If it’s late December, it’s time to share my favorite books of the year. I’ve intentionally chosen to call my list “Favorite Reads” for two reasons. First, I read just under 50 books this year, which means I didn’t read hundreds of books; so I can’t say these are the 20 best books of the year. They’re just the 20 best books of those I read this year. There are so many 2023 books remaining on my TBR list, and I’m confident that some of them would have made the top 20. Second, they’re my favorite reads of 2023, but not all of them were published this year. A few came out in 2022 and one is from 2020.

Pictured above, in no particular order, are my Honorable Mentions, the 10 books that didn’t make my Top 10. I shuffled books in and out of places 8-12; it’s always hard to decide which ones will make the cut. Birnam Wood, You Are Here, Kantika, and Happiness Falls could well be in my Top 10 if I compiled it another day. All of these books were published in 2023 except Trespasses (Nov. 2022) and Take My Hand (Jan. 2022). A few were TV book club selections (Happiness Falls was the Good Morning America Book Club pick for September and We Must Not Think of Ourselves was the Today Show/Read With Jenna pick for December) and two were finalists for major literary awards (Birnam Wood and Trespasses).

Three authors made strong showings with their debut novels: Shannon Bowring (The Road to Dalton, about the interconnected lives of residents of a small town in Maine), Karin Lin-Greenberg (You Are Here, which probes the lives of several employees of a mall in upstate New York that is scheduled to close), and Louise Kennedy (Trespasses, about a complicated love affair during The Troubles in Northern Ireland). These are writers to keep an eye on.

Tomorrow I’ll share the books that placed 5th through 10th, with the 2nd to 4th place books to follow on December 26, and my favorite book of the year wrapping things up on December 27.