My Favourite Books of 2023

It’s December, which I think is a great excuse to look back at some of the wonderful books I’ve read this year. In picking out my favourites, I’ve narrowed it down to ten titles covering three categories:

• Fiction first published in 2023
• Fiction first published pre-2023
• Non-fiction (I haven’t read enough non-fiction in the last 12 months to separate it out by year!)

Without further ado, here is my top ten for the year, with links to my reviews.

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Fiction Published in 2023

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Weyward by Emilia Hart

KATE, 2019
Kate flees London – abandoning everything – for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

VIOLET, 1942
Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever.

ALTHA, 1619
Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated.

But Weyward women belong to the wild. And they cannot be tamed…

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The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson

Laura Shepherd-Robinson’s The Square of Sevens is an epic and sweeping novel set in Georgian high society, a dazzling story offering up mystery, intrigue, heartbreak, and audacious twists.

‘My father had spelt it out to me. Choice was a luxury I couldn’t afford. This is your story, Red. You must tell it well…’

A girl known only as Red, the daughter of a Cornish fortune-teller, travels with her father making a living predicting fortunes using the ancient method: the Square of Sevens. When her father suddenly dies, Red becomes the ward of a gentleman scholar.

Now raised as a lady amidst the Georgian splendour of Bath, her fortune-telling is a delight to high society. But she cannot ignore the questions that gnaw at her soul: who was her mother? How did she die? And who are the mysterious enemies her father was always terrified would find him?

The pursuit of these mysteries takes her from Cornwall and Bath to London and Devon, from the rough ribaldry of the Bartholomew Fair to the grand houses of two of the most powerful families in England. And while Red’s quest brings her the possibility of great reward, it also leads into her grave danger…

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Other Women by Emma Flint

It is 1923 and a country is in mourning. Thousands of husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts were lost in the war, millions more returned home wounded and forever changed.

Beatrice Cade is an orphan, unmarried and childless. After her brother’s death, she decides to make a new life for herself. She takes a room in a Bloomsbury ladies’ club and a job in the City. But just when her new world is starting to take shape, a fleeting encounter threatens to ruin everything.

Kate Ryan is an ordinary wife and mother. Since the end of the war, she has managed to build an enviable life with her husband and young daughter. From the outside, they seem like a normal, happy family. But when two policemen knock on Kate’s door and jeopardise the facade Kate has created, she knows what she has to do to protect the people she loves. And suddenly, two women who never should have met are connected for ever…

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The Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson

All is not as it seems within the halls of Her Majesty’s Royal Coven…

Despite thinking they’ve thwarted the prophecy, the witches are still reeling from the events of the past few months.

Ciara now occupies her twin sister’s body as she prepares to take on the role of High Priestess. But why are the sinister government agents of the Shadow Cabinet so invested in her coronation?

And then there’s the small matter of Dabney Hale: freshly escaped from Grierlings prison, he’s on the hunt for a mythical object that will give him unimaginable power. Leonie’s brother is on the trail, but doesn’t know the danger he now faces, and so she sets off to bring him home and bring Hale to justice.

Meanwhile, Theo and Holly are left to their own devices. Theo to work out how her miraculous transformation took place and Holly to discover what’s going on with her mum and dad. Elle’s Instagram-perfect world is about to come crashing down in the most terrifying way.

Payback’s a witch as Ciara, Leonie, Elle, Theo and Holly are about to find out.

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Fiction Published Pre-2023

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Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London – or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream: to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs. As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

A contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.

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Babel by R. F. Kuang

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

Oxford, 1836.

The city of dreaming spires.

It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.

And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift.

Until it became a prison…

But can a student stand against an empire?

An incendiary new novel from award-winning author R.F. Kuang about the power of language, the violence of colonialism, and the sacrifices of resistance.

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Her Majesty’s Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

(I make absolutely no apologies for including Juno Dawson twice – I adore this series!)

Hidden among us is a secret government department of witches known as Her Majesty’s Royal Coven.

They protect crown and country from magical forces and otherworldly evil, but their greatest enemy will come from within…

There are whisperings of a prophecy that will bring the coven to its knees, and four best friends are about to be caught at the centre.

Life as a modern witch was never simple… but now it’s about to get apocalyptic.

Prepare to be bewitched by Juno Dawson’s first adult series. A story of ancient prophecies and modern dating, of sacred sisterhood and demonic frenemies.

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Non-fiction

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Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman (translated by Elizabeth Manton and Erica Moore)

It’s a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives. From Machiavelli to Hobbes, Freud to Dawkins, the roots of this belief have sunk deep into Western thought. Human beings, we’re taught, are by nature selfish and governed by self-interest.

Humankind makes a new argument: that it is realistic, as well as revolutionary, to assume that people are good. The instinct to cooperate rather than compete, trust rather than distrust, has an evolutionary basis going right back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. By thinking the worst of others, we bring out the worst in our politics and economics too.

In this major book, internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman takes some of the world’s most famous studies and events and reframes them, providing a new perspective on the last 200,000 years of human history. From the real-life Lord of the Flies to the Blitz, a Siberian fox farm to an infamous New York murder, Stanley Milgram’s Yale shock machine to the Stanford prison experiment, Bregman shows how believing in human kindness and altruism can be a new way to think – and act as the foundation for achieving true change in our society.

It is time for a new view of human nature.

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Bibliomaniac by Robin Ince

Why play to 12,000 people when you can play to 12? In Autumn 2021, Robin Ince’s stadium tour with Professor Brian Cox was postponed due to the pandemic. Rather than do nothing, he decided instead to go on a tour of over a hundred bookshops in the UK, from Wigtown to Penzance; from Swansea to Margate.

Packed with witty anecdotes and tall tales, Bibliomaniac takes the reader on a journey across Britain as Robin explores his lifelong love of bookshops and books – and also tries to find out just why he can never have enough of them.

It is the story of an addiction and a romance, and also of an occasional points failure just outside Oxenholme.

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Educated by Tara Westover

Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old.

At sixteen, to escape her father’s radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

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And there you have it – my favourite books of 2023! What were your favourites for the year? Let me know in the comments! 😎