HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you had a restful end of the year and look forward to what 2024 has in store for you all. This is the first time in the history of my blog where I couldn’t narrow down my faves into a Top 10 so here is my Top 20!

Plot: Autumn Albert can see the dead – much to her annoyance. But when her dad dies in mysterious circumstances, he’s the one ghost who doesn’t appear. A curious instruction in his will sends Autumn to Imber, the storm-soaked island of his a place marked by tight-lipped locals, strange stacks of witchstones – and even fewer ghosts. Soon Autumn is ensnared in a dark and twisty mystery, which must be unravelled before the sea rises up and history is doomed to repeat itself …

The perfect book for the spooky season. I was intrigued about a middle-grade book with strong Wicker Man vibes and inspirations. Like I was so interested to see how it was done but also nervous to see how far the author would take it. Emily Randall-Jones nailed the horror elements! She also had an amazingly strong female character at the centre which I love!

Plot: Master spy Twilight is the best at what he does when it comes to going undercover on dangerous missions in the name of a better world. But when he receives the ultimate impossible assignment—get married and have a kid—he may finally be in over his head! Not one to depend on others, Twilight has his work cut out for him procuring both a wife and a child for his mission to infiltrate an elite private school. What he doesn’t know is that the wife he’s chosen is an assassin and the child he’s adopted is a telepath!

Now, tell me why this book nearly had me laughing out loud on my flight back from Amsterdam. I am so happy I finally got my hands on this series! Every great thing I heard about this is very accurate. I love the setting, the comedic writing and the characters. FOUND FAMILY IS THE ULTIMATE TROPE!

Plot: Life at Grace Field House has been good for Emma and her fellow orphans. While the daily studying and exams they have to take are tough, their loving caretaker provides them with delicious foods and plenty of playtime. But perhaps not everything is as it seems… Emma, Norman and Ray are the brightest kids at the Grace Field House orphanage. And under the care of the woman they refer to as “Mom,” all the kids have enjoyed a comfortable life. Good food, clean clothes and the perfect environment to learn—what more could an orphan ask for? One day, though, Emma and Norman uncover the dark truth of the outside world they are forbidden from seeing.

I mean I actually have a whole series review because I loved this series so much and I needed to scream from the rooftops about it. Link here >>>

Plot: In a land far away, there were two kingdoms: the Outside, where twisted beasts roamed that could curse with a touch, and the Inside, where humans lived in safety and peace. The girl and the beast should never have met, but when they do, a quiet fairytale begins.

Nagabe has the most perfect balance of suspense, tension, heart and simplicity. With a limited palette and a slightly more simplistic style, compared to other series, Nagabe portrays and writes such poignant scenes and characters. I literally have to pace myself every time I read his work. I need to spend my time with it and absorb it.

Plot: In a world where everyone takes wonders like magic spells and dragons for granted, Coco is a girl with a simple dream: She wants to be a witch. But everybody knows magicians are born, not made, and Coco was not born with a gift for magic. Resigned to her un-magical life, Coco is about to give up on her dream to become a witch…until the day she meets Qifrey, a mysterious, traveling magician. After secretly seeing Qifrey perform magic in a way she’s never seen before, Coco soon learns what everybody “knows” might not be the truth, and discovers that her magical dream may not be as far away as it may seem…

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Witch Hat Atelier which is the maximalist series of my dreams. Think Howl’s bedroom in Howl’s Moving Castle. Full of heart, whimsy and intrigue I devoured this first volume and the subsequent volume.

Plot: Adina Walker has known this the entire time she’s been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy—a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It’s why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything. And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted from her top choice Ivy League college and any other. Her only chance to regain the future she’s sacrificed everything for is the Finish, a high-stakes contest sponsored by Edgewater’s founding family in which twelve young, ambitious women with exceptional promise are selected to compete in three mysterious events: the Ride, the Raid, and the Royale. The winner will be granted entry into the fold of the Remington family, whose wealth and power can open any door. But when she arrives at the Finish, Adina quickly gets the feeling that something isn’t quite right with both the Remingtons and her competition, and soon it becomes clear that this larger-than-life prize can only come at an even greater cost. Because the Finish’s stakes aren’t just make or break… they’re life and death. Adina knows the deck is stacked against her—it always has been—so maybe the only way to survive their vicious games is for her to change the rules.

This was incredibly thrilling and heart-pounding. I enjoyed reading every second of it despite hating the events that were unfolding. I thought the writing was super engaging and I literally flew through this book and couldn’t put it down. The characters were written so well and I enjoyed watching the psychology of the characters, their alliances, and their battles. It was very very interesting.

Plot: Laure Mesny is a perfectionist with an axe to grind. Despite being constantly overlooked in the elite and cutthroat world of the Parisian ballet, she will do anything to prove that a Black girl can take center stage. To level the playing field, Laure ventures deep into the depths of the Catacombs and strikes a deal with a pulsating river of blood. The primordial power Laure gains promises influence and adoration, everything she’s dreamed of and worked toward. With retribution on her mind, she surpasses her bitter and privileged peers, leaving broken bodies behind her on her climb to stardom. But even as undeniable as she is, Laure is not the only monster around. And her vicious desires make her a perfect target for slaughter. As she descends into madness and the mystifying underworld beneath her, she is faced with the ultimate choice: continue to break herself for scraps of validation or succumb to the darkness that wants her exactly as she is—monstrous heart and all. That is, if the god-killer doesn’t catch her first.

Another time where I need to link to my full review because I need to read all my thoughts in its entirety. Please see the link here >>>

Plot: Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth—all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1937 novel that all of New York seems to have read. Yet there are other versions of this tale of privilege and deceit. Hernan Diaz’s TRUST elegantly puts these competing narratives into conversation with one another—and in tension with the perspective of one woman bent on disentangling fact from fiction. The result is a novel that spans over a century and becomes more exhilarating with each new revelation. At once an immersive story and a brilliant literary puzzle, TRUST engages the reader in a quest for the truth while confronting the deceptions that often live at the heart of personal relationships, the reality-warping force of capital, and the ease with which power can manipulate facts.

An unexpected favourite here! Very Great Gatsby meets Succession vibes. This story tells the story of a billionaire and his wife; their relationship, rise to fame, their philanthropy and her illness. This story is told 4 times, in 4 different ways. As you read this book you try to unearth whose version of the story is actually true. I thought it was incredibly impressive for an author to take the same story and write it in so many different ways with different narrators and through different mediums. I felt like I was solving a puzzle.

Plot: When Polly Morland is clearing out her mother’s house she finds a book that will lead her to a remarkable figure living on her own doorstep: the country doctor who works in the same remote, wooded valley she has lived in for many years. This doctor is a rarity in contemporary medicine – she knows her patients inside out, and their stories are deeply entwined with her own. In A Fortunate Woman, with its beautiful photographs by Richard Baker, Polly Morland has written a profoundly moving love letter to a landscape, a community and, above all, to what it means to be a good doctor.

Not a non-fiction book on my Top 20! The amount of heart that is in this book. I never thought I could be so moved by non-fiction let alone CRY MY EYES OUT!! The heart-breaking and also heart-warming anecdotes about the life in this small town was just emotional rollercoaster and a great insight into the NHS.

Plot: The Hexologists, Iz and Warren Wilby, are quite accustomed to helping desperate clients with the bugbears of city life. Aided by hexes and a bag of charmed relics, the Wilbies have recovered children abducted by chimney-wraiths, removed infestations of barb-nosed incubi, and ventured into the Gray Plains of the Unmade to soothe a troubled ghost. Well-acquainted with the weird, they never shy away from a challenging case. But when they are approached by the royal secretary and told the king pleads to be baked into a cake—going so far as to wedge himself inside a lit oven—the Wilbies soon find themselves embroiled in a mystery that could very well see the nation turned on its head. Their effort to expose a royal secret buried under forty years of lies brings them nose to nose with a violent anti-royalist gang, avaricious ghouls, alchemists who draw their power from a hell-like dimension, and a bookish dragon who only occasionally eats people. Armed with a love toughened by adversity and a stick of chalk that can conjure light from the darkness, hope from the hopeless, Iz and Warren Wilby are ready for a case that will test every spell, skill, and odd magical artifact in their considerable bag of tricks.

Josiah Bancroft does not disappoint! He never lets me down! This steam-punk fantasy ,which (I personally feel) is inspired by Britain during the Industrial Revolution, has an amazing mystery at the centre, rumours of revolution around the corners and a married couple who holds the whole story together. I am being serious I have literally found a book that ticks all my book fave boxes. Bancroft’s writing and imagination is incredible. I got slight Terry Pratchett vibes.

Plot: Few writers today have reshaped our view of the ancient Greek myths more than revered bestselling author Natalie Haynes. Divine Might is a female-centered look at Olympus and the Furies, focusing on the goddesses whose prowess, passions, jealousies, and desires rival those of their male kin, Infused with Haynes’s engaging charm and irrepressible wit, Divine Might is a refreshing take on the legends and stories we thought we knew.

Ok, so I know I said no more Greek Mythology. I MEANT RE-TELLINGS. I am taking a break from the re-tellings. Until Madeline Miller releases her Hades and Persephone re-telling and I have heard the possibility of a Hera re-telling from Jennifer Saint. So I am one major hypocrite. The reason I say this is everytime I think I am done with greek mythology but thenI read something like Divine Might and it reminds me why I love it so much! THIS BOOK WAS SO SO SO GOOD. Specifically the Hera chapter. I learnt so much about deities I thought I knew loads about already.

Plot: Everyone knows the story of the Alperton Angels, the cult that brainwashed a teenage girl into believing her baby was the anti-Christ. When the girl came to her senses and called the police, the Angels committed suicide and mother and baby disappeared. Now, true crime author Amanda Bailey is looking to revive her career by writing a book on the case. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen; finding them will be the true-crime scoop of the year. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and also on the baby’s trail. As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realize that the truth about the Angels is much darker and stranger than they’d ever imagined, and in pursuit of the story they risk becoming part of it.

Every January I can’t wait to sit down with the latest Janice Hallett novel and expect my brain to explode from my genius. This book was no exception. I literally read this book in 2 days. I was up late into the night to finish this book. Hallett’s brain is just so smart and talented. I found this book to be my favourite of the 3 she has written so far. The plot is so smart, the characters so interesting. I highly recommend this book. Genuinely devastated that I have to wait until September 2024 for another Hallett novel!!!

Plot: Emory might be a student at the prestigious Aldryn College for Lunar Magics, but her healing abilities have always been mediocre at best—until a treacherous night in the Dovermere sea caves leaves a group of her classmates dead and her as the only survivor. Now Emory is plagued by strange, impossible powers that no healer should possess. Powers that would ruin her life if the wrong person were to discover them. To gain control of these new abilities, Emory enlists the help of the school’s most reclusive student, Baz—a boy already well-versed in the deadly nature of darker magic, whose sister happened to be one of the drowned students and Emory’s best friend. Determined to find the truth behind the drownings and the cult-like secret society she’s convinced her classmates were involved in, Emory is faced with even more questions when the supposedly drowned students start washing ashore— alive —only for them each immediately to die horrible, magical deaths. And Emory is not the only one seeking answers. When her new magic captures the society’s attention, she finds herself drawn into their world of privilege and power, all while wondering if the truth she’s searching for might lead her right back to Dovermere…to face the fate she was never meant to escape.

The writing was incredibly insightful and poetic, the plot kept me up at night and constantly guessing, the mystical meta element to the plot was super fun (listen I love books about books), the beauty of relationships and how complicated they can be was probably the most interesting and humanising factor of the novel and finally I loved the exploration into how insecurity and fear can hold you back.

Plot: Rumors begin to spread of a species of hyperintelligent, dangerous octopus that may have developed its own language and culture. Marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where the octopuses were discovered, off from the world. Dr. Nguyen joins DIANIMA’s team on the islands: a battle-scarred security agent and the world’s first android. The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. The stakes are high: there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of the octopuses’ advancements, and as Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves. But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.

This book is so much more about an incredibly intelligent Octopus. This book is kind of a window to the future, to what our future may be like if we stray down the path we are going. Where AI and technology start to take over our world when corporations get greedy and we destroy our eco-system, over-fishing, capitalism, and modern-day slavery. This book covers a lot. This book covers so much that on paper you think how can this author cover all of these themes in a coherent and easy-to-follow/accessible way while also maintaining an engaging story about humanity and connection as well as a killer Octopus? Well, Nayler does all of that and more.

Plot: After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus. A flying demon feeding on human energies. A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down. And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw. The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates. She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.

Now, here is another book I wish I had read way earlier! Literally everyone was talking about how amazing this book was and I knew I needed to finally see what all the hype was all about. I LOVED THIS SO MUCH!!! The lore, the magic, the exploration of grief both current but also generational. I loved Bree so much and I really enjoyed the romance in this book! I found the ending to be so incredibly powerful.

Plot: Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins. Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour. Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.

This book gave me very strong Witcher vibes so if you are a fan of that series you will love this one. This world was a great balance of taking well-known and highly loved elements of the fantasy genre but adding a fresh new set of ideas and world-building. Everything surrounding the Gods from the ones we meet all the way to the long and twisted history of the Gods was by far my favourite part of the book. They added so much depth to the story not just in terms of varied and vibrant characters but also in terms of world-building and character motivation. We follow 4 different characters in this story all with secrets to hide and questions to answer. I found every single POV in this book to be engaging and exciting. I enjoyed all of their stories equally and I looked forward to turning the page and seeing who we were following next. I really enjoyed watching these characters as individuals and learning their story and learn who they are at their core but I LOVED watching these characters together and bond with each other. It was perfect.

Plot: 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 absolutely loved this book with every fiber of my being. You know you are reading a great book when you hate the unlikeable main character so much. Kuang’s characterization of June Hayward and her journey of fakery and fraud is incredible. I was in my seat squirming and cringing at Hayward’s internal monologue – her audacity, her ignorance, her willingness to meet the point and then completely run away from it. Her desire for notoriety and fame beat out issues of ethics, morals, and doing the right thing. It was done so well. I consumed this book in no time at all and I will be front and center for Kuang’s next book!

Plot: Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot. Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home. As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.

his book is an amazing slow-burn urban fantasy/horror novel about creepy houses with a complicated history, a book about a book, the topic of how history distorts the truth, how poverty can be just as horrific and scary as the fantastical horrors plaguing this story, slavery in the American South, Opal’s character from start to finish was so incredibly written and I feel that Harrow has truly nailed flowery prose with a straight to the point plot.

Plot: The Emperor needs necromancers. The Ninth Necromancer needs a swordswoman. Gideon has a sword, some dirty magazines, and no more time for undead bullshit. Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die. Of course, some things are better left dead.

I don’t think I will be able to truly put into words how much I enjoyed this book! This book literally put me in a reading slump after I finished it. Literally no book was matching up to this one! I had been waiting for a book with interesting characters, unique plot and a complicated world. I like not fully understanding what is going on. This book confused and amazed me.

HERE WE GO! My favourite book of 2023 is…

Plot: Seven women stand in shock in a seedy hotel room; a man’s severed head sits in the centre of the floor. Each of the women – the wife, the teenager, the ex, the journalist, the colleague, the friend, and the woman who raised him – has a very good reason to have done it, yet each swears she did not. In order to protect each other, they must figure out who is responsible, all while staying one step ahead of the police. Against the ticking clock of a murder investigation, each woman’s secret is brought to light as the connections between them converge to reveal a killer.

I have never been so strongly impacted by a book in my life. The harrowing, raw and truthful way that Wilding writes as we slowly learn more about these women and how one singular man’s actions caused a ripple effect in these women’s lives was a hard read but a powerful read. I really enjoyed getting into the mind of these women and living their stories and their truths. Some of the best character work I had read alongside a super engaging mystery where each time we learn something you feel yourself creeping closer and closer to the reveal of the murderer.