I thought I would do a little wrap up on my favourite books / theatre shows / music of 2019. I think it’ll be nice for myself to look back on next year and see what my favourites are now in comparison to a years time. Plus I’ve really enjoyed reading other peoples 2019 favourite blog posts.
So without further ado, here is my top two favourite books, theatre shows and music of 2019!
Would love to hear what your favourites of the year have been in the comments!
Books
I decided to go off Goodreads for this one and pick out of the books that I’d given a five star rating too. Coincidentally I only rated two books as 5 stars this year and as even more of a coincidence they’re the last two books that I’ve read so typically my blog posts about them aren’t up yet so I don’t want to go into too much detail about them.
- The Christmasaurus And The Winter Witch – Tom Fletcher
I love The Christmasaurus. I am completely out of the target audience for this series of books but they’re just full of Christmassy magic and has a dinosaur so what more do you want from a Christmas story.
The Christmasarus And The Winter Witch is book number two in the series. It’s sort of difficult to explain what happens without spoilers to parts of book one but all you need to know is that this book takes place a year after book one. William Trundle and his family gets invited to take a tour of the North Pole with Santa himself and discoverers the secret weapon to ensure all the children get their presents on Christmas Eve. But then everything goes wrong and the fate of all future Christmas Days rests in the hands of William!
If you’ve never heard of The Christmasaurus you must check out the first book first. It is even released as a musical edition where the songs are so catchy and fitting to the story. As its a children’s book you can expect the illustrations to be great and this book certainly has a great illustrator.
I purposely waited and read this book on Christmas Day and it provided that little bit of Christmas magic you need at this time of year. I find sequels tend to be not as good as book one, but The Christmasaurus And The Winter Witch is one of the few that is just as good.
- Marriage On Madison Avenue – Lauren Layne
The irony that this book is in my best of 2019 list when it isn’t even out until 2020! However, I read this book this year so I feel that’s still fine for me to be classing it in this list. A blog post is coming up tomorrow about this book so I’ll edit this post to include the link once its up.
This story is about Audrey who doesn’t have the best luck in relationships. Her best friend Clarke is fed up of his mother trying to meddle in his dating life so tells her that he is engaged to Audrey. The pair are strictly best friends, always have been and always will be. They don’t feel any romantic connection to each other, that is until they start pretending to be engaged and the lines begin to blur.
This book is one of those stories that makes your heart happy and it’s genuinely one of the best romance novels that I’ve read in a long time. Your must read book for 2020!
Theatre
I saw a lot of shows this year. Although I can honestly say that I loved everything I saw this year (normally I see a few things that fell abit flat) but two shows are the real stand outs for me this year.
- Beetlejuice
Whenever anyone gets me into a conversation about musicals, it doesn’t take me long to start talking about how much of an incredible performer I think Alex Brightman is. When I saw him in School Of Rock I left the theatre in awe of his performance so the minute I heard he was going to be staring in Beetlejuice I knew it would be amazing and I could only hope to get to America to see the show, which luckily I did.
Beetlejuice is an incredible show – end of. It’s hilarious with so many moments making you uncontrollably laugh, Alex Brightman’s lively portrayal of Beetlejuice didn’t disappoint in the slightest, the music is catchy and you’ll have it on repeat, the cast is insanely talented, visually the show is stunning and it even has a few special effects thrown in for good measure.
The show is shockingly being evicted from the Winter Garden Theatre next year so sadly as of the time of writing this it will be shutting very shortly so if you live near New York or have a holiday planned to go there, please get tickets to see Beetlejuice. I had never seen the film so knew very little about the plot but I absolutely loved the musical – it will not disappoint if you get tickets.
- Dear Evan Hansen
If you’ve spent any time on this blog at all you’ll know Dear Evan Hansen was always going to be in my favourites list. I was lucky enough to see this show twice this year (Broadway and West End production) and words cannot describe how much I adore this show.
Dear Evan Hansen makes me uncontrollably cry more than anything I have ever seen but in a good way! This show really connects to so many people, myself included and I had to wait along time to see the show as it’s been a while since I was last in America and it wasn’t in London at the time but it was completely worthwhile. If you’ve not seen the show before I can only urge you to go and see it because its fantastic.
This show is a game changer in musicals for me. It’s such a simple story, the stage design is even simpler but it offers so much. The story is the real driving point, top that off with songs that you will listen to on loop for the foreseeable future and characters that everyone can relate to, it really cements itself as a musical that will stand the test of time.
I just can’t fully put into words how much I love this musical but if you get the chance to see it you really should take the opportunity to go!
Music
Like with the books I have got this from my Spotify wrap up and it looks like 2019 was truly the year of musicals.
- Ben Platt
Number one on my list this year is Ben Platt. It’s not a surprise that Ben Platt ended up as number one as not only have I listened to his own album (Sing To Me Instead) on repeat, my listening of Dear Evan Hansen and The Politician is also classed as Ben Platt.
Ben Platt has quite a unique voice. I feel like you’ll absolutely love him or won’t like him at all. His voice for me truly gives you chills during some of his song – he is crazily talented. My favourite from his album is If I Dont Live Forever but I feel if you’ve not heard his music before a good place to start would be with the singles Bad Habit and Rain.
I was lucky enough to catch Ben Platt’s Radio City show which is going to be on Netflix in the new year and I can confirm he is vocally as incredible in real life as on CD. If you like Ben Platt in the slightest I can’t recommend seeing him live enough.
If you’ve never heard of him, check out his album or wait for the Netflix concert!
- Will Roland
Will Roland being second in my top artists of the year really surprised me. This has obviously come from my obsessive listening of the Be More Chill cast recording (with probably abit if Dear Evan Hansen thrown in for good measure) as I was so excited to see the show on Broadway…then it shut early!
Will Roland is someone who I am desperate to see perform live. He has such an expressive voice and I can only imagine how fantastic he must be actually in a show.
The Be More Chill Broadway Cast Recording is one of my favourites. I’ve mentioned this before on my blog but I actually prefer the Broadway cast to the original recording. For me, Will Roland has the perfect voice for Jeremy and I think the songs sound even better when he sings them.
The whole album is good from start to finish and you can see how the whole thing went viral and brought the show back to Broadway.
I’m sure Will Roland will feature highly in my Spotify list in 2020 too as Be More Chill comes to London so you already know the obsessive listening is going to return!
- Taylor Swift
I know I said I was only going to be doing two options for each but I feel like Taylor Swift needs a special mention. I know based on last.fm that I’ve listened to Taylor a lot this year but a lot of the ways that I listen to her won’t have been counted online. I play her music so much on vinyl and on my iPod which is so old it isn’t Spotify compatible.
Taylor Swift is one of those go to artists that you can chose any of her albums, play from start to finish and love every single song that’s on it.
I already know she’ll feature very highly next year as I get to see her headline Glastonbury which I already know is going to be one of the highlights of my year.
melissay 