Favorite Authors of 2016

I'm rather late in writing this post because most of my favorite authors of 2016 were the same as the ones from previous years!

My favorite authors remain:
1.  Melanie Dickerson
2.  Georgette Heyer
3.  Emilie Loring
4.  Grace Livingston Hill
5.  Karen Witemeyer
6.  Julie Klassen
7.  Elizabeth Camden
8.  Sarah Ladd
9.  Tamara Leigh
10. Clare Darcy

So, what authors did I read the most this past year?

1.  The author I read the most was Emilie Loring!  I wrote about her in last year's post, at which time I had only read two of her fifty books.  Last fall, I was lucky to place a winning bid on a lot of 46 Loring books online, and I've been reading them ever since.  In fact, I was recently invited to write a guest post on The Emilie Loring Collection blog (Patti Bender).  You can read that post HERE.  In return for the post, Patti sent me one of the four books I was missing!  My post discusses the reasons why I love Emilie Loring's books, so I won't go into any more detail here!

2.  Second place was a tie between four authors--I read three books each.  The first is Melanie Dickerson, my current favorite author.  My pick of the year, though every single one of her books is awesome in my opinion, was The Beautiful Pretender. I pre-order all her books as soon as I can and have already read one this year.

3.  The second is Lori Wick.  I've known of Lori Wick for years but never bought any of her books.  The only reason I have read several of her books in the past few years is because a friend of mine gave me quite of few!  Some of Wick's books I like, and others I'm not that crazy about.  There are definitely a few keepers.  Sophie's Heart has been one of my favorites.

4.  Karen Witemeyer is one of my all-time favorite Christian novelists (probably a close second to Melanie Dickerson).  Stealing the Preacher was my favorite this year, though I loved all three of the novels I read.  What made this one special was that I won an autographed copy in a blog giveaway!  I had to complete a short writing assignment in order to enter the giveaway.  Writing is my hobby. While I may or may not ever publish, I have written over 300 story ideas, with 70 of those edited as short stories (mostly for my own enjoyment, though I've let a very few people read one or two).  I'm constantly editing and seeking to improve my writing, so this was a fun and instructive lesson and was a lot more effort than simply writing a blog comment.  Anyway, my entry won me a book, so it was well worth the effort!

5.  I read The Hunger Games trilogy probably 4-5 years ago; of course that's the series Suzanne Collins is known for.  A few years ago, however, I discovered her lesser-known Gregor the Overlander series.  I read all five of the books in that series before passing them to my teenage son. He loves them!  I read three of Collins's books this past year.

Did I discover any new authors in 2016 that blew me away?  No, not really.  Just my regular favorites!  Emilie Loring was pretty much my star author last year and will probably be this year as well!  As soon as I finish reading Loring's books, I do have a large pile of books by other authors, just waiting to be read at some point this year.  So, maybe, just maybe, I'll find a new gem in 2017!