Did we finish all the books we wanted to read in 2023? No, but we had a spectacular time trying.
Last year gave us juicy bestselling titles like Emily Henry’s “Happy Place” alongside instant literary classics like James McBride's "The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.” It was a banner year for celebrity memoirs as A-listers including Barbra Streisand, Britney Spears, Prince Harry and Kerry Washington gave us a glimpse into their worlds. And of course we devoured new pages from the reliable brains of Stephen King, James Patterson and Colleen Hoover.
As the calendar flips, so opens a fresh 12 months of reading opportunity. But before we’re awash with new titles, we wanted to look back at our favorite books of 2023. We hope you’ll find a few you missed last year and can add to your 2024 to-read list.
Hemon keeps many plates spinning: He’s a professor at Princeton, a musician under the name Cielo Hemon, the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant and a screenwriter who co-wrote the script for “The Matrix Resurrections.” Somehow, while doing all that, he also wrote one of the all-time-great novels about World War I. The Bosnian American writer takes readers on a tour of the horrors of the 20th century as seen through the eyes of Pinto, a poetic dreamer who falls in love with a fellow soldier on the front lines and, like Hemon himself, is displaced forever by war. It’s a wrenching war narrative, a soaring love story and everything between. It’s truly a book that lives up to its ambitious title. – Barbara VanDenburgh
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As much as I love Stephen King, it’s fun to seek out other horror writers who can weave together the sinister and sublime, like Harrison and her cult chiller with a dysfunctional family and a big ol’ secret. Vesper Wright is a cynical 20-something who gets fired from her dead-end chain restaurant job. She gets a wedding invite from her cousin (and ex-BFF), who’s still in the ultra-religious community Vesper escaped from as a teenager. She goes back “home” to reconnect with loved ones and her icy mom, an iconic movie scream queen. Things go awry when a major reveal happens – it’s not hard to figure out but still pretty cool – and Vesper is forced to confront her past and figure out her future. It’s a hellacious coming-of-age novel with apocalyptic stakes and a delicious dark streak. – Brian Truitt
If you’re a fan of dragons and intrigue, then this fast-paced, twisty book is for you. Yarros manifests a brutal world where your enemies are just as dangerous as your fellow students, who are encouraged to kill anyone who shows weakness. Think “Game of Thrones” meets “Hunger Games.” The novel follows Violet Sorrengail, whose commanding general mother denies her entry to the safe Scribe Quadrant and forces her into Basgiath War College, where she is forged into a deadly weapon and discovers a secret so massive that it changes everything she thinks she knows. The second book in "The Empyrean" series, “Iron Flame,” was recently published and is just as absorbing as the first. – Jennifer McClellan
More great reads:Amazon reveals the 10 best books of 2023, and No. 1 is a unanimous winner
I admit I'm a sucker for a romantic comedy. But often after consumption, I feel empty and can’t even remember what happened, except people seemed to end up happily ever after. So Sittenfeld’s newest book was a pure delight that feels smart while also breezy and funny. The writer of “Prep” and “Rodham” is able to bring together sharp observations about women and love − and women and work − while sucking you into the will-they-or-won’t-they story. The book follows a late-night show writer who falls for a pop singer and all of the insecurities that come with it. Sittenfeld even works the pandemic into this love story and lets it unfold in what feels like real-time. The book is a fun and smart escape, and we can only hope it finds its way to the big screen soon so we can consume it again. – Laura Trujillo
This book is haunting, and not just because of ghosts. Due's latest novel follows 12-year-old Robert Stephens Jr., a Black boy in Jim Crow South who has been sent to the Gracetown School for Boys, a segregated reformatory facility where many boys have been sentenced and some never make it out. The fictional reform school and its abuses are quite similar to Florida’s very real Dozier School for Boys. It also doesn't help that Robert can see ghosts. The school's ground is full of those who died there, and Robert has been tasked with helping catch them. Robert and his sister, Gloria, who is trying to help free her brother, must learn to navigate the challenges they are forced to face in a racist world where they are hated, yet also invisible. "The Reformatory" is raw, compelling and has so much emotion in its pages. – Felecia Wellington Radel
We all suspected Hollywood was a shark tank, but Tinseltown chronicler Shulman takes us into the murky aquarium to see the Megalodons up close. What comes across clearly is that what was old is sadly new again, from the pre-#MeToo issues at the dawn of the movie age 100 years ago to the aggressive and at times suspect tactics to crown some stars and movies over others. It is a sweeping chronicle of the past that also helps us put every future Oscar telecast into glorious if snarky perspective. – Marco della Cava
Reflecting on the year, there are two essential queer texts that I keep coming back to: Barbra Streisand’s nearly 1,000-page memoir, a gloriously dishy deep dive into the life and career of our greatest living entertainer; and Zimmerman’s marvelous first book, “Is It Hot in Here?” Through a series of drolly hilarious and frequently moving essays, the comedian vividly muses on family, heartbreak, religious guilt and the general gay chaos of modern dating. For anyone else whose sexual awakening was inspired at least in part by “Fiddler on the Roof” and an actor playing Motel, this book is tailor-made just for you. – Patrick Ryan
It’s not every day that a book about cannibalism, cults and flesh-eating zombies makes you bawl your eyes out. Lozada-Oliva’s first novel in prose follows three generations of unruly and strong women: Candelaria, the matriarch; Lucia, her daughter; and granddaughters Bianca, an archaeologist, Candy, a recovering addict, and Paola, a brainwashed wellness cultist. The estranged sisters all deal with their diasporic identity, womanhood and vices on their own – but their fierce love for one another always brings them back together. Especially during an apocalypse. At its heart, “Candelaria” is about the unflinching love that binds generations of women together and the work it takes to dismantle intergenerational trauma. Easily one of my favorites of 2023, “Candelaria” is messy, trippy, beautiful and complicated. – Pamela Avila
Strasser’s grief memoir about her mother and brother dying four months apart is a must-read for anyone grieving because it reminds you that life isn’t about happy endings. It’s about possibilities. She mined her son’s Little League baseball games as a beautiful through-line to her grief journey. "There's something eternal about baseball that seems to tie the living to the dead, that seems to tie the past to the future,” Strasser told me in an interview. “We just put our feet in the dirt. We prayed for wins. We let losses wash over us. We knew that there were endless possibilities for magical happy endings. And we didn't always get a happy ending, but we knew one was always possible.” – David Oliver
I love the self-improvement genre, and this book provided such an "aha" moment of clarity. I’ve often felt alone in my ambition to continuously strive to be the best version of myself. (I’m not saying I accomplished this unachievable goal, but it’s something I’m constantly thinking about that has made me feel separate from others at times.) Morgan Schafler’s book gave me an identity as a proud perfectionist and made me feel like less of a weirdo. She also provides tools on how to ease the self-applied pressure to be perfect. “All people care about is you, and you are not a composite list of your perceived accomplishments and failures in life,” she wants readers to remember. “The energy you bring into the room with you is more valuable than anything you could ever do.” – Erin Jensen
Peyton’s debut novel certainly doesn’t read like a debut. Her lyrical, historical narrative shifts perspectives among a group of enslaved Black women on a struggling Texas plantation as they stage a covert rebellion against their white captors, who have hired a “stockman” to rape and impregnate them. It’s a brutal book, as any narrative from the perspective of the enslaved must by necessity be. But it’s also a hopeful, empowering narrative as the women use what resources and will they have to defy their tormentors and assert their humanity in the face of great evil. – VanDenburgh
If you feel intimidated by poetry, or if you think poetry just isn’t for you, then get ready for Chicago poet Olivarez to change your mind. “Promises of Gold” urges readers to “allow poetry into your life,” he said in an interview with USA TODAY. Olivarez’s poems are about the familial, brotherly, romantic, platonic and self kinds of love in our lives, and about how restorative those ties can be. “Promises of Gold” tackles grief, intergenerational ties, machismo, heartbreak, love and how the mundanity of everyday life can end up being transformative. The tender, funny, colloquial yet beautiful way in which Olivarez crafts every poem will leave you meditating on the big love you feel for friends, family and community. – Avila
As a woman who wrote a book about my mother who killed herself jumping into the Grand Canyon, I admit that I was fully unprepared for the first sentence of Maynard’s novel: “I was twenty-seven years old when I decided to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge.” That sentence took my breath away, and then so did the rest of the 432-page book that tells a story of hope. We need more books like this, one that tells a story as universal as loss and then as uplifting as the ways you can find survival. The story follows Irene, a woman in hiding from a problem she didn’t create who suffers an immeasurable loss and winds up at a lake in a Central American country that closely resembles Maynard’s own place at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. I hung on every lyrical sentence as the book followed Irene’s journey to run an inn and to find herself, even when it required embracing a dose of magical realism. – Trujillo
This might not be the book you seek out, but it finds you, it’s a book that’ll change you. The author is a stuntwoman to celebrity A-listers, and she will have you walking away more empathetic and understanding of childhood sexual abuse survivors. The memoir, divided into three parts ("Splitting," "Spinning" and "Landing"), details Murphy’s painful process of excavating her darkest memories with unflinching honesty and a desperate need to pull back the curtain on toxic family dynamics that perpetuate the cycle of molestation. Murphy’s “Glimmer” does a tremendous job of destigmatizing child sexual abuse and challenging readers to stand up and speak out for survivors. Murphy’s memoir is about the long road to healing, the difficult but important job of telling your story, and how despite everything, there’s the chance of a “Glimmer” of hope at the end. – Avila
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