My Favorite Books Of 2023

 Happy New Year! 2023 was the year I read the most books I have ever read in my life. 85 books 😮 my goal was 80 so I am very pleased. I think my average rating was a 3.8 which I think is pretty good. I do tend to give a lot of 3.5/4 star so that tracks. So I will insert a visual of my best of 2023 bracket and then my honorable mentions which are all 4 star or higher. 

So here are my best books of 2023! We have mostly horror/suspense/thriller but a couple general/historical fiction and 1 romance. If you are looking for great suspense thrillers definitely check out The Southern Book Clubs Guide To Slaying Vampires, Razorblade Tears, None Of This Is True and The Only One Left. If you’re looking for a true extreme horror then Maeve Fly is the perfect book! If paranormal,sci-fi is your thing then I suggest Kindred and My Best Friends Exorcism. The Push is very much about generational trauma and motherhood. Kind of in a group all its own but still considered a thriller. Shark Heart is a romance but it’s also fantasy. It’s so beautiful and heartbreaking. Unlike anything I’ve read before. That brings us to my two favorite books of the year. I could not pick just one. The first one Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine is something that will stay with me forever. I know it won’t resonate with everyone. I know some will see it as a some weird book about paranoia but it was so much more for me. I have never cried so much reading a book. Definitely check trigger warnings as it does talk about miscarriage, IVF, infertility etc. The overall narrative of how women are gaslit so much especially when it comes to their bodies and their health in the medical system. Not knowing if you can trust your own thoughts and feelings. She really did a fantastic job showing the emotions a person goes through while trying to conceive and trying to understand this foreign thing in your body! Her authors note at the end was brilliant and I wish that was made into a book itself! Even if it went in a bit of a strange direction I don’t care because the rest of it was so perfect. I will be rereading this at some point. My other favorite of the year is 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I am still so shocked that I loved this book as much as I did. A time travel book about JFK? That doesn’t really sound like my thing. It was so much more than that though. That is the premise though. This man goes back in time to prevent Lee Harvey Oswald from assassinating JFK. I loved the rules of the time travel and the idea of the butterfly effect. There were so many excellent characters in this book and to me Kings writing is like a screenplay which is why so many of his books translate so well into tv. I am still thinking about those characters and that world. It was 850 pages and I wanted more. This is sci-fi but it’s also suspense and romance. The romance is unexpected and so good! I really took my time reading this book and now I’m sad it’s over. I have a new favorite book character Jake/George. I need to watch the series now just so I can go back to that world. 

So those were my most favorite books of 2023. It was really hard choosing those because as you can see I had a lot that I loved. If I had to choose a top 5 from Honorable Mentions it would be Nestlings by Nat Cassidy, The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark By Warren Wagner, Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig and The House In The Cerulean Sea by T.J Klune. But I would recommend them all! What were your favorite books of 2023! Any that were on my list? I can’t wait to see what makes it to the top this year! Happy Reading!