I promise that I’m really picky about which books I give perfect grades. I’m not just passing out As to anything. An A grade is for a book I think everyone should read — a game changer.
But when you read 203 books in a year, you’re bound to have a lot of favorites, right?
I guess with that context, my list doesn’t seem quite so ridiculous.
My 33 Favorite Fiction Books of 2023
An interesting thing I noticed about my 33 favorite fiction books from last year is that they were fairly diverse in genre. I love thrillers, so I always read a lot of those. But some of my favorite (and perhaps my most favorite) books of the year weren’t in that genre.
And one grouping of favorites was actually a five-book series. I hardly ever read series!
Here they are! My reviews of my 33 favorite books of 2023. I tried to keep them nice and short. You can click the titles to order.
1. After That Night
Sara Linton was attacked 15 years ago while she was in medical school residency. Now, she’s a successful doctor and is engaged to Special Agent Will Trent, a handsome, controversial cop with a past of his own.
But when Sara treats a young woman who was brutally attacked and left for dead, the past seems all too present. Is the woman’s attack related to her own? Sara and Will work to find the culprit and connect any other attacks before there are more victims.
2. All the Dangerous Things
Isabelle Drake hasn’t slept in a year. You wouldn’t either if your toddler son disappeared from his crib in the middle of the night while you slept next door. Now Isabelle is divorced from her husband and working the true crime circuit to try to find Mason. She feels like the police haven’t done enough, and someone, somewhere, holds the key to where her son is.
When Isabelle agrees to be interviewed by a true crime podcaster who has become interested in Mason’s case, she starts to wonder if her suspicions of neighbors and guests at her public presentations might actually be a bit too widespread. Maybe she needs to look closer to home to find out what happened to Mason. Perhaps she even needs to consider herself.
3. Bone Cold
Anna North was kidnapped 23 years ago and held for ransom. Before she escaped, her captor cut off her little finger. After returning home, her famous parents convinced everyone she was dead so she could live a private life.
Now, Harlow Grail is working as a novelist when she starts getting strange messages. Clearly, someone knows who she is and is ready to relive the past.
4. Bright Young Women
If you didn’t know it was fiction, you’d think Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll was true. After all, anyone who knows about Ted Bundy’s crimes remembers the murders at the sorority house in Florida, which is where this book starts.
It focuses on the chapter’s president, Pamela Schumacher, who survives the murders and sees Bundy just before he leaves the house.
Pamela tries to help her sisters grieve and mourn while bringing Bundy to justice, but not before she identifies the wrong guy as being in the house.
5. Daisy Jones & the Six
Daisy Jones & The Six is about a fictional ‘70s rock band. The story is told through the band’s members through what’s meant to seem like interviews with the author.
The story revolves around Daisy Jones, who is basically the coolest girl ever with an unusual voice to boot, and The Six, a rock band led by Billy Dunne. Together, they rise to become one of the most iconic bands of the time. But, the dynamics between the band members, the drugs, the fame, and the conflicts all lead to an inevitable fall. You know, your normal rock ‘n’ roll stuff.
6. Do You Remember
Tess Strebel wakes up every morning unable to remember anything that’s happened to her in the last decade. She thinks she’s still engaged and on the brink of a new life but wakes up each day to find she’s married to a different man who is running her spa care empire.
Luckily, she wrote herself a letter to explain it all because she’s not sure she believes her husband. It seems that Tess was a car wreck that left her without memory and prone to blackouts. Her husband took over her business and hired a woman who is essentially a nanny to stay with Tess while he works each day.
Tess only remembers her life from before the accident, but she has the note in her own handwriting and no reason to think what her husband and caregiver are telling her isn’t true… until she does.
7. Happy Place
Happy Place is about a group of college best friends who spend time each summer in one friend’s family cottage in Maine. Only this year’s get-together is different.
One group is engaged.
Another couple plans to get married in a surprise wedding while they’re there.
Everyone seems to be moving on with their lives, and this vacation will be their last at their beloved cottage, which is being sold.
But the biggest secret of all is that the engaged couple that makes them all think continued friendship and love are possible has secretly split up. When will they tell their friends? Can the group’s friendship survive?
8. Hidden Pictures
Mallory Quinn is starting her life over after rehab, and she needs a job. She feels like everything is starting off well when she gets a nannying position for Ted and Caroline Maxwell.
The Maxwells pay her well, and their house is gorgeous. They’ve even thought of seemingly every detail in the guest cottage where Mallory will live. Oh, and their 5-year-old son, Teddy, is an adorable, kind little boy.
Mallory feels like she’s hit the jackpot.
But something isn’t what it seems in the Maxwell house.
Teddy starts drawing pictures of a woman’s murder and talking regularly about his imaginary friend.
The more Mallory discovers about the house’s history and what happened there, the less convinced she is that Teddy’s friend is actually imaginary.
Can she get to the bottom of the mystery before someone (maybe even herself) is seriously hurt?
9. I Know Where You Live
Violet’s grandfather sexually abused her as a child. Her mother and grandmother ignored it… pretended it didn’t happen. But it happened, and it changed Violet forever.
Now, she’s using the hate stored up for her grandfather to get revenge for other children like her. She’s going after predators.
Violet’s Papa has a fatal heart attack at her wedding. Is he one of hers, or did someone else do her a favor?
10. I Will Find You
David Burroughs is in jail for murdering his 3-year-old son, only he doesn’t remember doing it. He and his then-wife woke up one morning to find a dead child in their son’s bed. All of the evidence pointed to Will, so he’s on death row.
Then, his former sister-in-law visits with a disturbing photo. One of her coworkers was on vacation at an amusement park. When she was showing her vacation photos, the SIL spots a boy in the background who looks just like the “dead” Burroughs boy.
Can David prove his son is still alive? If so, who was the little boy who died, and where is his son now? And how can he get to the truth while behind bars?
11. I’m Not Done With You Yet
I’m Not Done With You Yet is about Jane, a mediocre writer living a boring life. She’s a writer, but not successfully. She’s married, but not happily. You get the drift.
Then Jane sees an opportunity to reconnect with Thalia, her college best friend, who she was essentially obsessed with but hasn’t been able to find for more than a decade. Oh, did I mention that Thalia is now a successful author?
When Jane shows up at a book convention for a surprise meet-up with Thalia, the results are anything but expected.
12. Just the Nicest Couple
Mia and Jack seem to adore each other and their regular life in the small town of Willow Creek. Mia, a school teacher, is surrounded by friends each day and adored by her students. And she and Jack finally have the secret they’ve been hoping for. Mia is pregnant.
Life seems to be pretty ideal for Jack and Mia until their friend Jake Hayes goes missing. At first, Jake’s wife, Nina, a teacher with Mia, thinks her husband may have left her after a fight. She hopes he’s just blowing off some steam, but then he doesn’t come home for days and days. Then the police find his abandoned car — a prized possession.
It looks increasingly likely that something happened to Jake. As Nina tries to solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearance, she begins wondering just how much Mia and Jack may know.
13. Kill Show
This book is written as a series of interviews with the various characters who are participating in a documentary about the disappearance of 16-year-old Sara Parcell and the true-crime television show that launched days after she disappeared.
The book includes interviews with all the characters, including those accused of kidnapping Sara, her loved ones, the police on the case, and the film crew from the show.
Sara’s story and the stories of those around her play out through the interviews. For the reader, it’s like reading a book but also watching a true-crime show and the later documentary in your head. Super creative storytelling. It also has a good twist.
14. Lessons in Chemistry
This book is about a brilliant female chemist, Elizabeth Zott. I normally wouldn’t describe her gender, but it’s an integral part of the story in the early 1960s when Elizabeth is breaking barriers at Hastings Research Institute, where she’s not only the only female scientist but also a stand-out above her male colleagues. Well, all of them except Nobel-prize-nominated Calvin Evans, the most amazing chemist on the staff.
Elizabeth and Calvin have a run-in about supplies — beakers, to be exact. They don’t like each other. Right until they do. You see where this is going, right?
After years of quirky happiness together, tragedy strikes, and Elizabeth finds herself a single mother without a job.
When she goes to set a TV producer straight about his daughter stealing her child’s lunch, he becomes fascinated by her chemistry-based approach to cooking. He talks her into launching a cooking show, Supper at Six, where Elizabeth becomes a change-maker for women across the world who learn more than cooking from her.
“Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”
15. Room for Rent
Nya has one goal — to finish her last year of college. Unfortunately, that means she has to find a place to live because her best friend graduated and moved home. And, since Nya has little money, she needs to find someplace cheap.
She finds an affordable room for rent in a house near campus. She’s feeling pretty lucky, despite its rundown appearance. That is, until she meets her roommate and finds out it isn’t the girl she expected, but a strange guy.
Still, it’s this room or homelessness, so Nya takes it. He can’t be that bad, right?
Now, she’s certain that someone is coming into her room at night and going through her things when she’s not home.
When she confronts her roommate, he acts like she’s the one tormenting him. Is he gaslighting her, or is something else going on in the house?
16. Someone Else’s Shoes
Sam Kemp accidentally grabbed the wrong bag at the gym and ended up with a gorgeous red pair of Louboutin heels. But Sam needs more than a great pair of shoes.
Her husband is depressed, out of work, and only moves from the bed to the sofa.
Her boss hates her and is doing everything he can to eliminate her.
Even feeling powerful in a great pair of heels isn’t enough to right Sam’s world right now.
But Nisha Cantor needs those heels. It’s her bag Sam accidentally picked up. And since her super-wealthy husband immediately locked her out of their penthouse suite and had security throw her out of the posh hotel they were staying in, what’s in that bag is all she has.
Furthermore, her jerk husband (who already replaced her with his secretary) seems fixated on the shoes. He won’t even discuss a divorce settlement until she returns the shoes.
What is it with these heels?
An unlikely friendship blooms between four women over a pair of shoes none of them cares about and getting revenge on the man who can’t seem to think of anything else.
17. Stolen Things
Laurie Ahmadi is working her shift as a 9-1-1 dispatcher when she receives a panic-stricken call from her teenage daughter, Jojo. Jojo is disoriented, in pain, and doesn’t know where she is.
Laurie and her police chief husband, Omid, find Jojo at the home of a pro football player, covered in blood and unable to remember what happened to her.
As Laurie and Omid try to find out what happened that night and who was involved, they confront disturbing truths about the officers in their department and about each other.
18. Strange Sally Diamond
Sally Diamond’s father told her to just put him out with the trash when he died. So, that’s what she did. Her father died, and Sally put him in the incinerator with the other garbage.
Oops! Turns out that wasn’t exactly her father’s plan.
Also, he’s not actually her father.
The sheltered woman then tries to learn to make it in the world alone, all while learning about and dealing with her troubled past and figuring out just what people actually mean by what they say.
19. Tell Her Story
Paige Barrett ends up living in her sister’s guest house after she’s fired from her job as a journalist. Waiting tables in Florida is a long way from being a journalist in New York, and Paige is feeling the grief of the change.
But Paige’s sister has a plan. She thinks Paige should start a podcast. After all, they’re super popular and she knows all about interviewing people.
Paige starts getting interested and launches a true-crime podcast about the 20-year-old unsolved murder of a local teacher, Jessica Cady.
Paige soon learns that the thing about small towns is that everyone is a suspect — even the people you’re closest to.
20-24. The Mindf*ck Series
This series is about Lana, a revenge serial killer, who meets and falls in love with an FBI profile. Of course, Logan’s team is looking for Lana, but he doesn’t even think the killer he’s looking for is female. Hence, the mindf*ck.
The books had a Criminal Minds feel to me as Lana kills the small-town men who raped her and murdered her brother.
Parts of the books were pretty graphic, and the sex scenes were steamy, but I thought the whole concept was excellent. I read each book in a day. It’s always a fun twist when you want the “bad character” to get away with it.
25. The People We Keep
April leaves her small town, abusive father, and shelter in a motor home without a working motor in search of something better. She wants to stop feeling so empty and abandoned and find her place in the world.
Luckily, April can sing. Her musical journey through bars, coffee shops, and anywhere else she can find to perform introduces her to people who shape her understanding of family, love, and self-worth.
In the end, April has lived a hard and winding life for her young age, but she’s surrounded by the people she loves most and vice versa.
26. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Movie star Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell her life story. But no one really understands why she’s chosen Monique Grant, an unknown magazine reporter, to share it with.
Monique knows an opportunity when she sees one, so she spends time with Hugo, listening to her tell the story of her life in the spotlight and her marriages to her seven husbands.
In the end, Monique discovers that Evelyn truly does everything for a reason, and she had more than one for choosing the young woman to give her story.
27. The Stranger Behind You
Joan Lurie is a journalist who exposes a powerful media mogul as a sexual predator. Then, on the night her story hits the stands, she’s attacked after celebrating with her newsroom colleagues.
Joan finds her life spiraling into a nightmare of paranoia and danger.
The rest of the book weaves Joan’s present-day ordeal with the haunting history of the building where she takes refuge, the Malabar House. She was attracted to the building because of its security, but she later learns it was once a home for women escaping abusive situations.
But is Joan safe there? More importantly, what’s real and what’s paranoia? Are her friends her enemies or vice versa?
28. The Surgeon
Dr. Anne Wiley has never lost a patient until today. She also never looks at her patient’s faces while she’s operating on them. But something made her look behind the screen to see the man’s face right before deciding how long or if her team should continue saving his life.
What she saw astonished her. She hadn’t recognized him before, but she did now. And he’d done a terrible thing.
Did her knowledge of his past result in his death? If so, did she murder him? Will she get caught?
29. The Things We Leave Unfinished
This story is told through a dual timeline, intertwining the present-day life of Georgia Stanton with the unfinished World War II-era novel written by her late great-grandmother, a famous romance author.
Georgia grapples with her own heartache and the legacy of her great-grandmother’s unfinished manuscript. Should she publish her grandmother’s real-life story, the only novel she left unpublished and unfinished?
As Georgia begins living her own love story, she learns more about her great-grandmother’s true story. So, how should the book be finished? Is it a fairy tale happily ever after, or is the truth, as painful as it may seem, the only way to tell it.
30. The Weight of Blood
Springville students don’t know Maddy is part Black — until they do. And once they do, they torment the girl even more than usual.
People in the small town like to pretend they’re not racist. In an attempt to prove the point, they decide to host the first-ever integrated prom.
When the superstar quarterback asks Maddy to the prom, she thinks her luck is finally changing. But it’s all just a trick that he’s not in on.
What Springville residents don’t realize is that Maddy Washington has powers, and she’s not going to take their racist bullying anymore.
31. What Lies in the Woods
What started as a game of imagination among three girls resulted in one of them being repeatedly stabbed and almost murdered.
The friends testified against the man they said stabbed their friend — a serial killer responsible for murdering six women.
But even after putting a killer behind bars, the girls were still haunted by a secret of their own. More than 20 years later, it’s tired of being buried.
32. Yellowface
This book is about authors June Hayward and Athena Liu. The women went to school together, and both wanted to be successful authors. Athena is. June… not so much.
But the two are still friends, at least as much as they ever were. The truth is that June finds Athena kind of… pretentious and annoying.
Then, one night, the women have dinner at Athena’s place. After identifying the manuscript for her next book on her desk, Athena chokes on the food and dies.
I’ll bet you can’t guess what June did. Yep! She stole the Asian woman’s book about Chinese laborers during World War I and published it as a white author. But can she get away with it?
33. You Loved Me Once
Ren has thrown herself into her career as a doctor and tries not to think about how she can’t get close to anyone, even the handsome doctor she’s dating, because of a long-ago broken heart.
She’s totally focused on her new clinical trial, which could help women with cancer avoid hysterectomies. But guess whose wife is one of her patients?
Ren is faced with a conflict between her own medical ethics, her past love, the possibilities of the future, and a sick woman’s wishes. What will she do?
Happy Reading!
There they are! My 33 favorite books of 2023. I think it’s unintentionally one of my most diverse lists yet. There’s something here for everyone.
I hope you find something on the list to read and love.
As always, happy reading!
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