, but I’ve been talking about that one a lot lately, so I think I want to feature another one – I’m thinking one of the best ones I’ve read all year -and that is…

Eliza and Her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

This book reminded me why I love contemporary novels. It is funny at parts, so very real and realistic, wonderfully relatable, SO EMOTIONAL, and swoony. It’s literally everything that makes contemporary novels so brilliant and, well, contemporary novels.

I talk about this a lot: I’m not a book crier. I rarely cry in books. I haven’t kept an official record, but I’m pretty sure I’ve cried only, like, 3 times over a book in the entirety of my reading career. Contemporary books are always the one to do it for me (except for Crooked Kingdom, which got a single tear from me), and this book brought a tear to my eye. It played with my emotions in the worst and best ways.

AND THE SHIP WAS SWOONY AND ADORABLE AND I CAN’T EVEN DEAL.

The story also brings us an exceedingly relatable heroine that I love and felt for. She is everything that you should have in a contemporary novel. I love this novel, and it brought so many feels.

What do you think? What is your favorite contemporary novel? Let’s discuss in the comments below!