My Favorite Books of 2023

Plus, a quick update on why I moved this newsletter to Substack.

Hi, book friends!

Happy belated New Year. I hope your January is off to a strong start, especially when it comes to reading.

I’m really excited to be writing to you from a new newsletter platform — Substack — which is a move I’ve been considering for a few months now. I’m feeling inspired to write more again, and I hope the fact that you don’t have to click away from your inbox will make it a better experience for you, too. I know I personally love reading newsletters on Substack, especially with their mobile app.

If you’ve been subscribed before now, the things I plan to publish won’t look too different: monthly recaps and TBRs, reading updates, books I’m looking forward to, bookish news, and so on. But now that stuff will come to you as it’s published, and it will all live right in the newsletter itself instead of on my blog, which I’ve scaled back to include only book reviews and the Booker of the Month book club info page.

Speaking of folks who’ve been around a while, thanks for your patience with me as I went unexpectedly quiet in November/December. As I shared just before the New Year, my husband and I are expecting a baby girl bookworm in June (!), and I spent most of the fourth quarter of 2023 very sick and bone-tired. If you missed them, you can catch up on all my reviews here and read my monthly wrap-ups and TBRs here for November/December and here for December/January.

Alright, enough talk! On to the good stuff.

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My favorite reads of 2023

A couple of quick disclaimers: First, I use the word “favorite” instead of “best” on purpose; this is about enjoyment, not necessarily quality (whatever quality means, anyway). Second, these are books I read in 2023, not just those published in 2023. Third, these are listed in the order I read them, not ranked. And finally, sorry not sorry for including 18 whole books here; I make up the rules, and I shall not be bound to a top ten! I read 113 books, after all. But I did break them up by genre, if that helps.

OK, let’s go. Click each title for my full review.

Literary fiction favorites

• Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan: A powerful novel about one girl’s coming-of-age during the Sri Lankan civil war. This book was impossible to put down; the prose — or maybe it’s more accurate to say Sashi’s voice — had a momentum that just reached out and gripped me and never let go. But it wasn’t just excellent on a sentence level. This book is tough to read at times, but gorgeous and heartbreaking throughout. I absolutely loved it.

• Take What You Need by Idra Novey: A quick but heartbreaking read about an estranged stepmother and stepdaughter with geographic, class, and political divides. The characters here — especially Jean — are so vivid and humanly flawed that it cracks your heart in two. One of the most underhyped litfic books of the year, IMO.

• Happy Place by Emily Henry: Okay, this is genre romance, not litfic, but it didn’t really fit anywhere else. I don’t read many romance novels, but Emily Henry is my (and many others’) exception. I loved her latest; this one hit me in the gut more than her others did. Henry’s character and conflict work + Julia Whelan’s audio narration had min tears.

• Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: A searing, extremely smart, and compulsively readable novel about incarceration, the use of Black lives as entertainment, and so much more. This was my pick for this year’s National Book Award (it was shortlisted). You gotta read it.

• The Bee Sting by Paul Murray: WHEW. 500 pages of family saga followed by 150 pages of literary thriller. I loved the way Murray played with voice and grammar for each member of the family. Many people, including me, wanted it to win the Booker (it was shortlisted). You’re not ready for the ending; read it anyway if you like long books about characters that could step off the page as they break your heart.

• Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward: Sensory and immersive, brutal and beautiful, Let Us Descend is another masterpiece from our queen Jesmyn Ward. Tell me you don’t get chills from the first line: “The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand.” This will be especially your jam if you’re a fan of magical realism, particularly of the spiritual variety.

• North Woods by Daniel Mason: This is what I want every literary historical fiction novel to be for the rest of time. It’s super engaging and creative in structure, with the focus on the woods (and a house in those woods, complete with apple orchard) over 4+ centuries. If you like books that span lifetimes, connect them in super-smart ways, cut to the quick of an excellent character in no time flat, weave in nature, and experiment with structure, run don’t walk!

Fantasy favorites

• A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness: A magical and deeply moving early-YA novel about grief in the wake of a parent’s death and the range of very human emotions that come with it. I sobbed, dear reader. Sobbed! Also, the illustrations were done by Jim Kay, whose work you may recognize from the watercolor editions of the first five Harry Potter books. And the audiobook is read, phenomenally, by none other than Jason Isaacs. (The movie is also excellent!)

• A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos, #0) by Samantha Shannon: This is the prequel to The Priory of the Orange Tree (although you could read it as a standalone), and I liked it even better. It’s fantastically rendered with everything you could want: dragons, queendoms, mystery, battles, politics, and multiple POVs spanning four continents. It’s also very sapphic!

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1) by Shannon Chakraborty: A pirate fantasy featuring a middle-aged woman main character? Say less!! And y’all, it does NOT disappoint. This is an adventurous, swashbuckling, gloriously fun time with an incredible cast of characters. It’s the start of a series (but feels like a standalone) and I can’t wait for more in this world!

• Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs: Magical books. Magical libraries. Magical herbs. Magical mirrors. Evil hiding in plain sight. A witchy cat. Sapphic (closed-door) romance. Sisterhood. What more could you ask for? This is a fast-paced, well-written, bookish standalone fantasy that I absolutely adored. It’s been a long time since a book made me want to text live updates to someone who’d already read it!

• The Fragile Threads of Power (Threads of Power, #1) by V.E. Schwab: This book — the start of a new trilogy that takes place seven years after Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy, featuring all the characters you love — is everything I hoped it would be. Schwab is a master plotter, a master of the details, a master of sentences — just a master of everything. We don’t deserve her.

• Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4) by Sarah J. Maas: I had an absolutely fantastic time reading this 8-book series, but it felt like cheating to include them all. So I tried to pick a favorite, and I landed on QoS. That said, books 4-7 were all incredible, and if you ask me tomorrow I might change my mind.

• Godkiller (Godkiller, #1) by Hannah Kaner: a well-written, well-built start of a new fantasy series with characters you’ll love and worldbuilding you’ll swoon over. I also love a book that takes place a few years after the big war is over, a sort of “where are they now” feeling that shows that happily ever after is more complicated than we think. For you if you love a sword-wielding butch bisexual woman (and fantasy in general, tbh).

• Starling House by Alix E. Harrow: Another top-notch novel from Alix E. Harrow, an auto-buy author for me. It was perfect for fall, exactly the plunge into plot that I needed, with lovable characters to boot. If you love spooky, magical Victorian houses, big-hearted guys with tattoos, and a main character who takes no sh*t, this is for you.

Nonfiction favorites

I didn’t read a ton of nonfiction this year, but I’m planning to step it back up in 2024. Still, I read a few gems.

• Choosing to Run: A Memoir by Des Linden: I went down a rabbit hole of memoir/manifestos by pro women runners this year, and this — by the first American woman to win the Boston Marathon in 33 years — was a standout. But I think anyone who loves a great memoir (especially an underdog story) would love this book. It was engaging, taught me something new, and made my world a little bigger.

• Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English by Valerie Fridland: A joyfully fun, delightfully nerdy book that word people will love. Valerie Fridland not only covers linguistics, with whole chapters on the history and fascinating unconscious use cases of um/uh, dude, literally, and more. She also explains how and why women and young people tend to lead the way in language shifts — and why they’re often criticized for it. Plus, she’s freakin’ funny.

• Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World by Lauren Fleshman: This one was my favorite of the running memoir/manifestos, I think. And honestly, the title doesn’t do it justice. This is perspective-shifting and deeply important — especially when it comes to what can be done to prevent eating disorders for women collegiate athletes — all while deftly carrying the narrative of Fleshman’s memoir. It taught me so much I didn’t know. A+.

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As always, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me! It would mean a lot if you were to take a second to like this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, too.

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— Deedi (she/her)