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My Top 10 Reads So Far in 2023
We’re officially halfway through 2023, so out of the 42 books I’ve read in the last six months, here are my top 10 so far.
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Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Book 1): Cozy and delightful
Emily Wilde is a socially awkward scholar of fairies. In this diary, she records the encounters and events she faces in a small Scandinavian village as she attempts to study their previously undocumented “Hidden Ones.”
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A Dowry of Blood: Dark and seductive
Told from the perspective of Constanta’s letters to Dracula, we follow her through the centuries of her second life as the ancient vampire’s first bride.
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Ninth House (Book 1): Gripping and creepy
Alex Stern, who has lived a hard life of drugs and petty crime, is offered a place in Yale’s secret dark magic societies because of her unique ability to see ghosts. One semester in, a woman turns up dead – and Alex thinks the societies are involved.
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Outlawed: Intriguing, but slow
Ada’s life of crime begins after she fails to conceive a child, is accused of witchcraft, and runs away to a gang of non-conforming outlaws.
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The Hawthorne Legacy (Book 2): Entertaining but not mind-blowing
The plot thickens as Avery tries to find the one man who may know why a stranger left his billions to her instead of his own family.
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Mary Jane: A delightful, cozy read
In 1975 Baltimore, 14-year-old sheltered Mary Jane takes a summer nannying job in a home where the psychologist father is treating a drug-addicted rock star and his movie star wife.
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Fourth Wing (Book 1): The best of 2023 so far
Despite being untrained, dealing with chronic pain, and having a target on her back, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail’s mother forces her to enroll in a dragon-riding military college – where the mortality rate for first-years is something like 50% or more. Now Violet has to survive not just the deadly training but the other ruthless students…
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To Shape a Dragon’s Breath: A superb cozy fantasy
Anequs, an indigenous islander in this fantasy world, is required to attend the colonizer’s school away from her people after a newly-hatched dragon chooses her to be its rider.
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Firekeeper’s Daughter: Entertaining and enlightening
After Daunis witnesses a murder, she becomes a confidential informant to the FBI. As more people in her community die, she becomes increasingly conflicted between protecting her tribe and trusting the feds to solve the crime.
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