It’s almost 2024 and it has been such a fantastic reading year. However, I’ve put a lot of my focus into school this past year, so while I haven’t read as many books as I usually do, that just means that the books I have read were near perfection.

Starting with one of my favorite genres, Romance.

 “The Favor” by Suzanne Wright was the first book I read by the author and she quickly became one of my favorite authors. Numerous of her books just drew me in and had such funny banter between her characters and the perfect amount of intense drama. 

I also finished some wildly popular romances, such as “The Dreamland Billionaires” by Lauren Asher and the “Twisted” series by Ana Huang. All the books in these series were super enjoyable with light-hearted and comedic writing and characters that quickly had me rooting for them. I’m definitely excited to continue to read more from these authors. 

And as always, I read some fantasy books that have made my jaw drop. One of these is “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros, which was released in April 2023. It has been one of the most hyped and talked about books on social media and for me, it did not disappoint. I loved the fast pace of the plot and the intense, detailed writing. The entire story was unique, suspenseful, and still had that touch of drama and romance I just lived for. 

“The Magician’s Daughter” by H.G. Parry and “What Beauty There Is” by Cory Anderson were two five-star reads that I just adored. They both had some sort of magical aura and were such beautiful books with descriptive writing and relatable characters. 

However, as good as those books were, I also read some that weren’t up to my personal standards. One was “If He Had Been With Me” by Laura Nowlin. I was really excited for this one, but the writing was underwhelming and the entire plot wasn’t executed most efficiently. Many characters were enjoyable but didn’t exactly touch or resonate with me. Still, I would recommend this to a younger audience looking for a sad romance. 

Another book that I didn’t particularly enjoy, is “We Hunt the Flame” by Hafsah Faizal. It’s a cliche fantasy romance that I would normally adore, but it was so mind-blowingly slow. However, the characters were interesting, the writing style was detailed, and there was still some enjoyable action. I still haven’t read the second book, but hopefully, it will be better than the original. 

What was quite possibly my top book of the year was “All The Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr. I had meant to pick this book up for years now and am so happy I did. 

“All The Light We Cannot See” was everything I could ever want in historical fiction. It had such beautiful storytelling with profound writing and the most depthful characters. Doerr played with different perspectives in such a unique way and he was able to execute a gut-wrenching, emotional story. The story concept itself was not like anything I’d ever seen before and while it was a bit confusing, it all just tied together and connected in the end. It was simply brilliant and the emotional damage that it caused me was worth it. “All The Light We Cannot See” is most definitely one of the best books of the year and possibly one of the best books I’ve ever read. 

2023 was a great year filled with even greater books and I’m excited for all the books I’ll be reading in 2024. One release I’m eagerly awaiting is “The Darkest Corner of the Heart” by Lisina Coney. She’s one of the sweetest authors out there, I adored her debut, “The Brightest Light of Sunshine ”, and TDCOTH is high on my 2024 to-be-read.