It’s funny how everyone seems happy to put the year behind them. I thought my 2023 was a good one. I definitely read some great books this year. The only reason I’m happy it’s 2024 is because I have some big plans this year. But let’s recap my top five books of 2023 before we look forward to what’s to come:
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Obviously, I bought Starter Villain because of the adorable and dapper-looking cat on the front cover. And because the novel features talking spy cats. If you enjoy unserious sci-fi/supervillain stories – and cats – then you will enjoy this novel.
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The Witch and the Tsar has all the makings of a novel that I would like: historical fiction, magical realism, an interesting back story featuring a mythology I am not familiar with, and a strong female protagonist; however, I just was not that into it. I did not think about not finishing The Witch and the Tsar, but I was not excited to get back to reading it every night before bedtime.
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I really should make more of an effort to read Lyndsay Faye’s novels because I usually end up enjoying them. The first novel of hers that I read was The Gods of Gotham, which is set in mid-19th century New York and is about a police officer who investigates a serial killer. It is a fascinating story about the Five Points district, but I will admit I was not a fan of the ending. I have also read Jane Steele, which reimagines Jane Eyre as a serial killer. Sounds like something that would make Charlotte Brontë roll over in her grave, but I thought it was really good. Now I have read The Paragon Hotel, which is set in one of my favourite time periods, the 1920s Prohibition Era, and is about the Italian mafia in New York and Black people living in Portland, Oregon as the Ku Klux Klan begins to make its presence known.
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Apparently, I completely misconstrued what Last Winter is about. I thought it was about an avalanche that engulfs a group of schoolkids, killing all of them but two, with one of the survivors being an eight-year-old girl whose father was the guide. Her father is still missing after the bodies of her schoolmates are recovered, so she decides to go off on her own in the wilderness to find him. I imagined a suspenseful adventure story with a precocious protagonist with mad survival skills. Instead, Last Winter is an uncomfortable story about the demise of a relationship between a mentally ill woman and a man who cannot deal with his wife’s mental health issues anymore. I would not have read this novel if I had known what I was actually getting myself into.
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I came across Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano in Indigo’s list of the Top 100 Books of the Year (it is number one on the list). Hello Beautiful is a homage to Little Women (ugh, I just love Little Women), so of course I had to read it. Do I think Hello Beautiful is the number one book of 2023? As affecting a story that it is about familial relationships, I am not impressed enough by Hello Beautiful to think it deserves top honour.
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The Vaster Wilds is Lauren Groff’s latest novel. It is a beautifully written but bleak story about a girl trying to survive on her own in the wilderness. Compared to Groff’s other novels, The Vaster Wilds is a despairing read.
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For those of you who have never heard of Anne Lister, she was a woman who lived in the early 19th century and who is known today as a very famous lesbian. She kept diaries written in code, and when the diaries were decrypted after her death, they revealed graphic details of her many lesbian relationships. I first learned of Anne Lister when I watched the BBC series Gentleman Jack, which focused on her relationship with Ann Walker, whom she “married” and was her partner until her death in 1840. Gentleman Jack is a fantastic series, and Anne Lister is a fascinating historical figure in how she openly lived an unconventional life for a woman of her time. She is what drew me to read Emma Donoghue’s latest novel, Learned by Heart, which is a fictional account of one of Anne Lister’s earliest relationships as a teenager with a girl she went to school with named Eliza Raine.
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