Best Books of 2023: I read 57 books this year with 17 of the books being published this year. I will post my top ten books published this year and my top 5 of books that were not published this year.

Top Ten of Books Published in 2023:

1: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang is a groundbreaking contemporary fiction about a stolen story from a dead Asian writer by a white one. The novel is so much more than its logline about a stolen novel as it is an in-depth look at the good and bad of the publishing industry and analyzes what intellectual property is and whether it can be stolen. The book asks: If I have a conversation with someone and use it verbatim in my story is that theft? Can a person tell a story of a different ethnicity other than their own? If you get a prompt sentence or paragraph that you include in the writing is it theft? Can an ethnic writer branch out and not lose their audience?  This novel was clear frontrunner when I finished it.  It won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Fiction.

2: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann is a harrowing true story of an English ship in the 1700s that is masterfully told. The story of the ship The Wager is interesting, but the way Grann moves events around adds suspense to the story. If the story were written straight it would be just okay. The way Grann writes it he foreshadows the events that are in the title a shipwreck, a mutiny, and a murder, and it is up for you the reader to figure out which character is going to do the mutiny and the murder. The characters are laid out like an Agatha Christie mystery where we learn about their background, what drives them, and how they came to the ship. I did not expect this story to be so well told, as I was reading it I thought it was the only book that could rival Yellowface, but it came in just short. This was the winner of the Gooreads Choice Award for Best History and Biography.

3. Starter Villain by John Scalzi is a fun comedy that explores the scenario of a nice guy who inherits a criminal empire. The story has a lot of fun with the concept and portrays the criminal empire as a James Bond villain’s fantasy. The volcano lair is fun visually for the reader. Scalzi has so much fun writing dialogue for the sentient cats and dolphins. The pacing of the book is rapid speed for a pretty short book at 262 pages. The book is hard to put down. My biggest complaint is the story is too short. The Kaiju Preservation Society written by John Scalzi, which made it into my top ten books, read of the year list for last year.

4: Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig is a one-of-a-kind horror that involves possessed apples and the people who eat them. The story is a happy medium of both weird and scary. It takes a great storyteller to make a horror about possessed apples work, but man does Chuck Wendig make it work. The story takes every trope about apples and applies it, the bad apple, the forbidden fruit, the golden apple, the bad seed, and the poisoned apples. The horror is greedy, cultish, cannibalistic, gory, and body modification. Wendig taps into descriptions of apple eating that will turn your stomach, and he’s just getting started.

5: In the Lives of Puppets by T. J. Klune is a smart futuristic retelling of Pinocchio. The book is filled with a lot of heart both literally and figuratively. The story is an emotional one with lots of twists and turns. The story is Pinocchio with a combination of Wall-E meets Terminator 2: Judgement Day. The characters are very memorable which makes this story work so well. Rambo is a little robot that I need in my life and was my favorite character by far. This story is a retelling of the classic story Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi but told for a new age with robots. I’m a sucker for a retelling but I need it to be clever as it makes odes to the original, actually being a retelling does not use one element of the story and throw everything else out and call it a retelling, and make changes that honor the original story’s theme. In the Lives of Puppets nails all three of these elements.

6: Marvel Wastelanders: Star-Lord by Sarah Cawkwell is a Marvel Comics story set in the future. The set-up for this story is the question: what if the bad guys won and Earth was turned into a wasteland? This story is adapted from a Sirius XM and Marvel New Media podcast called Wastelanders by Benjamin Percy. This story is one of five and the way it ends there is a potential for more. After reading this I hope Aconyte Books writes more in the series. Marvel Wastelanders: Star-Lord has a fantastic beginning that captures the characters of Rocket and Peter Quill (Star-Lord) so well. The banter is perfect as they are instantly in danger and arguing over whose fault it was and how to get out of the situation. The humor is on point and does not let up, I laughed out loud more than a few times.

7: Happy Place by Emily Henry is a funny romantic comedy about finding your happy place. Happy place is the novel’s theme and how you can get there through a job, vacation, or your person. The story has sexy, comedic, and very “real” moments. The novel is told in the present day but with many flashbacks to show happier times. I thought the overall story was very well written and balanced the highs and lows of the character’s emotions. The pace was very fast and made the novel easy to consume. The novel is a very beat-by-beat romantic comedy, but there was a twist that I did not see coming that elevated the story.  Happy Place won the Goodreads Choice Award for Best Romance.

8: The Ferryman by Justin Cronin is an emotional science fiction ride. The Novel feels like two stories in one. The world-building is well thought out and creatively developed. I love how dreams work in the story and how they are analyzed. The story goes places that I couldn’t predict, it is a wild ride.

9: Descendant Machine by Gareth L. Powell is a smart science fiction adventure filled with witty dialogue. Descendant Machine is the second book in the Continuance book series. It is a very loose sequel to Stars and Bones the first book in the series, where no characters return and the events in the book are light years away and not mentioned. The only thing tying the books together is the set up for how humans currently live and what happened to Earth. You do not have to read the first book, Stars and Bones, to read Descendant Machine.

10: Harley Quinn: Ravenous by Rachael Allen is the sequel to Harley Quinn: Reckoning and part of the DC Icons series. The DC Icons series has seven books so far and tells stories before the DC hero or villain became iconic. Harley Quinn is the first book in the DC Icons to get a sequel and eventual trilogy. Harley Quinn: Ravenous takes place 3 months after Harley Quinn: Reckoning. Harleeen Quinzel is now officially in college and still dealing with the repercussions that happened last year. This book like the last book starts with a flash-forward which we catch up to a little past the point midway in the book. This book is a little slower-paced than the first book at the beginning because Harleen is trying to be good but spoiler it won’t last for long. 

Top Five Books Not Published in 2023:

1: Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a historical fiction novel about tennis, love, winning, losing, and family. There’s a metaphor that runs through the novel about love, in tennis, love means 0 or better yet nothing. Carrie Soto throughout the book evolves into what love is in terms of winning and losing. This is a great book that hooks you in so fast and you instantly care about the character of Carrie Soto and what she wants to accomplish in the book. The father and daughter relationship works well and evolves through the years. The opening starts in the present of 1994, then goes into the past to show how Carrie got there.

2: Chesapeake by James A Michener is an epic historical fiction that explores 400 years of American history all about the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland. The novel starts out in 1583 and ends in 1978. The stories are so real, vivid, and intertwined in history that you can almost swear Michener is telling family dynasty’s through the years. This novel is deep in historical fiction and has a 13 page appendix of historical help. We get 14 vignettes or slices of life from about 5 main families and how they changed through out the years. I like that the story does not just stick to humans and tells stories of a Canadian geese migrating for the winter and a Maryland crab surviving the fresh water of the Bay.

3: Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage is a crazy psychological thriller about the most dysfunctional relationship between a mother and a child ever. The plot will get compared to The Omen, the Richard Donner film from the 1970’s, but where that plot involved a supernatural presence this book does not which makes it a little scarier. The writing in Baby Teeth is really great with a lot of really clever metaphors and passages. The pace of the book is really fast and very hard to put down. The theme and meaning running through the book is selfishness which all main characters have and is manifested in different ways: selfishness in career, selfishness in alone time, and selfishness of love. You could make arguments for which character was the most selfish.

4: Goosebumps – The Headless Ghost by R. L. Stine is a good old fashioned ghost story. The Headless Ghost is Goosebumps book 37 in the original series order. The story of the ghost and how he became headless is really great and scary, reminded me of a good campfire ghost story. The story takes place at Hill House which is an homage to the Shirley Jackson ghost story The Haunting of Hill House. This story is focused from the beginning and one of the best paced Goosebumps. The story is spooky and the danger feels real.

5: Horse by Geraldine Brooks is a historical fiction about horses, art, science, love, and racism. The novel is beautifully written with each word used as a brush stroke to paint the canvas of the mind. The story had me right at the start, where a series of events links the past to the present through a horse using art and science. The story is told in three timelines 1850s, 1950s, and 2019. The novel does an incredible job of linking the past to the present. The 1850s timeline is where the majority of the book takes place and is the most interesting period. Jarret and his love for the horse is infectious. Jarret is a slave and the horse Lexington the fastest racehorse of his time. They both just want to break free one on the race track and one in life. Their bond and understanding of one another is the heart of the book.