2022 in books. 12 months, 72 books, and countless amount of pages. The challenge I set myself for reading this year was to read 60 books, focus on the books I have on my shelves already, and try and be more involved in new releases. It is safe to say I have managed to achieve these, as well as make some new friends on the way. A huge thanks to Katherine Blakeman for letting me read her book before release and sharing her work with me, as well as the rest of the book twitter!
The Books
For the long format I have taken out reviews, so head over to each month for a more in-depth dive into the books I have read! This is a long post, so I’ll try and keep it as accessible as possible feel free to jump to whichever section below:
January 2022
A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 368 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
When Chloe Davis was twelve, six teenage girls went missing in her small Louisiana town. By the end of the summer, Chloe’s father had been arrested as a serial killer and promptly put in prison. Chloe and the rest of her family were left to grapple with the truth and try to move forward while dealing with the aftermath.
Now 20 years later, Dr. Chloe Davis has her own private practice as a psychologist in Baton Rouge and getting ready for her wedding. She has found herself in a somewhat normal life, away from her traumatic past, even making plans to get married. However, this mask sometimes slips as she relives her own past through her younger female patients. Then a local teenager goes missing in a familiar way; then another… Has the past caught up with her?
Rating:
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 378 pages
First Published: 2012
Synopsis:
The Life of Achilles, son of the sea goddess Thetis and the legendary king Peleus. He is strong, swift, and beautiful. His life is told through the eyes of Patroclus, an awkward young prince, exiled from his homeland. They are brought together by chance and forge an inseparable bond, despite risking the gods’ wrath.
We follow the training and growth of Achilles and Patroclus from boy to adulthood, ending at the long siege of Troy over the kidnapping of Helen.
Rating:
The Rose Code: A Novel by Kate Quinn
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 624 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Set in 1940s England, this novel is split between war and the Royal Wedding of 1947, Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. As England are thrown into the throngs of war to fight the Nazis, three very different women answer the call to mysterious country estate Bletchley Park. Debutante Osla is the rich girl, adorned with beauty, wealth, and the dashing Prince Philip of Greece, but she aches to prove herself as more than a society girl, and puts her fluent German to use as a translator. Opposite is imperious self-made Mab, from East-End London poverty, who ends up working the legendary code-breaking machines, as she conceals old wounds. Both Osla and Mab are quick to see the potential in local village spinster Beth, whose shyness conceals a brilliant facility with puzzles, and soon Beth spreads her wings as one of the Park’s few female cryptanalysts. But war, loss, and the impossible pressure of Bletchly Park, the place that drew them together, tear them apart.
1947. As the royal wedding whips post-war Britain into a fever, three friends-turned-enemies are reunited by a mysterious encrypted letter… the key to which lies buried in the long-ago betrayal that destroyed their friendship and left one of them confined to an asylum. Was there a traitor hiding in the shadows of their Bletchley Park past?
Commonwealth: A Novel by Ann Patchett
Genre: Literary Fiction
Length: 322 pages
First Published: 2016
Synopsis:
Spanning 5 decades, this novel covers the life and relationships of four parents and their six children. Spending summers together, the Keating and Cousins children forge a lasting bond that is based on a shared disillusionment with their parents and the strange and genuine affection that grows up between them.
Warrior: The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse
by Jack Seely
Genre: Biographical Non Fiction
Length: 176 pages
First Published: 2011
Synopsis
My Horse Warrior, was first published in 1934, s told by Winston Churchill’s great heroic friend, Jack Seely. Warrior was the thoroughbred horse Seely took to France in 1914, surviving five years of bombs and bullets and leading a cavalry charge in 1918 before returning home where they rode on together until 1938.
The book Warrior: The Amazing Story of a Real War Horse tells the whole history of Warrior from his birth in an Isle of Wight field, to his amazing life as a famous war horse. The book narrates the horse’s extraordinary character and some unbelievable twists of fate, which helped him survive a war that claimed the lives of 8 million horses.
This new edition is introduced by Jack Seely’s grandson Brough Scott, a well-known broadcaster and journalist. It includes the original illustrations that equine and war artist Sir Alfred Munnings drew especially for Jack Seely both during the war and at home afterward.
Rating
February
The Silent Chapter: A Heartwarming and Heartbreaking Love Story in 20th-Century Britain
Katherine Blakeman
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 406 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
A 20th-century love story, the classic of opposites attract. We follow the lives of Dorothy and Patrick, their growth, and their family, navigating the main events of the 1900s.
For my full review of this book click here.
Rating:
The Guest List: A Novel
Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 330 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
A B-list celebrity wedding taking place on an island off the coast of Ireland, a storm, a web of secrets….what could possibly go wrong.
Rating:
Yonder
Jabari Asim
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 272 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
“They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues and their beliefs but they have a language and rituals all their own.”
This novel follows a group of enslaved Black “stolen” in the mid-19th century in an unspecified area of the Deep American South. William and Cato are brought together by chance, meeting at Placid Hall under their captor Cannonball Greene. Greene is an egotistical tyrannical plantation owner who is studying his slaves like they are simple animals, all the while treating his own animals better.
We follow the voices of several slaves including William and Cato on their journey from Placid Hall to freedom in this beautifully told novel.
Rating:
The Hunting Party: A Novel
Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 406 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
It is Christmas break 2018, and a group of friends meets up to welcome the New Year together, a tradition they began as Oxford students ten years ago. For this particular holiday, they’ve chosen an idyllic and isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands. They arrive on December 30th, just before a historic blizzard seals the lodge off from the outside world.
However, on New Year’s Day, one of them is dead…
Rating:
Six Years
Harlan Coben
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 351 pages
First Published: 2013
Synopsis:
Jake Fisher is a man who promises the love of his life that he will keep out of her new life with her husband Todd. Years pass, and Jake is a professor at a university working hard and keeping his promise to Natalie. He finds out that her husband Todd has died, so approaches the funeral to see Natalie, just one more time.
Rating:
The Huntress
Kate Quinn
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 560 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
After the war, the hunters become the hunted. Set through the 1940s and early 1950s, the Huntress follows the lives of an international group of people the Nazi hunters and the Nazis in hiding.
Rating:
March
The Holiday
T. M. Logan
Genre: Mystery & Thriller
Length: 385 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
A group of old gal pals decides to rekindle their friendship by going on holiday to a villa in the south of France with their families. A week away seemed like a delightful idea, until secrets unravel that someone would kill to keep secret…
Rating:
Daughter of the Reich: A Novel
Louise Fein
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 560 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
A coming of age story of a daughter of a high-ranking Nazi officer who is caught between providing for the glorious new Reich and her friendship with Jewish boy Walter. Set in 1930s Germany, the story follows Hetty and her internal turmoil of making her family proud and doing what is right.
Rating:
All My Darkest Impulses (House of Crows book #1)
Lisa Unger
Genre: Mystery
Length: 51 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
For disgraced professor Matthew Merle, the inheritance of his grandfather’s crumbling mansion is both a burden and an offer of a safe haven. His childhood friend Claire, a psychiatrist, desperately needs a haven of her own after one of her patients unleashes his dark side. At turning points in their lives, it’s inevitable that they should return to the past. And to Merle House. It’s been waiting for them. (more on Goodreads here)
Rating:
Fog Descending (House of Crows book #2)
Lisa Unger
Genre: Mystery
Length: 60 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
For disgraced professor Matthew Merle, the inheritance of his grandfather’s crumbling mansion is both a burden and an offer of a safe haven. His childhood friend Claire, a psychiatrist, desperately needs a haven of her own after one of her patients unleashes his dark side. At turning points in their lives, it’s inevitable that they should return to the past. And to Merle House. It’s been waiting for them. (more on Goodreads here)
Rating:
The Little Shop of Happy Ever After
(Scottish Bookshop #1)
Jenny Colgan
Genre: Romance
Length: 343 pages
First Published: 2016
Synopsis:
Nina is about to lose her job. With libraries closing and reopening as media centers, Nina’s love of books drives her to spend her life savings to set up a mobile bookshop in the Scottish highlands. Being a lost romantic herself she is torn between two suitors while settling into her new rural life…
Rating:
April
You Only Live Thrice: Perspective is a Superpower
Karl Perry
Genre: Non-Fiction, Biography
Length: 322 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
You Only Live Thrice is a very personal and powerful book that will make you consider the little things in life. Perspective is indeed a superpower and the life experiences shared in this book will put a spotlight on your own mortality and make it do a little dance. The book is a biographical experience of the author who shares all, in a brutally honest fashion, his experience with cardiac problems, death and trying to put everything back together again in a pandemic world.
Rating:
The Green Girl and The Serum
(The Green Girl Series #1)
S.T.L. Armstrong
Genre: Young Adult Sci-Fi
Length: 155 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
For the readers who love Marvel, D.C., and particularly X-men, The Green Girl series is calling! The debut of this series centers around the concept behind the Mega Humans, in particular a girl named Stacey. We are introduced to a world where a serum, originally designed as a cancer cure, gave its test subjects superpowers, and in some cases changed the colour of their skin. This is where Stacey comes in, being a Mega Human with green skin. She is one of the good girls, along with her boyfriend Ben, a powerful psychic, and their cohort, known as Haven. They strive to make peace between themselves and humans, all while trying to thwart the evil of the Mega Human terrorist group the Outcasts, lead by the powerful villainous Surge…
The Bookshop on the Shore
(Scottish Bookshop #2)
Jenny Colgan
Genre: Romance
Length: 416 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
The second book of the Scottish bookshop series, following young single mum Zoe on her Scottish adventure. After making a connection with her baby daddy’s sister, Zoe ends up helping Nina with her bookshop while she is bedbound with her pregnancy. The story follows Zoe’s life as a Nanny in a large Scottish estate and her experience with the family.
Rating:
How to Kill Your Family
Bella Mackie
Genre: Fiction/Dark Comedy
Length: 355 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Grace Bernard discovers her absentee millionaire father rejected her dying mother’s pleas for help, so she vows revenge, and sets about to kill every member of his family. However Grace is in prison, but it’s not for a murder she committed…
Rating:
My Sister, The Serial Killer
Oyinkan Braithwaite
Genre: Fiction/Dark Comedy
Length: 226 pages
First Published: 2018
Synopsis:
“My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker – and more difficult to get out of the carpet – than water…“
When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel, and a strong stomach.
Rating:
To The Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf
Genre: Fiction/Classic
Length: 209 pages
First Published: 1929
Synopsis:
The Ramsay’s are a family unit, face the greatest challenges of being human within society. Change. The story follows the family on a holiday and is a lovely insight and commentary on their relationships within the family and externally to society.
Rating:
Yours Cheerfully
A J Pearce
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 320 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
The follow-up book to Dear Mrs. Bird, Yours Cheerfully continues following the lives of our two wartime gals Emmy and Bunty as they navigate the complications of war: love, loss, and women’s rights.
Rating:
All Yours Perfect
Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Length: 305 pages
First Published: 2018
Synopsis:
Quinn and Graham have the perfect relationship, real love but all that is threatened by the breakdown of their marriage….
Rating:
May
Appaloosa Summer
Tudor Robins
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Length: 246 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
16-year-old Meg suffers a tragic disaster during a show, where her brave thoroughbred drops dead mid-jump leaving her grieving for the first time and her summer now free and open. She ends up taking up work at a friend’s B&B on an island, a change of scenery, a job, and the possibility to overcome her suffocating grief.
Jared, an islander and cattle farmer knows loss after recently losing his father in a tragic accident. after chance brings Jared and Meg together, that and a dusty old appaloosa, both of their summers end up completely different from what they could have imagined.
Rating:
Emily Edwards Equestrian Extraordinaire
Laura Holt-Haslam
Genre: Children’s
Length: 276 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Emily Edwards is bright for her age. She has read all the books the local library has on horses – not just the kid books either, but all the adult books on horsemanship, riding disciplines, and Kentucky Derby winners. She has knowledge of horses but has never actually ridden a horse. That is until she wins an essay competition to join an Equestrian Adventure camp for a week in the summer!
Rating:
The Hush Society Presents
Izzy Matias
Genre: Coming of Age
Length: 280 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
A nostalgic coming-of-age tale that navigates the awkward unknown between high school and university, following passions and family relationships. Set in the UK, the book follows Cameron, a teenager on the cusp of going to university to follow his parent’s ideas of what he should do in his life. However, Cameron has other ideas after meeting Cassie and her music project The Hush Society. The last summer between high school and university quickly turns into a summer of gigs, friendship, personal development, and moral dilemma…
Rating:
Fludd
Hilary Mantel
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 186 pages
First Published: 2010
Synopsis:
Featherington 1956. A stranger in a storm throws the congregation and holy order of Fetaherington into disarray.
He is the curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin-or is he?
In the most unlikely of places, a superstitious town that understands little of romance or sentimentality, where bad blood between neighbors is ancient and impenetrable, miracles begin to bloom.
Rating:
Where the Bluegrass Grows
Laurie Berglie
Genre: Romance
Length: 186 pages
First Published: 2016
Synopsis:
Tired of her life in Maryland, Molly packs her bags and heads west to Lexington, Kentucky, where she’ll spend the summer with her best friend, Macy. Molly’s looking forward to riding horses, doing a little writing, and taking a break from her love life. But then she meets Beau Bridges, a handsome horse vet who steals her heart and turns her world upside down.
Rating:
The Paris Apartment
Lucy Foley
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Length: 360 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Jess needs a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less-than-ideal circumstances. Her half-brother Ben didn’t sound thrilled when she asked if she could crash with him for a bit, but he didn’t say no, and surely everything will look better in Paris. Only when she shows up – to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.
Rating:
Grabbing Mane
Natalie Keller Reinert
Genre: Equestrian
Length: 364 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
Casey Halbach’s life was perfectly adequate. Good friends, a loving boyfriend, decent job: she had it all. So why did she feel like she was missing something? And was that something actually a part of her life she’d already given up?
When Casey finds herself back at the stable where she learned to ride as a child, she impulsively decides a fresh riding lesson is exactly what she needs to liven up her life. She never could have expected just how lively her life was about to become.
Rating:
June
Wednesday Riders
Tudor Robins
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Length: 239 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
Book two of the island series, the story of Meg continues. Meg can’t wait to get back. She’s excited to see her new mare kick up her heels in Salem’s old paddock. She’s impatient to run on country roads between breeze-blown hayfields. Mostly, Meg longs to be back with Jared again. It’s going to be the perfect summer. But there is trouble in her relationship with Jared…
Rating:
The Others
The Twyford Code
Janice Hallet
Genre: Mystery
Length: 384 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
The murder of the century, a series of children’s books and a mysterious disappearance of a teacher. 40 years later, Steven Smith renews his interest in the disappearance of his former teacher and the confiscation of a book by Edith Twyford…
Rating:
The Love Hypothesis
Ali Hazelwood
Genre: Romance
Length: 356 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Third year Ph.D candidate Olive is not one for romantic relationships. Her best friend on the other hand is all over that and that’s the reason she is in this highly awkward situation with the most-hated professor on campus…
Rating:
It Ends With Us
Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Length: 385 pages
First Published: 2016
Synopsis:
Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up — she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Rating:
Layla
Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Length: 301 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
When Leeds meets Layla, he’s convinced he’ll spend the rest of his life with her—until an unexpected attack leaves Layla fighting for her life. After weeks in the hospital, Layla recovers physically, but the emotional and mental scarring has altered the woman Leeds fell in love with. In order to put their relationship back on track, Leeds whisks Layla away to the bed-and-breakfast where they first met. Once they arrive, Layla’s behavior takes a bizarre turn. And that’s just one of many inexplicable occurrences. (from goodreads)
Rating:
The Ocean at The End of The Lane
Neil Gaiman
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 181 pages
First Published: 2013
Synopsis:
Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
Rating:
The Last Thing He Told Me: A Novel
Laura Dave
Genre: Mystery
Length: 320 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Despite her confusion and fear, Hannah Hall knows exactly to whom the note refers: Owen’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Bailey. Bailey lost her mother tragically as a child. Bailey wants absolutely nothing to do with her new stepmother.
Rating:
July
Community Profit from Clean Energy
Brian F. Keane
Genre: Non Fiction
Length: 256 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
Renewable energy is good for your wallet. Green Is Good is a no-nonsense guide to how you can easily incorporate clean energy and energy efficiency into your daily life all the while saving money, making money, and helping wean your community off fossil fuels. A renewable energy future isn’t just good for the environment; it’s good for the economy, and Green Is Good will show you how—before it’s too late.
Rating:
The Others
Verity
Colleen Hoover
Genre: Creepy Romance
Length: 336 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Colleen Hoover has another creepy romance… “Lowen Ashleigh is a struggling writer on the brink of financial ruin when she accepts the job offer of a lifetime. Jeremy Crawford, the husband of bestselling author Verity Crawford, has hired Lowen to complete the remaining books in a successful series his injured wife is unable to finish.”
Rating:
The Cartographers
Peng Shepherd
Genre: Fantasy, Mystery
Length: 392 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Cartography has been Nell’s lifelong passion. Her father, the esteemed Dr. Young was her role model and personal hero until a cheap irrelevant gas station map causes their worlds to separate and ruin her reputation in the academic world of maps. Years have passed, they haven’t spoken, and Dr. Young is murdered under mysterious circumstances…The map returns and the mystery of Nell’s past and future are unraveled in a fantastical novel.
Rating:
Exciting Times
Naoise Dolan
Genre: Romance
Length: 243 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
Ava moved to Hong Kong to find happiness, but so far, it isn’t working out. Since she left Dublin, she’s been spending her days teaching English to rich children—she’s been assigned the grammar classes because she lacks warmth—and her nights avoiding petulant roommates in her cramped apartment.
When Ava befriends Julian, a witty British banker, he offers a shortcut into a lavish life her meager salary could never allow. Ignoring her feminist leanings and her better instincts, Ava finds herself moving into Julian’s apartment, letting him buy her clothes, and, eventually, striking up a sexual relationship with him. When Julian’s job takes him back to London, she stays put, unsure of where their relationship stands
August
Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller
Genre: Classic
Length: 318 pages
First Published: 1934
Synopsis:
Tropic of Cancer is a combination autobiographical fictional work where Miller explores his life as a struggling writer in “bohemian squalor” in the 1920s and 30s Paris. Some chapters follow incidents involving Miller’s real-life friends and acquaintances, while other chapters are written in a stream-of-consciousness style.
“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God.”
Henry Miller | Tropic of Cancer
Rating:
The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
Genre: Fantasy
Length: 288 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
Nora’s life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth, she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived.
Rating:
Beautiful World, Where Are You
Sally Rooney
Genre: Romance, Contemporary Literature
Length: 356 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Alice is a novelist. She meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend, Eileen, is getting over a breakup and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, and Simon are still young—but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, and they break apart. They have sex, they worry about sex, and they worry about their friendships and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?
Rating:
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Length: 433 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it. But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
Rating:
Good Girl, Bad Blood
Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Length: 417 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
After her EPQ project podcast goes viral, Pip finds herself sought after for mysteries and cold cases. One of her best friend’s brothers goes missing – the police are not concerned but his family is beside themselves. Pip decides she will help them leading to unraveling more secrets, lies, and scandals in her small sleepy village.
Rating:
September
The Soulmate Equation
Lauren Christina
Genre: Romance
Length: 416 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Single mom Jess Davis is a data and statistics wizard, but no amount of number crunching can convince her to step back into the dating world. After all, her father was never around, her hard-partying mother disappeared when she was six, and her ex decided he wasn’t “father material” before her daughter was even born. Jess holds her loved ones close but working constantly to stay afloat is hard…and lonely. But then Jess hears about GeneticAlly, a buzzy new DNA-based matchmaking company that’s predicted to change dating forever. Finding a soulmate through DNA? The reliability of numbers: This Jess understands.
Rating:
As Good As Dead
Holly Jackson
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Length: 459 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
The third and final book of this rollercoaster series. Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars.
Rating:
Dead In The Water
Mark Ellis
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Length: 350 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Summer, 1942. The Second World War rages on but Britain now faces the Nazi threat with America at its side. In a bombed-out London swarming with gangsters and spies, DCI Frank Merlin continues his battle against rampant wartime crime. A mangled body is found in the Thames just as some items of priceless art go mysteriously missing. What sinister connection links the two?
Rating:
October
Too Late
Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Length: 395 pages
First Published: 2016
Synopsis:
Sloan will go through hell and back for those she loves. And she does, every single day.
After finding herself stuck in a relationship with the dangerous and morally corrupt Asa Jackson, Sloan will do whatever it takes to get by until she’s able to find a way out. Nothing will get in her way.
Nothing except Carter. (Synopsis from Goodreads)
Rating:
The Spanish Love Deception
Elena Armas
Genre: Romance
Length: 487 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Catalina Martín desperately needs a date for her sister’s wedding. Especially since her little white lie about her American boyfriend has spiralled out of control. Now everyone she knows—including her ex and his fiancée—will be there and eager to meet him. (Synopsis from Goodreads)
Rating:
The Bridesmaid
Nina Manning
Genre: Thriller
Length: 296 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
From the moment they met as children, Sasha knew that beautiful, wealthy, and confident Caitlin would always be her absolute best friend. Sasha would do anything to make Caitlin happy.
Even keep her darkest secrets…
he years have passed, but their friendship remains. And when Caitlin announces she’s getting married there is only one choice for the role of bridesmaid. Sasha will make sure Caitlin’s wedding is as beautiful and perfect as she is. Won’t she?
But as the big day approaches, cracks begin to appear. Because no matter what Sasha does, she never seems to make Caitlin happy.
Rating:
The Unhoneymooners
Lauren Christina
Genre: Romance
Length: 400 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
Olive is always unlucky: in her career, in love, in…well, everything. Her identical twin sister Ami, on the other hand, is probably the luckiest person in the world. Her meet-cute with her fiancé is something out of a romantic comedy (gag) and she’s managed to finance her entire wedding by winning a series of Internet contests (double gag). Worst of all, she’s forcing Olive to spend the day with her sworn enemy, Ethan, who just happens to be the best man.
Olive braces herself to get through 24 hours of wedding hell before she can return to her comfortable, unlucky life. But when the entire wedding party gets food poisoning from eating bad shellfish, the only people who aren’t affected are Olive and Ethan. And now there’s an all-expenses-paid honeymoon in Hawaii up for grabs.
Putting their mutual hatred aside for the sake of a free vacation, Olive and Ethan head for paradise, determined to avoid each other at all costs.
But when Olive runs into her future boss, the little white lie she tells him is suddenly at risk to become a whole lot bigger. She and Ethan now have to pretend to be loving newlyweds, and her luck seems worse than ever. But the weird thing is that she doesn’t mind playing pretend. In fact, she feels kind of… lucky.
Rating:
The Outcast: And Other Dark Tales
E. F. Benson
Genre: Horror, Short Stories
Length: 304 pages
First Published: 2020
Synopsis:
The terrifying presence of a restless spirit on the top deck of a London bus; a possession at the bridge table on a cruise up the Nile; a nightmare encounter with druidic sacrifice in the innocuous setting of a terraced back garden . . . E F Benson’s “spook stories” pushed the boundaries of the ghost story tradition by exploring new, previously “out of bounds” settings—such as public transport and even hauntings by daylight—to frighten his readers from the 1890s to the 1930s.
Rating:
November
It Happened One Summer
Tessa Bailey
Genre: Romance
Length: 397 pages
First Published: 2021
Synopsis:
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party land Piper in jail, her stepfather decides enough is enough. He cuts her off and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar… in the remote port town of Westport in Washington.
Piper tries to keep her head down, especially as the locals seem less than friendly, in particular, that tall captain Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time.
Rating:
Small Angels
Lauren Owen
Genre: Horror
Length: 400 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
A wedding in a small English village attracts a malicious spirit, forcing deep secrets to the surface–a hypnotic tale of sisterhood, first love, and hauntings.
Rating:
Slaughter House Five
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Genre: Classic
Length: 215 pages
First Published: 1969
Synopsis:
Prisoner of war, optometrist, time-traveler – these are the life roles of Billy Pilgrim, hero of this miraculously moving, bitter and funny story of innocence faced with the apocalypse. Slaughterhouse 5 is one of the world’s great anti-war books. Centering on the infamous fire-bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, Billy Pilgrim’s odyssey through time reflects the journey of our own fractured lives as we search for meaning in what we are afraid to know.
Rating:
The Diamond Eye
Kate Quinn
Genre: Historical Fiction
Length: 435 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
In 1937 in the snowbound city of Kiev (now known as Kyiv), wry and bookish history student Mila Pavlichenko organizes her life around her library job and her young son–but Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia sends her on a different path. Given a rifle and sent to join the fight, Mila must forge herself from studious girl to deadly sniper–a lethal hunter of Nazis known as Lady Death.
When news of her three hundredth kill makes her a national heroine, Mila finds herself torn from the bloody battlefields of the eastern front and sent to America on a goodwill tour.
Still reeling from war wounds and devastated by the loss, Mila finds herself isolated and lonely in the glittering world of Washington, DC–until an unexpected friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and an even more unexpected connection with a silent fellow sniper offer the possibility of happiness.
But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a deadly new foe lurking in the shadows, Lady Death finds herself battling her own demons and enemy bullets in the deadliest duel of her life.
Rating:
Malibu Burns
Mark Richardson
Genre: Sci Fi, Dystopian
Length: 288 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Teen Malibu Makimura discovers she can feel people’s emotions and senses an ominous voice growing inside her. She lands a job at a women’s nightclub drawing surrealist caricatures. One night while drawing a portrait, she feels a sinister emotion projected by a woman named Luciana, who invites Malibu to her Presidio Heights mansion.
Têmpete au Haras
Chris Donner
Genre: YA
Length: 234 pages
First Published: 2012
Synopsis:
All these foals, I attended their birth, it was my great passion. And even today, despite everything that has happened to me, this is what interests me the most: the next foal to be born. To see him get up, hesitant, stumble, stick to his mother, suckle, all that, and then run, and grow, and soon win a race, before giving birth to other foals, and so on. Some horses become stars, you just have to make them run, and they go faster than the others. Why? It’s a mystery. At least that’s what those with a star claim: “Mystery and gumption.” But should we believe them? Haven’t they, in truth, found the magic potion?
Rating:
December
I’m Glad My Mom Died
Jennette McCurdy
Genre: Autobiography
Length: 320 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life.
Rating:
The Summer We’ve Had
Katherine Blakeman
Genre: Romance
Length: 277 pages
First Published: 2023
Synopsis:
After a nightmare couple of years following the death of her celebrity singer mother, Cass Mulligan is moving down to the sun, sea, and shingle of Cornwall for a fresh start. But she soon realizes that she’s not the only one in need of some TLC…
Felicia Wilson’s life is one long series of spinning plates. She has Dissociative Identity Disorder, a system of five alternate personalities living in her body, and they all have different hopes, fears, and desires.
Rating:
The Book Eaters
Sunyi Dean
Genre: Horror, Fantasy
Length: 298 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it. To them, spy novels are a peppery snack; romance novels are sweet and delicious. Eating a map can help them remember destinations, and children, when they misbehave, are forced to eat dry, musty pages from dictionaries. Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairytales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.
Rating:
Bunny
Mona Awad
Genre: Horror
Length: 307 pages
First Published: 2019
Synopsis:
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other “Bunny,” and seem to move and speak as one.
But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled “Smut Salon,” and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus “Workshop” where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into a deadly collision.
Rating:
Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution
R. F. Kuang
Genre: Dark Academia, Fantasy
Length: 545 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation — also known as Babel.
Babel is the world’s center of translation and, more importantly, of silver-working: the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation through enchanted silver bars, to magical effect. Silver-working has made the British Empire unparalleled in power, and Babel’s research in foreign languages serves the Empire’s quest to colonize everything it encounters. Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, is a fairytale for Robin; a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge.
But knowledge serves power, and for Robin, a Chinese boy raised in Britain, serving Babel inevitably means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to sabotaging the silver-working that supports imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide: Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence? What is he willing to sacrifice to bring Babel down?
Rating:
The Dead Romantics
Ashley Paston
Genre: Romance, Paranormal
Length: 368 pages
First Published: 2022
Synopsis:
Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem—after a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead. When her new editor, a too-handsome mountain of a man, won’t give her an extension on her book deadline, Florence prepares to kiss her career goodbye, but then she gets a phone call she never wanted to receive, and she must return home for the first time in a decade to help her family bury her beloved father.
Rating:
2022 has been a wild year in books and I look forward to what 2023 brings! Any recommendations please let me know below!!
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