Trying to figure out what to read in 2021? Here are the best of the best January 2021 book releases. Check out what’s getting all of the attention for the month.
The beginning of the 2021 is almost here. Before you know it,
The end of the year is rushing upon is fasting than ever. Before you know it, Halloween and Thanksgiving will be over and you’ll be writing out your New Year’s Resolutions.
The year isn’t quite over yet. We still have a few more 2020 releases to cover before moving on to 2021’s exciting roster.
In honor of a new year, let’s start celebrating all of these new books. There are so many January 2021 book releases, so I added the ones that most book lovers are looking forward to most. I can’t lie, there are several on this list that I will one-click buy. Knowing myself, I’ll also order in hardback because I’m a weirdo who spends way too much money on books.
Don’t try to act like I’m the only one.
Interested yet? Keep scrolling to find your upcoming favorite January 2021 book releases!
Keep up with all the upcoming book releases here.
Most Anticipated January 2021 Book Releases
The Woman Outside My Door by Rachel Ryan
January 5, 2021 – All children have imaginary friends, Georgina tells herself. It’s perfectly normal, and they all grow out of it in the end. But when her seven-year-old son, Cody, tells her about New Granny, the new friend he’s met in the park, Georgina is instantly suspicious. Something—call it maternal instinct—tells her he isn’t making it up. Read More→
Nick by Michael Farris Smith
January 5, 2021 – Before Nick Carraway moved to West Egg and into Gatsby’s periphery, he was at the center of a very different story-one taking place along the trenches and deep within the tunnels of World War I. Floundering in the wake of the destruction he witnessed firsthand, Nick delays his return home, hoping to escape the questions he cannot answer about the horrors of war. Read More→
One of the Good Ones by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite
January 5, 2021 – When teen social activist and history buff Kezi Smith is killed under mysterious circumstances after attending a social justice rally, her devastated sister Happi and their family are left reeling in the aftermath. As Kezi becomes another immortalized victim in the fight against police brutality, Happi begins to question the idealized way her sister is remembered. Perfect. Angelic. Read More→
The Heiress by Molly Greeley
January 5, 2021 – As a fussy baby, Anne was prescribed laudanum to quiet her and has been given the opium-heavy syrup ever since, on account of her continuing ill health. While Lady Catherine is outraged when Darcy chooses not to marry her daughter, Anne barely even notices. Read More→
When You Look Like Us by Pamela N. Harris
January 5, 2021 – When you look like us—brown skin, brown eyes, black braids or fades—people think you’re trouble. No one looks twice at a missing black girl from the projects because she must’ve brought whatever happened to her upon herself. I, Jay Murphy, can admit that, for a minute, I thought my sister, Nicole, got too caught up with her boyfriend—a drug dealer—and his friends. Read More→
Happily Ever Afters by Elise Bryant
January 5, 2021 – Sixteen-year-old Tessa Johnson has never felt like the protagonist in her own life. She’s rarely seen herself reflected in the pages of the romance novels she loves. The only place she’s a true leading lady is in her own writing—in the swoony love stories she shares only with Caroline, her best friend and #1 devoted reader. Read More→
Our Darkest Night by Jennifer Robson
January 5, 2021 – It is the autumn of 1943, and life is becoming increasingly perilous for Italian Jews like the Mazin family. With Nazi Germany now occupying most of her beloved homeland, and the threat of imprisonment and deportation growing ever more certain, Antonina Mazin has but one hope to survive—to leave Venice and her beloved parents and hide in the countryside with a man she has only just met. Read More→
The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins
January 5, 2021 – Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates––a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. The kind of place where no one will notice if Jane lifts the discarded tchotchkes and jewelry off the side tables of her well-heeled clients. Where no one will think to ask if Jane is her real name. Read More→
Roman and Jewel by Dana L. Davis
January 5, 2021 – Jerzie Jhames will do anything to land the lead role in Broadway’s hottest new show, Roman and Jewel, a Romeo and Juliet inspired hip-hopera featuring a diverse cast and modern twists on the play. But her hopes are crushed when she learns mega-star Cinny won the lead…and Jerzie is her understudy. Read More→
Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas
January 12, 2021 – If there’s one thing seventeen-year-old Maverick Carter knows, it’s that a real man takes care of his family. As the son of a former gang legend, Mav does that the only way he knows how: dealing for the King Lords. With this money he can help his mom, who works two jobs while his dad’s in prison. Read More→
People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd
January 5, 2021 – A razor-sharp, wickedly smart suspense debut about an ambitious influencer mom whose soaring success threatens her marriage, her morals, and her family’s safety. Followed by Millions, Watched by One. To her adoring fans, Emmy Jackson, aka @the_mamabare, is the honest “Instamum” who always tells it like it is. To her skeptical husband, a washed-up novelist who knows just how creative Emmy can be with the truth, she is a breadwinning powerhouse chillingly brilliant at monetizing the intimate details of their family life. Read More→
Chlorine Sky by Mahogany L. Browne
January 12, 2021 – She looks me hard in my eyes & my knees lock into tree trunks. My eyes don’t dance like my heartbeat racing. They stare straight back hot daggers. I remember things will never be the same. I remember things. With gritty and heartbreaking honesty, Mahogany L. Browne delivers a novel-in-verse about broken promises, fast rumors, and when growing up means growing apart from your best friend. Read More→
Siri, Who am I? by Sam Tschida
January 12, 2021 – Mia might look like a Millennial but she was born yesterday. Emerging from a coma with short-term amnesia after an accident, Mia can’t remember her own name until the Siri assistant on her iPhone provides it. Based on her cool hairstyle (undercut with glamorous waves), dress (Prada), and signature lipstick (Chanel), she senses she’s wealthy, but the only way to know for sure is to retrace her steps once she leaves the hospital. Using Instagram and Uber, she arrives at the pink duplex she calls home in her posts but finds Max, a cute, off-duty postdoc supplementing his income with a house-sitting gig. He tells her the house belongs to JP, a billionaire with a chocolate empire. Read More→
Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
January 12, 2021 – Born on a plantation in Charles City, Virginia, Pheby Delores Brown has lived a relatively sheltered life. Shielded by her mother’s position as the estate’s medicine woman and cherished by the Master’s sister, she is set apart from the others on the plantation, belonging to neither world. Read More→
Waiting For The Night Song by Julie Carrick Dalton
January 12, 2021 – Cadie Kessler has spent decades trying to cover up one truth. One moment. But deep down, didn’t she always know her secret would surface? An urgent message from her long-estranged best friend Daniela Garcia brings Cadie, now a forestry researcher, back to her childhood home. There, Cadie and Daniela are forced to face a dark secret that ended both their idyllic childhood bond and the magical summer that takes up more space in Cadie’s memory then all her other years combined. Read More→
The Divines by Ellie Eaton
January 19, 2021 – The girls of St John the Divine, an elite English boarding school, were notorious for flipping their hair, harassing teachers, chasing boys, and chain-smoking cigarettes. They were fiercely loyal, sharp-tongued, and cuttingly humorous in the way that only teenage girls can be. For Josephine, now in her thirties, the years at St John were a lifetime ago. She hasn’t spoken to another Divine in fifteen years, not since the day the school shuttered its doors in disgrace. Read More→
Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner
January 19, 2021 – Frankie Elkin is an average middle-aged woman with more regrets than belongings who spends her life doing what no one else will: searching for missing people the world has stopped looking for. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never paid attention, Frankie starts looking. Read More→
The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon
January 26, 2021 – Shay Goldstein has been a producer at her Seattle public radio station for nearly a decade, and she can’t imagine working anywhere else. But lately it’s been a constant clash between her and her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, who’s fresh off a journalism master’s program and convinced he knows everything about public radio. Read More→
A Vow So Bold And Deadly by Brigid Kemmerer
January 26, 2021 – Emberfall is crumbling fast, torn between those who believe Rhen is the rightful prince and those who are eager to begin a new era under Grey, the true heir. Grey has agreed to wait two months before attacking Emberfall, and in that time, Rhen has turned away from everyone–even Harper, as she desperately tries to help him find a path to peace. Read More→
What January 2021 Book Releases are you looking forward to most in 2021?
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2021 is set to be a treat🤗
I’m so here for it! We need it after this year for sure 🥰
Angie Thomas and Brigid Kemmerer are the ones that I am most excited to read danielle!
This will be my first Brigid Kemmerer book. I’ve heard nothing but good things about her books 🥰
I have a few of these on my TBR list, but have also added a couple more. I need publishers to stop publishing good books so that I can catch up! 🙂
These publishers are trying to bankrupt us in 2021. Don’t they know that 2020 was a rough year! 🙂