Divine Rivals should win in the YA fantasy category. Beautiful book. It'll be the one time I totally agree with goodreads.

Fourth Wing will win in adult or new adult fantasy (not sure they break them out), but it's objectively poorly written. People just love it and it'll win the vote in a landslide.

Memoire - The Many Lives of Mama Love

Horror - The September House

Deepti Kapoor's Age of Vice just made the cut, having been published on Jan. 3 2023. I thought it was excellent - the best popular lit I've read in a while.

Kapoor managed to pull off two narrative techniques really well: a) jumping between past and present in the narrative; and b) present-tense narration ("He goes to the store" rather than "He went to the store"). IMO most authors of popular bestsellers who try this don't succeed, particularly with the time-jumping... it's done so often that it feels like a gimmick and the plot usually gets muddled as a result. Not so with Age of Vice. 5/5 stars.

Anonymous wrote:The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Also loved Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

I also loved Hello Beautiful

I have discovered what whatever the Goodreads readers love, I hate. They lost their minds for the Midnight Library and Lessons in Chemistry and I don’t think I’ve ever hated two books more

Anonymous wrote:I am really struggling to finish covenant of water.

Mi gave myself permission to skip parts I didn’t find interesting. I could still follow the story and I fo not feel I missed anything “important.” I was glad I stuck with it.

The Five Star Weekend
Fourth Wing

I just started The Detective Stayed Up Late so now I'm excited

There were several big, sprawling, highly-anticipated books that didn't really work for me, thought I did enjoy Nathan Hill's Wellness and Emma Cline's The Guest (which we've discussed here already).

My two favorite 2023 reading experiences were thrillers. T. Jefferson Parker's The Rescue and Adrian McKinty's The Detective Stayed Up Late, which I think I will end up having on my Best Crime Fiction of the Decade list in another six years. Definitely my favorite so far since 2020.

Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

I am really struggling to finish covenant of water.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton: Ecological thriller with a shocking, cinematic ending

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy: Set during the 1970s Troubles in Ireland, a doomed love story

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai: A Gen X woman returns to her all-girls boarding school and reflects on a friend's mysterious death and how the #metoo movement has changed her view of her teen years

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: lovely book set on a cherry farm in Michigan during Covid. The mother tells her adult daughters about her life before marriage

Homestead by Melina Moustakis: set in Alaska as it's becoming a state, this is the story of whether a marriage of convenience can turn into love

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff: a young woman escapes from a dying early American colony - the story of her navigation of the early American landscape

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng: Set in Penang 1910s-20s, British Author Somerset Maugham visits friends to spend some time recuperating from illness and hears the woman's story. Hard to sum up but I really loved this one.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Also loved Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

How to Love Your Daughter by Hila Blum

The year end lists and the Goodreads survey are about to come out. What were your favorite books that were published or translated in 2023?