Reading books is so fun. Right? But still, aren’t there some times when your eyes are too tired that you just can’t read? Well, thank god there is a solution out there. What is it, you ask? An audiobook is an answer! Audiobooks are pretty good, too, and can be used in place of physical books when you can’t access physical books. Here, I am going to talk about 17 best Fiction and Non-Fiction audiobooks of 2021.
Although I am a huge fan of reading, audiobooks aren’t too bad. Initially, I was pretty skeptical about listening to an audiobook, thinking that it’ll ruin all the fun and the central feature of the book, but to my surprise, it was a good experience! Though I agree reading is a way better option, audiobooks can be good too.
Audiobooks can help you enhance your vocabulary and comprehension. They might aid our ability to view the story. As opposed to reading, listening to audiobooks can help us better understand phrases more deeply. Listening to a story instead of seeing one can elicit a stronger emotional reaction. Audiobooks may be a good option for individuals who have problems with the tactile act of reading.
Some of you might still be skeptical of listening to audiobooks as we are not used to them, however, I would suggest you to check these out. I’m sure they’ll change your perception of audiobooks as well.
17 Awesome Audiobooks of 2021 | Fiction and Non-Fiction
Here’s a list of audiobooks you definitely need to check out.
1. The Push
Full Title: The Push
Author: Ashley Andain
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 5th January 2021
Description:
This book is a psychological drama about the formation and breaking of a family, featuring a woman for whom the encounter of maternity is everything she feared and nothing she hoped for. Blythe Connor is determined to give Violet the warm, nurturing mother she never had.
However, in motherhood’s arduous early days, Blythe grows concerned that something is incorrect with her kid because she doesn’t act like most children. Is it all Blythe’s imagination? Fox, her spouse, claims she’s hallucinating.
The more Fox denies Blythe’s anxieties, the more she doubts her sanity, and we begin to doubt what Blythe describes to us about her life. Then their son Sam is born, and Blythe has the idyllic relationship she’d always envisioned with her child.
Violet appears to adore her little brother. But then, as their lives are turned upside down instantly, Blythe is forced to confront the truth. The Push is a one-of-a-kind tale that will challenge everything you think you know about parenting, what we owe our children, and what it’s like when mothers aren’t believed.
2. Just as I am
Full Title: Just as I am: A Memoir
Author: Cicely Tyson, Michelle Burford
Genre: Memoir
Publishing Date: 26th January 2021
Description:
The author’s truth is described in the book ‘Just As I Am’. It’s she, pure and unadorned, the sparkle and ribbons removed. She is Cicely, in these words, the performer who has graced the stage and cinema for more than six decades. She is also the church girl who used to speak very little. She is the adolescent who found comfort in the lines of the old hymn that this novel is named after.
She is a human nature observer and a dreamer of bold fantasies. She is a lady who has suffered as much as she has cherished, a good Christian who has been divinely guided. And now, at the age of ninety, she is a lady with something to say.
3. Infinite Country
Full Title: Infinite Country
Author: Patricia Engel
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 2nd March 2021
Description:
Infinite Country is the narrative of two countries and one mixed-status family, for whom every achievement is laced with regret, and every desire pursued carries the weight of a dream never realized. Talia is imprisoned in a Colombian correctional facility for young girls after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been justified. She must leave immediately and return to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States await her.
If she misses her trip, she may lose her chance to see her relatives in the north. This is the story of how one family ended up in two different countries with two distinct universes, which unfold like a kaleidoscope.
4. Unfinished
Full Title: Unfinished: A Memoir
Author: Priyanka Chopra Jonas
Genre: Memoir
Publishing Date: 9th February 2021
Description:
This biography follows Priyanka throughout her youth in India, where her grandparents and parents reared her. Two army doctors dedicated not only to their offspring but also to their professions and charitable work would be sent away to residential school at a young age, to her formative teenage years in the United States, where she lived with extended relatives in the Midwest, Queens, and suburban Boston, when she faced discrimination; to her return to India.
Readers seeking insight into what is needed to thrive in India’s huge film business will discover it here, as well as an accurate view of the struggles Priyanka experienced while managing her career in both India and Hollywood. The outcome is a warm, hilarious, sarcastic, inspirational, daring, and revolutionary novel like Priyanka Chopra.
5. The Four Winds
Full Title: The Four Winds
Author: Kristin Hannah
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 27th January 2021
Description:
This tale takes place in Texas in 1921, during a time of plenty. The Great War is made, the land’s wealth is abundant, and America is on the verge of a new and hopeful period. But the future appears gloomy for Elsa Wolcott, who is judged too old to marry in a period when the wedding is a female’s only choice. Until she meets Rafe Martinelli one night and tries to change her path in life. With her image in shambles, she has no choice but to marry a man she hardly knows.
During 1934, the situation changed; thousands were out of work, and the Great Plains had been decimated by drought. As crops fail, water runs out, and the soil breaks up, farmers struggle to maintain their land and livelihoods. Dust storms rage across the plains incessantly.
Everything on the Martinelli estate is decaying, including Elsa’s shaky marriage; each day is a frantic fight against nature and a struggle to keep her children alive.
6. You Got Anything Stronger?
Full Title: You Got Anything Stronger?
Author: Gabrielle Union
Genre: 14th September 2021
Publishing Date: Autobiography
Description:
This is the writer at her most fragile state in this book. She’s lately discovered great strength in her vulnerability, and she’d want to convey it to us through this book.
The author’s life has altered dramatically in the last four years. She has become a mother and is parenting two beautiful daughters. Her husband had left the company. Her work has grown to include the opportunity to raise the voices of others who need to be heard. But the globe has also revealed that as women, black women, moms, aging women, fellow humans, and friends, we now have a lot to fight for.
The author of this book shows us how this ever-changing life brings obstacles while also providing me with times of bliss. She takes us on a girls night out at Chateau Marmont and introduces us to Isis, a character from her novel Bring It On.
She honestly opens up about her childbearing experience and the birth of Kaavia James Union Wade for the first time. She also takes on the creative industry’s racist structures and policies, demanding equality and true transparency.
7. What’s Mine and Yours
Full Title: What’s Mine and Yours
Author: Naima Coster
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 2nd March 2021
Description:
A neighborhood in the Piedmont of North Carolina is outraged as a county program moves pupils from the majority Black east side of town to the predominantly white west side.
The merger of different pupils, Gee and Noelle, sets in motion a series of events that will inevitably bind the two families over the following two decades. Jade, Gee’s tough, ambitious mother, is on one side of the integration debate. She’s desperate to teach her son the tools he’ll need to live in America as a delicate, apprehensive young Black man after a traumatic loss.
Lacey May, Noelle’s obstinate mother, is a white woman who struggles to see the half-Latina daughters as being anything other than white. She tries to protect them because she can’t protect herself from Robbie, their beautiful but untrustworthy dad.
When Gee and Noelle participate in a school production intended to bridge the gap among new and returning classmates, their paths cross, and their two seemingly disparate households begin to create deeply tangled, complex links that influence their adult lives. Their moms, each desperate to provide their kids a better life, will decide things that will plague them for years.
8. A Court of Silver Flames
Full Title: A Court of Silver Flames
Author: Sarah J. Mass
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 16th February 2021
Description:
Nesta Archeron was always a thorny, prideful woman who was quick to anger and reluctant to forgive. Since the conflict, she’s fought to escape the tragedies she witnessed and find a home for herself inside the bizarre and terrifying Night Court. Cassian, the combat, flying warrior who is always there for Nesta, is the one who gets on her nerves the most.
Cassian’s rage was not the only thing that got her going. Sparks become flame when they have been ridiculed mercilessly in a fight together. Nesta and Cassian will battle demons within and without as the possibility of war looms over them once more if they are to stop their court’s foes.
9. One Last Stop
Full Title: One Last Stop
Author: Casey McQuiston
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 1st June 2021
Description:
August, a pessimistic 23 year-old, believes that going to New York City will prove her point: that things like enchantment and movie love stories don’t exist and that the only intelligent way to live is alone.
She can’t see how working at a pancake diner 24 hours a day and sharing a room with too many strange housemates will change that. Her metro ride will almost definitely be nothing more than a daily slog amid weariness and electricity outages. Then there’s this stunning woman on the train.
Jane is fascinating, captivating, mysterious, and impossible. August’s day was saved when Jane, with her rough edges, swoopy hair, and sweet smile, showed in a leather jacket. August’s subway crush quickly becomes the highlight of her day, but she soon discovers one major flaw: Jane doesn’t only look like an old punk rocker.
August will have to use all she wanted to leave in her past to help her, as she is shifted in time from the 1970s. After all, it may be past time to begin believing in something.
10. How To Do The Work
Full Title: How to do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal From Your Past, and Create Yourself
Author: Nicole LePera
Genre: Self-Help Book
Publishing Date: 9th March 2021
Description:
Dr. Nicole LePera, a clinical psychologist, was frequently frustrated by the constraints of standard psychotherapy. She set out to build a unified philosophy of mental, physical, and spiritual wellness that gives people the interdisciplinary tools they need to treat themselves out of a desire to do more for her patients and herself.
She began to share what she’d learned with others after experiencing life-changing results for herself, and “The Holistic Psychologist” was created. Dr. LePera is now ready to share her highly desired protocol with the world. She provides a manifesto for Self-Healing and an indispensable guide to living a more vivid, real, and joyous life in How to Do the Work.
Dr. LePera uses the most up-to-date research from various scientific domains and healing modalities to show how adverse childhood experiences and trauma can cause whole-body dysfunction, triggering detrimental stress responses that keep us bound in codependency, emotional immaturity and trauma bonding.
These self-destructive behaviors can easily spiral out of control if not handled, leaving people unhappy, dissatisfied, and unhealthy.
11. Project Hail Mary
Full Title: Project Hail Mary
Author: Andy Weir
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 4th May 2021
Description:
Ryland Grace is the final survivor of a desperate, last-ditch mission, and if he fails, humanity and the planet will perish. Except he’s unaware of it right now. He can’t recall his name, much less the nature of his work or how to do it.
He only knows he’s been sleeping for eternity. And he’s just awoken millions of kilometers from home, alone but for two bodies. Ryland knows that he now faces an impossible task, with his crewmates dead and his memories hazily returning.
As he hurtles through space in this tiny ship, it’s up to him to solve an impossible scientific puzzle and save our species from annihilation. And he’ll have to do it all by himself, with the clock ticking and the nearest human being light-years distant. Doesn’t he?
12. The Storyteller
Full Title: The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music
Author: Dave Grohl
Genre: Autobiography
Publishing Date: 4th October 2021
Description:
It begins with a description of Grohl’s journey from clenching his teeth rhythmically to making a percussion set out of pillowcases to calling the spirit of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham and imploring him for musical success on a crude altar. The seance went off without a hitch. He’s now friends with Paul McCartney, the eulogizer for Motörhead’s late Lemmy. Punk, grunge, and rock are all about rage and dissatisfaction.
Similarly, these styles thrive on goodwill and optimism, coexisting with pessimism. Grohl is noted for being a Tigger-like personality, cheerful and exuberant. He has always preferred life over death, irrepressible yang to Cobain’s more tortured yin.
13. Apples Never Fall
Full Title: Apples Never Fall
Author: Liane Moriarty
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 14th September 2021
Description:
The Delaneys are well-known in their neighborhood. Stan and Joy, their parents, are the envy of their peers. On the tennis court, they’re unstoppable, and off it, their rapport is evident.
However, after fifty years of marriage, they’ve finally sold their prestigious tennis academy and are looking forward to what may be their golden years. So, what’s the deal with Stan and Joy? Amy, Logan, Troy, and Brooke Delaney were all tennis stars in their own right, but their father would tell you that none of them had what it required to make it all the way. But that’s fine now that they’ve all grown up and the prospect of grandchildren looms.
Savannah, a stranger, knocks on Stan and Joy’s door one night, injured from a fight with her lover. The Delaneys are delighted to provide her with the modest act of compassion she so much requires.
Only if she desired that, when Joy goes away and Savannah isn’t discovered, the police question the only individual still alive: Stan. But, like many spouses, he has a lot to hide for someone who professes to be blameless.
Two of the Delaney kids believe their father is harmless, while the others aren’t so sure. But as the two sides face off in possibly their most important match ever, all of the Delaneys will begin to look at their common family history in a whole new way.
14. How the Word is Passed
Full Title: How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America
Author: Clint Smith
Genre: Travel Literature
Publishing Date: 1st June 2021
Description:
This book takes you on an exciting tour of monuments and landmarks, both truthful about the history and those that aren’t, telling a multigenerational story about how slavery has shaped our nation’s history and humanity.
It’s the story of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation in Virginia, where he published letters extolling the need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people.
It’s the narrative of the Whitney Plantation, one of the few former plantations dedicated to preserving the lives and work of the enslaved people who kept it going. It’s the narrative of Angola.
A medieval plantation turned optimum prison in Louisiana, where Black men labor for almost no pay across 18,000 hectares of land. It’s the narrative of Blandford Cemetery, where significant numbers of Confederate troops were laid to rest.
15. Milk Blood Heat
Full Title: Milk Blood Heat
Author: Dantiel W. Moniz
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 2nd February 2021
Description:
When an unforeseen tragedy strikes, a 13-year-old girl reflects on her melancholy and the differences between herself and her white best friend; a lady recuperating from a miscarriage finds it difficult to see beyond her daughter, whose body parts she sees around her everyday life, a teenager defies her family’s church and is accused of tempting the devil, servers at a supper club cater to the insatiable appetites of their wealthy patrons, and two separated siblings take.
Each narrative is set in the cities and suburbs of Florida and delves into the everyday generation of innocent girls, women, and men who are presented with remarkable moments of terrible emotional reckoning.
16. Beginner’s Mind
Full Title: Beginner’s Mind
Author: Yo-Yo Ma
Genre: Biography
Publishing Date: 21st September 2021
Description:
Beginner’s mind extends the author’s enthusiastic examination of culture’s role in assisting us in envisioning and building a better future, challenging each of us to reclaim a beginner’s mind, one open to new questions, personal friendships, and new explorations, and unexpected solutions.
Listeners gain insight into Ma’s past as he chronicles his remarkable journey through four stories of origins and learns how the creative innovator keeps finding optimism in the boundless possibilities of human inquiry, creativity, and cooperation.
17. The Last Thing he Told Me
Full Title: The Last Thing he Told Me
Author: Laura Dave
Genre: Fiction
Publishing Date: 4th May 2021
Description:
Hannah Hall is worried about her husband’s sudden disappearance. Her calls are going unanswered, the FBI arrests his boss, a US Marshall, and FBI agents show up at their house unannounced, and she has no idea where Owen, her husband, is. She only has a note left by Owen for her, which says “protect her,” and she knows exactly who it refers to.
“She” in the note refers to Owen’s 16-year-old daughter, Bailey, whose mother passed away when she was just a child and who wants nothing to do with Hannah.
Could Bailey be the key to discovering the truth? Watch them both slowly build an unexpected future as they investigate together.
Final Words
These books are insanely awesome and are even more likable when consumed as audiobooks. These audiobooks have been recommended by some of the best listeners and I believe you’d like it too.
