At the beginning of the year, I set my year’s reading goal at 100 books. I thought this would be a comfortable goal as I didn’t have time to read last year nearly as often as I’d have liked. Here we are at the end of May and I’ve hit 100 books for the year so, armed with a new reading goal for the year, I’d like to talk about some of my favourites!
First is The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. This was one of the first books I read this year and it was very easily a five star. I was absolutely torn to pieces over this story, and I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard as I had reading the last several chapters.
Laura did an amazing job of showing how thin the line between good and bad is, and she really captured the humanity behind what drives someone to do terrible things in the name of love. Her characters were so beautifully realized, and their development across the story was unreal. Owen has become one of my all-time favourite characters, and Hannah a role model for her loyalty and devotion to Bailey.
In the end, I genuinely felt like I lost someone of my own family and felt like I needed to mourn for a long time before I was ready to move on. This deserved way more than 5 stars, and I’ll remember the lessons in this story for the rest of my life.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have several classic literary loves. These literary loves include Dostoevsky, Poe, and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Might I introduce you to Forsaken, the love child of the three previously mentioned?
Andrew has a real gift for suspenseful horror and building up the anxiety over the course of a book. He has absolute perfect timing when it comes to reveals, and I had chills when the big reveal happened at the end. Keeping in mind that I had a hunch about three quarters of the way through the book who the narrator was, I was still completely enthralled with this read.
Forsaken was an extremely satisfying read, despite not having the classic happy ending. The characters were twisted but that made them so interesting to read. This was another very happy 5 stars.
This wouldn’t be a highlight reel without Cassie Cole! I have read quite a few of her books, but Bosses with Benefits is by far my favourite of any that I’ve read; another easy 5 stars.
Lord knows I’ve read A LOT of romance over the years. At times, I think the genre itself can get a bit stale and safe in what it knows and what it’s done before, but Cassie breathed new life into it with her latest steamy release. Cassie takes OnlyFans, a site that is widely stigmatized as being a sex selling site and shows the behind the scenes of OnlyFans models. I loved that she took this concept and ran with it, making it very real and giving the reader something to connect to.
My heart went out to Ginny and her three men. They were each incredibly relatable and I found myself empathizing with their struggles. Cassie gave them so much depth that I felt like I was struggling right along with them. And my God, what a villain! Sandra was a total witch with a b, and I could absolutely seeing someone like her doing what she did.
One Cassie Cole is definitely not enough, and how could I talk about my top books without mentioning Drilled?
Have you heard of fracking? Simply put, it’s the process of injecting liquid at high pressures into the ground to extract gas or oil. Doesn’t sound very sexy, does it? Well….THINK AGAIN! Boy howdy, these men are hot. Each of them have their quirks, but they all fit together so well. They have a really good dynamic with Lexa, and the amount of suspense in this kept me on the edge of my seat. As someone who read a lot of Harlequin Intrigue (probably sooner than I should have, to be honest), I really missed a good romantic suspense.
I loved that Cassie didn’t bog down the book with an overload of facts and the science behind fracking. She provided just enough detail so that the reader would have a basic understanding of it without making their eyes cross from an overly complex explanation. Fracking can be a very dangerous business, and I really thought Cassie did it justice. It was interesting also to see what exactly a safety auditor does and how their jobs are seen in the industry.
I’ll be the first to admit that anthologies and I have a bit of a history. Of any type of book that I read, I’m probably the harshest on anthologies. I have pretty high expectations of them, and most of the ones that I’ve read haven’t met them. However, Fear Forge: The Winter Quarter 2022 blew every anthology I’ve ever read out of the water!
I can’t say that I’ve ever really considered forging and blacksmithing in general. It’s not something that I run into much where I live, so it’s usually not anywhere near my thoughts. Lyndsey has put together a masterful set of stories related to those industries, and I was intrigued from the get go. She really carved out a niche here, and I’d love to see more done in the genre with forges and smithing. It’s definitely an underused concept.
I really can’t say enough about this one. There’s something here for everyone: stories that make you think of possibilities, stories that deviate totally from the evil norm, stories that are poetically horrifying, and stories that make you crave full novels. Lyndsey’s authors explore forging and craftmanship like you’ve never experienced, and I found a lot of amazing new authors to follow!
Christopher Stanfield’s The Bloody Rose is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. Christopher has taken the traditional serial killer (unstable, antisocial, older lone male) and flipped it entirely on its head. Here we are introduced to Apple, a well-rounded, bright, popular young woman with an incredibly dangerous secret. She kills people in increasingly creative ways because she enjoys it.
There’s a huge societal dilemma in this book, and that made it the most interesting for me. While Apple enjoys killing people, she only kills those with horrible secrets of their own. A moral killer isn’t seen very often, and it really makes you think. The Bloody Rose is accused of being a monster, but the people that she kills are monsters in their own right….is she in the wrong? Is she a ruthless murderer or a vigilante seeking justice for those who couldn’t get it through the official channels? Apple is so so clever and she makes a beautiful anti-hero; it’s incredible.
The next installment in Apple’s fascinating story, Bitter Seeds, comes out in October and I cannot wait! I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at this next chapter and believe me, you really won’t want to miss this!
Nailbiters: Hard Bitten was an interesting one. If I’m critical on anthologies, I’m also pretty picky with collections because I never feel like they are cohesive enough. This was my first foray into Paul Kane’s work and I was very pleasantly surprised. Each of the stories was so different in style, but they fit together so well with the overarching theme.
It’s hard to even pick a favourite from the stories in this collection because they each brought something new and exciting to the table. There honestly wasn’t a bad story here, and that’s a huge admission from me. I do wish that I had read Nailbiters first since there were a couple stories that worked off of the stories in that collection, but it wasn’t anything that spoiled my experience.
Paul is a real talent in the psychological thriller genre and he writes the most diverse characters that I’ve read. This one was an exciting experience, and I’m really glad that I took the chance on this one!
My favourite book of the year, and perhaps of all time: The Devil’s Pocketbook by Ross Jeffery.
This one is one of my most recent reads, and it blew me away. Despite the fact that I’ve already reviewed it, I still don’t even know how to put my thoughts into words. I got so wrapped up and invested in this story. My heart positively bled for Erik with everything that happened to him, and Lara’s pain was so raw…it was almost like I was choking with it.
The best part of this book was Erik on the cliff. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but Erik was very close to the edge, and he says that no one knows the strength that it takes to go against every natural instinct that you have. Chills. No one truly knows and understands what those feelings are like unless they’ve been there, and Ross captured that so achingly perfectly.
I’ve never read something as real and as powerful as The Devil’s Pocketbook and it’ll stick with me for as long as I live.
Honourable Mentions
Slashtag by Jon Cohn brings readers all the excitement of Saw and Big Brother if H.H. Holmes was the mastermind behind them!
Jon brought the story to life through the eyes of the characters in such a way that I was fascinated by. He really captured the overly-scripted aspects of reality TV and the added true horror elements changed the game entirely. There was never a dull moment while reading this.
The thing that intrigued me the most was how immersive this reader experience was. Jon has created a website and podcast episodes to accompany the story, which was a huge curveball! I did have a little bit of confusion on when I was supposed to listen to the podcast, and I do wish that it would’ve been a little more obvious, but I loved the added storytelling of it. The story itself was told in narratives, cast emails, and text messages which gave the story more depth and brought the characters to life even more.
The formatting was a smidge wonky on the pages with the texts, so that part of it didn’t really work, but what a fun concept for storytelling! Solid four stars.
GORDON CAKES
That’s all I’m going to say here. I’ve never been more disgusted in my life.
Vive le fromage!
So there you have it; my favourites and honourable mentions to wrap up my first 100 books of the year. I’ve had some really good picks so far, and I’m really looking forward to what my next 100 brings!
Let me know what your favourite reads of 2023 are!
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