Whether you found this post searching for the best books set in the 2010s, or you’re participating in our Decades Challenge, we hope you’ll find some great books set between 2010 and 2019 to add to your TBR lists. If you’re looking for books set between 2000-2009, you can find them here.
Our fiction recommendations include works of drama, romance, comedy, and young adult literature. Each provides insights into the culture and social issues of the decade. Memoir and non-fiction titles also closely examine relevant topics of the decade.
The Twenty-Tens – A Look Back at the Not-So-Distant Past
The 2010s shined a light on new and lingering inequalities, both in America and around the world. This focus led to both strife and progress. Mass shootings and natural disasters permeated throughout the decade, and politics became increasingly divisive.
Social media use evolved from a simple way to stay connected with friends into an easy way to influence strangers. Sometimes it’s good, like our ability to share favorite books with you right now. Or the money raised for ALS research during the viral Ice Bucket Challenge. However, social media’s full negative ramifications are still being learned. Sadly, this includes increased teen suicide and dangerous misinformation spreading like wildfire during elections.
Along the way, there were fundamental changes in how we travel and vacation. The sharing economy led to huge new companies like Uber and Airbnb. Alternative energies have become more advanced, and many companies have become more aware of their environmental impacts. We learned more about the harm of things like single-use plastics. We have a way to go, but by the end of the twenty-tens, we were doing a better job protecting Earth than when the decade started.
For additional historical context, check out the timeline of major world events included at the end of the post.
Books Set in the 2010s
Literary Historical Fiction
The Wind Knows My Name
Isabel Allende
Publication Date:
06/05/2023
Setting:
Arizona, 2019 and Vienna, Austria, 1938
Book Summary
This dual-timeline novel weaves together past and present stories of War and immigration. In 1938 Vienna, Samuel Adler was just six when his father disappeared during Kristallnacht. In order to save her son’s life, his mother secured him a spot on the last Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria. He boarded the train alone, bound for the UK with nothing more than a change of clothes and his violin.
Eighty years later, a mother and daughter board a train seeking a better life. They are fleeing danger in El Salvador, but their arrival in the US coincides with the new family separation policy. Anita, just seven years old and blind, finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She comforts herself by escaping into a fantasy world called Azabahar that she dreamed up with her sisters back home.
A young social worker named Selena is assigned to Anita’s case, and with the help of a lawyer, they discover that Anita has one relative in the US – Leticia Cordero, who works in the home of 86-year-old Samuel Adler.
Ruth Jefferson is a 44-year-old labor and delivery nurse with twenty years of experience at a Connecticut hospital. After being reassigned away from a patient, she learns that the parents are white supremacists and don’t want Ruth, who is African American, to touch their child.
The hospital complies with their request, but the next day, the baby goes into cardiac distress while Ruth is alone in the nursery. Does she obey the orders of her superiors based on the parent’s mandate, or does she intervene?
This story is told from three alternating points of view: Ruth, the nurse; Kennedy, her middle-aged attorney; and Turk, the newborn’s white supremacist father.
The Book Girls Say…
This novel is an emotional roller coaster ride that is painful to read at times, but we promise that it’s totally worth it. You may need to take a little break after reading the first chapter from Turk’s perspective, but after some deep breaths, please, please pick this book back up and keep reading. If we had the power, we’d make this book required reading for everyone!
A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea is a non-fiction book that reads like page-turning fiction. In the 2010s, the Syrian refugee crisis flooded the news, with many countries overwhelmed trying to process the vast numbers of asylum seekers fleeing their war-torn homes.
This book tells the well-rounded story of one girl, Doaa, starting with her life in Syria before the war and following her journey of strength, courage, and sorrow. Each page is compelling as you get an inside look at a 19-year-old refugee who first fought to stay in Syria and then fought for her life and the lives of other children during a harrowing four days at sea.
The Book Girls Say…
This is one of Melissa’s favorite books of all time. It intersects a dramatic page-turning story with rare insight into everything a refugee endures before landing in another country to ask for asylum. If you loved Adunni in The Girl with the Louding Voice, we think you’ll also fall in love with Doaa.
Melissa Fleming was born in Massachusetts and has spent her adult life living in Europe and working for international refugee organizations. She leads communications for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and travels to war zones and refugee camps to give voice to those people forcibly displaced from their homes. In A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea, she tells the story of one of the Syrian refugees she worked with.
Claude is the youngest son in a family with five brothers. And he firmly knows that when he grows up, he wants to be a girl. His parents see his sincerity and opt to move out of their smaller town to Seattle, where they expect people to be more accepting of others. However, despite being okay with Claude being whoever he is, they don’t want themselves or Claude to be targeted as weird. In their new city, Claude is Poppy. The entire family keeps the secret until everything explodes one day.
The Book Girls Say…
This story is a timely look at the inner workings of a family with a transgender child. While the book is about a fictionalized family, the author has first-hand experiences with the topic, giving authenticity to the parents’ perspectives.
In the tiny community of Beartown, life revolves around hockey. It provides entertainment and hope for a better future. It’s a story about hockey, small-town life, and much more. When a shocking event occurs, the town quickly takes sides. Who will stand up for the truth and put hockey above humanity? The themes are definitely relevant to the decade.
If you’ve already read Beartown and the sequel Us Against You, this is a great excuse to pick up the final book in the Trilogy, The Winners, which was published in September 2022. It’s set two years after Beartown, so it still sneaks into the 2010s.
The Book Girls Say…
Fredrik Backman has a gift with words, melodic phrasing, and unparalleled insight into human motivations. He writes characters that are so well-rounded that even if you disagree with their decisions, you understand what they were thinking. We both gave this one all the stars!
Chanel Miller first took the world by storm in 2016 as Emily Doe after her victim impact statement in a sexual assault hearing against Brock Turner went viral. Her memoir goes into more depth about her life before, during, and after that night. She’s vulnerable and brave, sharing her struggles each step of the way.
While the prominent Me Too Movement started in 2017 with Harvey Weinstein, Chanel Miller’s bravery and beautiful writing in 2016 was a precursor and opened millions of eyes to the second assault women face in the courts and public perception.
The Book Girls Say…
Melissa read this and was blown away by the brilliant writing. It’s not just an account of a terrible event, it’s full of beautiful language and raw emotion.
Randolph and Buddy Lee are both ex-cons, but have very different lives. Randolph left his past behind and started a successful lawn care business. He has a loving wife and owns a lovely small home. Buddy Lee is a barely functioning alcoholic living in a run-down trailer.
Besides both being ex-cons, the only thing they have in common is that their sons married each other, and both dads handled that poorly.
When both sons are brutally murdered, the men meet because of their shared goal – finding out what really happened to their boys.
The Book Girls Say…
Every chapter is easy to visualize in detail, but you won’t just see the characters. You’ll experience their emotions throughout the compelling story. Amid the page-turning tale, there are also great reminders about life and the importance of choosing to love your family while you can.
WARNING: If you’re sensitive to violence or lots of rough language, consider skipping this one. The downside of being able to picture every scene is that the descriptive writing includes the violent scenes.
After suffering a head injury in her home country of Mexico, Maribel’s family must move to Delaware so she can attend a special school, which will give her the best chance of recovery. The neighbors within their new apartment building are from other Central & South American countries, creating a bond as they try to adapt to their new home.
It’s a great look at the challenges of the immigrant experience and the lengths parents will go to for their children. You’ll also see an unlikely love story between Maribel and one of the boys from the apartment complex.
The Book Girls Say…
Melissa read this one back in 2015 and rated it 5 stars. Some reviewers don’t love that the coming-of-age story writing skewed a bit more toward YA versus literary fiction, but Melissa didn’t mind.
While roommates aren’t a concept unique to the 2010s, this decade was the rise of the sharing economy from ride-sharing to desk-sharing in coworking spots. The Flatshare takes this prevalence into a British apartment.
When night-shift worker Leon needs extra cash to help a family member, he decides to get a roommate. The problem is that he has a one-bedroom flat with just one bed. So he places an ad for someone to sleep in his bed while he’s at work. Of course, they’ll never be home simultaneously, but it’s still a crazy plan. But it’s just the affordable solution that Sophie needs after a breakup.
The Book Girls Say…
The Flatshare will make you laugh out loud as Leon and Sophie exchange notes and learn to co-habitat on opposite schedules. Under the humor, however, more serious storylines encompass other topics equally relevant to the last decade.
The Newcomers follows twenty-two immigrant teenagers throughout the 2015-2016 school year as they land at South High School in Denver, Colorado. Ranging in age from fourteen to nineteen, most of these students came directly from refugee camps in countries plagued by war, famine, or drought.
The book follows the student’s English language education with their dedicated and creative teacher, Mr. Williams. As they get a grasp of the languages, their individual histories unfold and add faces, names, and stories to those seeking asylum.
Class Mom is a light and entertaining novel about the life of a 40-something mom in a large suburb southwest of Kansas City. She also has two daughters in college, as well as a son in kindergarten.
If you’ve ever done a little eye-rolling when dealing with other parents at your child’s school, this is the book for you. Former rockstar groupie Jen is bamboozled into being the class mom for her daughter’s kindergarten class. Her emails recruiting other parent volunteers are full of the things you wish you could say, but hopefully wouldn’t.
The Book Girls Say…
This fun, irreverent book will make you laugh out loud as long as you don’t take it too seriously. If you’re not a fan of snark, sarcasm, or adult language, skip it. It’s total satire and not a deep novel, but sometimes, that’s just what we need!
If you enjoy the book, you’re in luck because it’s the first in a series of four books that follow the main character up through the years as her son goes through elementary school and on to middle school.
If you’ve ever watched Live with Kelly & Ryan (or Regis/Michael) in the mornings, the author of this book is Gelman’s wife, Laurie.
Deming Guo is 11 years old and lives with his single mom, Polly, who is an undocumented Chinese immigrant. She works hard at a nail salon to make enough for them to survive in a crowded apartment with her boyfriend, his sister, and his nephew.
One day, she doesn’t return home from work. No one is sure if she left willingly and will send for Deming, or if something terrible happened. When it’s clear Polly isn’t returning, Deming becomes a foster child. He’s placed with Peter and Kay, older college professors who aren’t sure if they’re meant to be parents. As Deming becomes Daniel to fit in better, he struggles to reconcile his new life with his old.
Daniel’s story alternates with that of his mother, Polly.
In this funny, yet tender, novel, Alice Island bookstore owner A.J. Fikry is having a terrible year. His wife has died, the store isn’t making enough sales, and his beloved book of Poe poems has been stolen. As a result, he’s cranky and pushing those around him away more than ever. Luckily, he has a few people who look past his curmudgeonly attitude.
His depression has reached the point that he no longer enjoys books. But, sometimes, life gives you second chances in unexpected ways. For A.J., it’s a small, but heavy, mysterious package that arrives at his shop. And as he begins to see the world around him in a new way, those around him can see him in a new way, too.
The Book Girls Say…
The Secret Life of AJ Fikry was also released as a movie. It would be fun to read with a friend and then watch together.
Ten-year-old Auggie has a facial deformity that previously prevented him from attending a traditional school. In his own words, “I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.”
Wonder begins from Auggie’s point of view as he starts 5th grade, but soon switches to include his classmates. While there are also chapters told from the perspective of his teenage sister, her boyfriend, and others, Auggie remains the focus of the story throughout. The multiple perspectives create a beautiful portrait of Auggie’s community as they struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.
The Book Girls Say…
In a time when the world could use more kindness, listening to this book that inspired the Choose Kind movement is a wonderful family experience, and it can lead to some wonderful conversations. Of all the audiobooks that Angela has listened to with her sons – this one ranks #1 as everyone’s favorite!
Eleanor Oliphant was one of our favorite quirky characters of the last decade. She struggles with social interactions and thinks things are okay in her loner lifestyle. However, a chance encounter opens her eyes to the possibility of life being more than fine and better with friends instead of relying on frozen pizza and vodka.
While we still have a ways to go, an expanded understanding of the importance of mental health and a movement to de-stigmatize mental health care was a positive shift in the 2010s. Seeing Eleanor’s struggles and progression aligns with this overall shift in perception.
The Book Girls Say…
Eleanor is quirky and endearing despite her lack of social skills. We both enjoyed this one!
This new novel will take you inside an elite NYC art school in 2011. America was in a recession after the 2008 crash, and the Occupy Wall Street movement was escalating. But at the school, students live in a bubble of their own world, spending days painting and sculpting.
New scholarship student Louisa feels adrift in the novel environment and is surprisingly attracted to her charismatic and wealthy roommate, Karina, and senior student Preston, an anti-capitalist online provocateur. As the relationships between the students force them to reconcile their identities and desires, Preston comes up with an explosive hoax that propels them into the cutthroat NYC art world.
The Book Girls Say…
This character-driven dark academia book contains many mature adult themes, from sex, drugs, and suicide to the complicated financial aspects of the art world. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s a great option if you love social commentary mixed with a sapphic romance.
Throughout the decade’s challenge, we’ve seen the role and treatment of women continually evolve. However, Things You Save in a Fire confronts some of the biases that have remained into the 2010s.
Cassie Hanwell was a firefighter in Austin and loved her job. But when her mother asks her to move to Boston despite their strained relationship, Cassie’s experience at the new fire house couldn’t be more different.
With a lack of funding, poor facilities, and an old-school hazing culture, the firehouse is not happy to have a woman join their crew.
The Book Girls Say…
Katherine Center became one of our favorite authors over the past two years, and Things You Save in a Fire is one of her best! Some consider this book a simple romance, but we believe the other aspects of the story are more important.
Kate is in the middle of an important meeting when she gets the frustrating call that her daughter has been caught cheating at her exclusive school.
When she arrives to pick Amelia up, the school is surrounded by emergency vehicles, and Kate learns that her daughter jumped to her death. At least that is what she believes until an anonymous text tells her that Amelia didn’t jump.
This suspense/mystery is a great insight into the increasing role of social media during the 2010s and the damage that comes along with it.
The Book Girls Say…
Most of the book is told from the mother’s perspective, but the entire story centers around Kate’s efforts to understand her daughter’s life. Additionally, we see the story through teenage eyes by way of the emails, text messages, and blog posts that Kate pours over as she attempts to piece together her daughter’s final days.
Eliza is a suburban wife secretly struggling with a new, intense fear of leaving her house. She forces herself to go to the store in preparation for a visit from her college-age children. While there, she hears younger moms talking about a new local online forum for women. Eliza has run a similar group for years, but these strangers are calling her original group boring.
In a moment of desperation and weakness, Eliza starts a rumor about a new neighbor on her board to liven it up. But soon, the rumor has reached further than she expected. It’s a great look at the repercussions of fake information, along with some additional 2010s themes.
The Book Girls Say…
This book is a great mix of comedy and drama about a group of neighbors overcoming their individual problems when they’re willing to share them and lean on other women.
Bernadette lives with her husband and her teenage daughter in Seattle – a city where she’s never felt she fits in. She was once a renowned architect, but now spends most of her time in the house hiding from the other moms of her daughter’s elite prep school.
Unlike her Microsoft employee husband, Elgie, who has fully embraced the granola-eating, public transport-using, bike-riding culture of 2010s Seattle, Bernadette spends her days in the house relying on a virtual assistant in India for many of her daily tasks. This becomes a real problem when her daughter’s stellar report card earns her a family cruise to Antarctica, and Bernadette becomes overwhelmed by the planning and preparations. When Bernadette disappears before the trip, her daughter Bee is determined to track her down, unraveling a web of secrets.
Much of this book is told in epistolary form, including notes from Bee’s school, email exchanges between Bernadette and her virtual assistant, and catty moms communicating about Bernadette’s eccentricities.
The Book Girls Say…
If you’re drawn to quirky and eccentric characters, you might love Bernadette as much as we do! This satirical novel was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for “Best Humor” when it was released in 2012, and it’s one of our favorite laugh-out-loud reads. But it’s more than just that… Maria Semple managed to create an enjoyable, witty, smart, and emotional novel!
Angela and her husband both enjoyed the audio version of this book, and this is one of the rare instances where we felt like the movie was almost as good as the book!
Marisol grew up hearing romantic stories of Cuba from her late grandmother, Elisa. The story alternates between these two family members from different generations.
In 1958 Havana, Elisa is the daughter of a sugar baron and a member of Cuba’s high society. Her family’s position largely shields her from the growing political unrest until she embarks on a forbidden affair.
Six decades later, in 2017, Elisa’s granddaughter Marisol arrives in Havana for the first time to fulfill her grandmother’s dying wish of having her ashes spread in her birth country. Marisol tries to reconcile the contrast of Cuba’s timeless beauty with its political climate, all while uncovering the story of her grandmother’s past.
Bea is a plus-sized fashion blogger tired of watching casts full of size 0 models. After a drunken post about the un-realness of the reality dating show, Main Squeeze, she gets a shocking call asking HER to be the next star of the show.
Can she trust the male contestants with her heart, or is it safer to remember she’s on the show for her career?
The Book Girls Say…
We both loved this one and enjoyed that the story varies between the actual narrative/ standard book format and snippets of podcast dialog, emails, etc about the show as fans watched. All the aspects came together and served as a great way to help your brain fully engage in the story.
The storyline blends reality TV, blogging, and the push to stop judging based on traditional beauty standards. It is fun and an excellent representation of the 2010s!
You are welcome to choose any book that you’d like to read for the challenge, but we hope that this list of books has given you a good starting point.
Sign Up for the Decades Challenge
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We compiled this list of major events of the time period to provide some historical context for your reading. We hope you enjoy learning a bit more about this period in history.
A January 2010 earthquake near Haiti’s capital, followed by more than 50 aftershocks, caused catastrophic damage to the island nation.
In April 2010, Apple launched the first generation iPad. While the iPad was not the very first tablet PC, its immediate popularity gave rise to numerous competitors.
The 2010 underground explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia killed 29 miners.
The Tea Party movement, representing US conservative populist social and political views, first began in 2009. It gained significant support and popularity during the 2010 mid-term elections.
An underwater 9.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan in March 2011 caused a tsunami with waves over 130 feet high. Damage from the earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.
England’s Prince William married Catherine Middleton in April 2011. The royal wedding was seen by an estimated 22.8 million television viewers around the world. Seven years later, in May of 2018, William’s younger brother, Prince Harry, married American Meghan Markle before a television audience of more than 29 million.
In September of 2011, Occupy Wall Street began as a march through the streets of the Financial District of NYC. It turned into a months-long sit-in at a park near the New York Stock Exchange. This protest movement, centered around issues of social and economic inequality, greed, and corruption, gained attention on social media and gave rise to other Occupy movements in the US and around the world.
England’s Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, marking 60 years since her 1952 ascension to the throne.
In July of 2012, “Gangnam Style” – the music video for the song by South Korean musician, Psy, became the first YouTube video to ever reach one billion views. It launched a worldwide dance craze.
On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and killed 26 people. Horrifyingly, this included 20 kids between the ages of six and seven. This was just one of many episodes of gun violence that marred the decade. Others included the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado that killed 12 and injured more than 70 others; the 2015 shooting of nine parishioners during a church prayer group in Charleston, South Carolina by a young white supremacist; the 2017 murder of 58 people attending a music festival in Las Vegas at the hands of a gunman in a 32nd-floor hotel room window who also injured hundreds of others, and 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which the teen gunman killed 17 and injured 17 others.
During the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon, two brothers detonated bombs that killed three and injured 264. A massive manhunt for the suspects of the Boston Marathon bombing ensued over the following four days.
A devastating EF-5 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma in May of 2013 ravaged the town and destroyed the elementary school. It was the deadliest tornado in the US since the 2011 Joplin, Missouri tornado that killed 158 people.
In 2013, several activists started using the social media hashtag #BlackLivesMatter following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of teen Trayvon Martin. The hashtag became a national movement that gained additional traction during the protests that followed the 2014 deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, who were both killed during encounters with the police.
Throughout the 2010s, social media became a popular way to raise money for charities. In the summer of 2014, the viral Ice Bucket Challenge raised over $115 million for ALS research. Those funds already aided in the discovery of a new ALS gene.
Following the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, same-sex marriage became legal in all fifty states in June of 2015.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady, became the first female presidential nominee of a major political party. She ran against businessman Donald Trump who ultimately won the 2016 Presidential Election with a large electoral college victory despite losing the popular vote by 2.8 million voters.
In 2016, Britons voted to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union in what came to be known as Brexit. The deadline to approve a withdrawal plan was extended several times. Parliament’s opposition to the proposed deal led to the resignation of Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019.
In January 2017, on the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency, more than 5 million people protested in support of gender equality and civil rights. The Women’s March – which was actually more than 600 marches worldwide – was the largest single-day demonstration in US history.
For the first time since 1918, a total solar eclipsewas visible across the entire United States in August 2017.
In the fall of 2017, the US territory of Puerto Rico was hit by two hurricanes, only weeks apart. Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria both pummelled the island, devastating the island’s infrastructure and resulting in the deaths of more than 4,600 people.
The #MeToo hashtag went viral on social media beginning in October 2017 following sexual abuse allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The hashtag turned into a feminist movement and became a rallying cry for millions of women who shared their own stories and experiences with sexual harassment and sexual abuse.
Following a whistleblower complaint about a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the US House of Representatives approved Articles of Impeachment against President Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Following a trial in the Senate, the President was acquitted in a vote that fell largely on party lines.
The Book Girls are best friends who jointly read over 200 books per year. We started Book Girls' Guide in 2019 to help others de-stress and find joy through the power of a great book. We do in-depth research on thousands of novels and non-fiction titles each year to provide curated book lists covering a variety of genres.
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