Our 2023 in books

Many book-related portals have a list of their favourite titles of the year, so we thought we'd put one together too. Out of the slew of publications to have come out last year, we feel that the following titles made our 2023.

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
Rock the Boat
9780861544202

Sixteen-year-old Ojibwe native Perry Firekeeper-Birch is forced into an internship at a tribal museum. Perry's eager to switch jobs until she encounters the remains of "Warrior Girl", a Native American ancestor, locked up in a local college's archives. She becomes obsessed with repatriating Warrior Girl and ropes in several like-minded people in her quest, which gets complicated when Indigenous women start going missing. Boulley delves into the issue of Indigenous ancestral rights and the repatriation of Indigenous artefacts.

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
Flatiron Books
9781250894274

The follow-up to Ninth House, sees Yale sophomore Galaxy "Alex" Stern trying to break Daniel Arlington, her supervisor at Lethe, out of hell. It will be tough, as any attempt to rescue him is forbidden, so she and her colleague Dawes have to take another route. Breaking into hell seems a fool's errand, but Alex must contend with her past and a murderer of Yale professors as well. Bardugo fans works will get a kick out of this.

The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff
Ballantine Books
9780593599242

When her no-good husband walked out on her, Geeta gained a fearsome reputation in her remote Indian village, thanks to rumours that she killed him. Her notoriety has some perks – nobody dares to mess with her – but being a so-called expert in husband disposal has troubled wives knocking at her door seeking her help. The hardships women in India face are mirrored in this novel and how the women deal with it here feels almost cathartic. Not that we advocate the measures they take but still...

A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon
Bloomsbury Publishing
9781526619761

Mores stories of women are told in this breathtaking novel, set centuries before the events in The Priory of the Orange Tree. With lush, evocative prose and intricate world-building, this prequel tells the tale of several ladies whose lives become intertwined when a cataclysm threatens their world. Fans of Shannon's storytelling will surely be satisfied, if not blown away.

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Berkley
9780593549223

Sixty-year-old self-styled tea expert Vera Wong wakes up one morning to find a dead body in her teahouse in San Francisco and, dutiful citizen that she is, calls the police and outlines the body like how they do it in crime shows. But after the cops show up, she decides that SHE could do a better job at catching the killer, and gets her chance when a bunch of people drop by, curious about the case. A lighthearted cosy mystery with a likeable protagonist.

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Piatkus
9780349437002

All Violet Sorrengail wanted was to be a scribe surrounded by books and recording history. After all, a girl with a chronic illness will never become a dragon rider, right? But Violet's mom, the commanding general of the kingdom, insists that she enrol in the war college. Even without the college's graduate-or-die policy, the cadets hate the general's guts enough to want her daughter dead. How Violet surmounts these odds is so brilliantly told, readers couldn't get enough, which is perhaps why the sequel, Iron Flame, was released just months later.

Homecoming by Kate Morton
Mariner Books
9780063020894

Laid off from her job as a journalist, Jess Turner-Bridges flies from London to Sydney where her grandmother Nora is hospitalised after a fall. Jess later learns that Nora seemed anxious weeks before the accident. At her grandmother's home, she finds a true-crime book detailing a tragedy that occurred in 1959 in the small town of Tambilla in South Australia AND her family's connection to it. Morton's writing draws us into Jess's exploration into this unsolved case and her family's past, holding our attention until the very last page.

The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece by Tom Hanks
Knopf
9781524712327

Tom Hanks's writing, characterisation and earnest storytelling grows on you as the pages turn. A boy who is taken to and then abandoned at a general store by his war veteran uncle grows up to become a cartoonist of some renown, whose work inspires a director and filmmaker to pen the script for a superhero flick. The making of this movie is an adventure in itself, heartwarming, poignant and funny in parts, featuring a cast from a fair chunk of the American social fabric, spanning decades of US history. (A review of the book is here.)

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in the Philippines by Patricia Evangelista
Atlantic Books
9781804710067

Between 2016 and 2022, the Philippines was wracked by extrajudicial killings under its then-president Rodrigo Duterte. Patricia Evangelista, a reporter at independent news site Rappler, bore witness to the deaths and their aftermaths. The title of this book comes from a quote taken from a supporter of Duterte, encapsulating the notion that those who died in the Philippines' bloody war on drugs deserved it. An incredible, harrowing read that lays out how people can be convinced to believe that "some people need killing".

Lady Tan's Circle of Women (UK edition) by Lisa See
Simon & Schuster UK
9781398526068

This novel is a reimagination of the life of Tan Yunxian, a female physician who lived during Ming-dynasty China. Born to a noble family, Tan is trained in medicine by her grandmother and starts specialising in women's illnesses. She later befriends Meiling, a young midwife-in-training, and work to overcome barriers in society and their professions in their respective practices. A captivating blend of history, culture and beautiful prose.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Atlantic Books
9781804710432

Dive into this sweeping intergenerational yarn of an Indian Malayali Christian family in Kerala. A girl marries into a family plagued by a strange condition: at least one person dies by drowning in every generation. The stories of two doctors who practise in India are also woven into this grand, expansive narrative – and we mean it, as this novel is over 700 pages long, but as we drift along with the flow of Verghese's writing, the heft of the novel barely registers.

Yellowface (UK edition) by R.F. Kuang
The Borough Press
9780008532789

For a while, this novel was the talk of the town with its biting critique of the publishing industry. The title comes from a practice where White actors portray East Asian characters in film and theatre; a literary example is the case of the American poet Michael Derrick Hudson, who used the pen name Yi-Fen Chou. In Kuang's novel, struggling author June Hayward appropriates and reworks her Asian friend's manuscript, publishes it under a nom de plume, and spends a fair bit of time trying to maintain her façade and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
HarperCollins
9780063335233

Thanks to COVID-19, the daughters of former actress Lara and her husband are helping their folks at the family's cherry farm. One day, the daughters interrogate their mother about her brief romance with then-not-famous actor Peter Duke when she was in her twenties and both of them were part of a theatre production. In between vignettes of the present, we are treated to Lara's story about how she got into acting, the romance in question, and more – including the bits she doesn't tell her daughters about. Loved the fine writing and characterisation in this slow-paced novel about family and relationships.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
Doubleday
9780385549868

Two groups of shipwreck survivors land in South America with different accounts of what happened after they were marooned on a remote Patagonian island. How did The Wager, a British vessel that was in pursuit of a Spanish galleon, get wrecked? What happened to the crew after they made it to shore? Journalist David Grann, author of the acclaimed The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon, brings his writing talent to bear in spinning the yarn of the ship and its crew.

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao
HarperCollins
9780008521370

In a colonised land, orphan Lan works as a song girl at a teahouse while searching for clues to a burn mark on her arm that only she can see. When young magician Zen sees this mark, he recognises its significance and connection to a long-lost magic. But can they work together to harness it and repel the colonisers? Zhao taps into Chinese history and culture to bring readers a tale of magic and demonic gods that evokes the enchantment and splendour of xianxia epics.

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History by Philippa Gregory
William Collins
9780008601713

Tapping into the skills honed researching for her historical novels, Philippa Gregory highlights the roles women played in nine centuries of English history in this ambitious and detailed work. Wading through books, archives and a trove of material, she unearthed stories of scores of "normal women" who went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, committed crimes, and so much more ... not merely bystanders but very much part of history.

Banyan Moon by Thao Thai
Quercus
9781529431988

This intergenerational tale of three Vietnamese American women sees Ann Tran returning to Banyan House, her childhood home, after her grandmother Minh passes away. Pregnant and her love life in tatters, Ann faces her estranged mother Huơng and struggles to rebuild their relationship without Minh. Minh's story is also unveiled, as are the secrets locked in the old house mother and daughter inherited. A sweeping evocative debut spanning Vietnam in the 1960s to modern-day Florida.

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
Tor
9781035007363

Wounded during a mission, orc mercenary Viv is sent against her will to recuperate in a sleepy beach town. So far from any action with nothing to do, she spends her days at a bookshop and its potty-mouthed proprietor – not a place in any world one expects to pick up the reading habit and a love for books. But things are about to get lively in this little town. Set years before the events in Baldree's previous novel, Legends & Lattes, this cosy high fantasy tale serves up more of the same that charmed readers of that first book.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
HarperVoyager UK
9780008381356

Despite her lifestyle, including run-ins with the supernatural, infamous pirate Amina al-Sirafi manages to retire peacefully with her family to a more mundane life. But a high-paying job rekindles the longing for adventure in her heart, and so she gathers her old crew for one last voyage – which may turn out to be so, if she isn't careful. Magic, monsters, mayhem, and a middle-aged female pirate captain and roguish crewmates? Why aren't you all on board already?

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux
Orion
9781399611350

Cryptocurrency burst into the scene riding a wave of hype and for a while, it seemed the future was here – until the hype fizzled out. Follow Zeke Faux on his globetrotting quest to understand the workings behind cryptocurrency and the people involved in it. What he uncovers made us wonder how the heck did the crypto buzz last as long as it did. Among those featured in the book is Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded the FTX cryptocurrency exchange that collapsed in 2022 and was convicted for fraud a year later.

And there you have it, our 2023 in books. Thank you for sticking with us and here's to a swell year ahead with more great reads!