Hi friends! ? 2023 is almost over as I’m writing this and you know what this means… time to recap our best books read this year! Not going to lie: Nyx and I have almost the same picks, so...

Hi friends! 2023 is almost over as I’m writing this and you know what this means… time to recap our best books read this year! Not going to lie: Nyx and I have almost the same picks, so I (Marie) did my very best to showcast other books, too. Overall, it’s been a pretty good reading year, I’d say. Let’s get started!

2023 reading statistics

Nyx: I read 32 books this year. It’s less than last year (40 books) and even less than the years before (I used to read about 50 books a year). But that’s okay, I’m just a little bit busier and have a little less time to read. I’m still really enjoying myself and I read quite a lot of amazing books in 2023!

Marie: I set a goal of 50 books read for this year and… well, I made it, but barely. I haven’t read that little since… 2015, according to Goodreads, but it’s still on point if I’m comparing this goal to the last few years. I’ve been reading around 50 books in the past three years. I guess that’s my new goal. Not going to lie, it feels a bit disappointing to read less, but well. Life and priorities change and, like my sister said, as long as I’m enjoying myself… it’s okay.

Nyx’s 5 Best Books Read in 2023

Every Summer After, Carley Fortune

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.

Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.

For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.

When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.

Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.

I didn’t expect to love it so much but damn this books gave me so many emotions! It was romantic, messy and compulsively readable. I could not put it down! If you’re into the friends to lovers and the second chance romance tropes, you’re in for a treat!

You and Me on Vacation, Emily Henry

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s the perfect read for friends to lovers fans like me! I loved the banter and the slow-burned romance. This book just made my heart really happy!

You Could Be So Pretty, Holly Bourne

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:“The Doctrine exists to make us believe we are less than, so we don’t have the strength to overthrow everything. Masking, and Ceremonies, and Chosen Ones – how we’re all groomed to worry constantly about what we look like – it’s a deliberate pressure. It’s designed to keep us down. To limit us. Divide us. Masks…Beauty…it’s all about weakening and dividing us.”

Belle Gentle follows the rules of The Doctrine to the letter and is so close to Having It All. She’s the highest Pretty in school, A Chosen One in her spare time, and she’s about to win The Ceremony and fulfil her destiny. So why does she feel so suffocated by her perfect life?

Joni Miller is an Objectionable and hated by everyone for her repulsive looks. But Joni doesn’t care. She just needs to win the Scholarship to The Education, so she get the power to overthrow The Doctrine and wake everyone up. The only person standing in her way is the prettiest girl in school.

Set in a dystopian world, of normalised sexual violence, and where girls are expected to maintain impossible beauty standards of beauty, You Could Be So Pretty explores what happens when two enemies are thrown together. As Belle and Joni confront their prejudices, the reader is left asking themselves: Is this world really so far from our own?

This book blew me away! Holly Bourne takes you deep into a dystopian world of normalised sexual violence and where girls are expected to maintain impossible beauty standards. Addictive and fast-paced, a must-read!

Unnecessary Drama, Nina Kenwood

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Eighteen-year-old Brooke is the kind of friend who not only remembers everyone’s birthdays, but also organizes the group present, pays for it, and politely chases others for their share. She’s the helper, the doer, the maker-of spreadsheets. She’s the responsible one who always follows the rules?and she plans to keep it that way during her first year of college.

Her student housing only has one “no unnecessary drama.” Which means no fights, tension, or romance between roommates. When one of them turns out to be Jesse, her high-school nemesis, Brooke is determined she can handle it. They’ll simply silently endure living together and stay out of each other’s way. But it turns out Jesse isn’t so easy to ignore.

With Unnecessary Drama , Nina Kenwood perfectly captures the experience of leaving home for the first time, dealing with the unexpected complications of life, and somehow finding exactly what you need.

This book perfectly captures the experience of leaving home for the first time and dealing with the unexpected complications of life. With a great anxiety representation and a very much relatable main character, this read is A++!

After I Do, Taylor Jenkins Reid

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:When Lauren and Ryan’s marriage reaches the breaking point, they come up with an unconventional plan. They decide to take a year off in the hopes of finding a way to fall in love again. One year apart, and only one rule: they cannot contact each other. Aside from that, anything goes.

Lauren embarks on a journey of self-discovery, quickly finding that her friends and family have their own ideas about the meaning of marriage. These influences, as well as her own healing process and the challenges of living apart from Ryan, begin to change Lauren’s ideas about monogamy and marriage. She starts to question: When you can have romance without loyalty and commitment without marriage, when love and lust are no longer tied together, what do you value? What are you willing to fight for?

I adore everything that Taylor Jenkins Reid writes and this one is no exception. It’s an emotional and heartfelt story with relatable characters. An honest and genuine book with a gorgeous writing style that you need to pick up now!

Honorable mentions

Marie’s 5 Best Books Read in 2023

The Breakup Tour, Austin Siegemund-Broka & Emily Wibberley

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Riley Wynn went from a promising singer-songwriter to a superstar overnight, thanks to her breakup song concept album and its unforgettable lead single. When Riley’s ex-husband claims the hit song is about him, she does something she hasn’t in ten years and calls Max Harcourt, her college boyfriend and the real inspiration for the song of the summer.

Max hasn’t spoken to Riley since their relationship ended. He’s content with managing the retirement home his family owns, but it’s not the life he dreamed of filled with music. When Riley asks him to go public as her songwriting muse, he agrees on one he’ll join her in her band on tour.

As they perform across the country, Max and Riley start to realize that while they hit some wrong notes in the past, their future could hold incredible things. And their rekindled relationship will either last forever or go down in flames.

Cheating because I’m mentioning this book releasing in 2024, but well. I’m a huge fan of Wibbroka’s books, as you know, and this one was no exception. You feel the Taylor Swift inspiration (huge fan), you get the incredible sparks Wibbroka always manage to have in their writing and it’s just such a good adult romance okay.

The Neighbor Favor, Kristina Forest

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming an editor of children’s books but has been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over e-mail turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won’t let herself entertain–until he ghosts her.

Months later, still crushed but determined to take charge of her life, Lily seeks a date to her sister’s wedding. And the perfect person to help her is Nick Brown, her charming, attractive new neighbor, whom she feels drawn to for unexplainable reasons. Little does she know that Nick is an author–her favorite fantasy author.

Nick, who has his reasons for using a pen name and for pushing people away, soon realizes that the beautiful, quiet woman from down the hall is the same Lily he fell in love with over e-mail months ago. Unwilling to complicate things even more between them, he agrees to set her up with someone else, though this simple favor between two neighbors is anything but–not when he can’t get her off his mind.

A second favorite adult romance and this one’s bookish. I just absolutely adored Lily, such a relatable, incredible main character dreaming of working as a book editor, falling for her new neighbor. This is an adorable, endearing bookish romance and I am in love.

Yellowface, R. F. Kuang

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.

White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface grapples with questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation, as well as the terrifying alienation of social media. R.F. Kuang’s novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

I’m not being original here, at all, but well. Yellowface deserves its praise. It’s a baffling, jaw-dropping, messy kind of book that leaves you wondering about publishing and I binge read this. I loved it.

All Alone With You, Amelia Diane Coombs

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS:Eloise Deane is the worst and doesn’t care who knows it. She’s grumpy, prefers to be alone, and is just slogging through senior year with one goal: get accepted to USC and move to California. So when her guidance counselor drops the bombshell that to score a scholarship she’ll desperately need, her applications require volunteer hours, Eloise is up for the challenge. Until she’s paired with LifeCare, a volunteer agency that offers social support to lonely seniors through phone calls and visits. Basically, it’s a total nightmare for Eloise’s anxiety.

Eloise realizes she’s made a huge mistake—especially when she’s paired with Austin, the fellow volunteer who’s the sunshine to her cloudy day. But as Eloise and Austin work together to keep Marianne Landis—the mysterious former frontwoman of the 1970s band the Laundromats—company, something strange happens. She actually…likes Marianne and Austin? Eloise isn’t sure what to do with that, especially when her feelings toward Austin begin to blur into more-than-friends territory.

And when ex-girlfriends, long-buried wounds, and insecurities reappear, Eloise will have a choice to make: go all in with Marianne and Austin or get out before she gets hurt.

Amelia Diane Coombs is officially one of my favorite authors. This YA contemporary has excellent anxiety/depression rep, won me over with its grumpy/sunshine trope and I’m just, this was so warm and relatable and, my heart. Loved this.

You Could Be So Pretty, Holly Bourne

CLICK TO READ THE SYNOPSIS: “The Doctrine exists to make us believe we are less than, so we don’t have the strength to overthrow everything. Masking, and Ceremonies, and Chosen Ones – how we’re all groomed to worry constantly about what we look like – it’s a deliberate pressure. It’s designed to keep us down. To limit us. Divide us. Masks…Beauty…it’s all about weakening and dividing us.”

Belle Gentle follows the rules of The Doctrine to the letter and is so close to Having It All. She’s the highest Pretty in school, A Chosen One in her spare time, and she’s about to win The Ceremony and fulfil her destiny. So why does she feel so suffocated by her perfect life?

Joni Miller is an Objectionable and hated by everyone for her repulsive looks. But Joni doesn’t care. She just needs to win the Scholarship to The Education, so she get the power to overthrow The Doctrine and wake everyone up. The only person standing in her way is the prettiest girl in school.

Set in a dystopian world, of normalised sexual violence, and where girls are expected to maintain impossible beauty standards of beauty, You Could Be So Pretty explores what happens when two enemies are thrown together. As Belle and Joni confront their prejudices, the reader is left asking themselves: Is this world really so far from our own?

I couldn’t not mention this book again. It’s the kind of book that should be required reading for teenagers and for, like, everyone. It blew me away, made me ANGRY, it’s a mirror of today’s society and all of the ugly, ugly aspects of it. I loved it.

Honorable mentions

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