In honor of World Book Day being today, April 23rd, I wanted to share with you all some of my all-time favorite books.  For the sake of time, I will just be posting about books that aren’t as well known (as opposed to classics like Pride and Prejudice and Little Women or Anne of Green Gables, which obviously would be my favorites).

Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

Oh my goodness, I cannot begin to explain the love I have for this book! It was the inspiration for my very first blog post and book review back in 2011, and remains one of the best historical fiction books I’ve read in my teenage years.  The plot was fantastic and the characters really drew you in.  I loved the setting of ancient Egypt and was fascinated throughout the whole story.  This is a book I’ve read over and over and over! 🙂

The Girl from the Train by Irma Joubert

The story hooked me from the beginning, and this is the one book that has resonated with every person I’ve shared it with: my mom, dad, both sets of grandmothers and grandfathers, younger siblings, siblings’ friends.  It is loved across multiple generations and tastes in fiction.  There are only a few books I have in print, ebook, and audio, due to my tendency to re-read them and want them in every format, and this is one of them.

Daring Greatly by Brené Brown

This one is a nonfiction book, and it shaped much of how I operate today.  I read it when I was about 14-15 and it changed my life and how I see and relate to other people.

Girls with Swords by Lisa Bevere

My reading of this overlapped with Daring Greatly, and together they changed how I viewed myself, my potential, spiritual warfare, God, and how I treat others.  I would recommend this book over Daring Greatly as it’s easier to read and apply, but both together definitely makes for a powerful shift in perspective!

And, those are my two favorite fiction and two favorite nonfiction books that I read as a teenager! Below I’ll add a list of more favorites:

• The Besty-Tacy series
• Heidi
• Pollyanna
• The Boxcar Children
• Encyclopedia Brown
• The Elsie Dinsmore series
• Caddie Woodlawn

At the end of every year, I post a list of my favorite reads from that calendar year.  Check out my favorite books from 2017 here.