23 Best Books We Read in 2023

Book Summary

Ashlyn Greer is a rare book dealer who loves the smell of old paper, ink, and leather. Old volumes appeal to all of her senses, including a sense the rest of us don’t have. She is gifted with the unique ability to feel the echoes of the books’ previous owners.

When Ashlyn discovers a pair of beautifully bound, unpublished volumes with no evidence of how they came to be, she gets wrapped up in a decades-old literary mystery. Each volume bears a curious inscription, as well as the emotional fingerprints of the authors, Hemi and Belle. The books tell conflicting sides of a tragic romance. The more Ashlyn learns about Hemi and Belle, the closer she comes to bringing closure to their love story and to the unfinished chapters of her own life.

Book Summary

This historical novel is based on the real-life & historic memoir of a 15th-century female physician in China. Tan Yunxian was raised in the Ming Dynasty era by her grandmother, also a physician, who taught her the art of Chinese medicine. She also learned about female conditions from her best friend, Meiling, who was training to be a midwife. While Yunxian was on the path to be a success in her own right, she was still sent into an arranged marriage.

Her new mother-in-law was a traditionalist who forbade her from seeing Meiling and stopped her from helping the girls and women in their household. Instead, she is supposed to be a “proper wife,” learning poetry, embroidering foot-binding slippers, and staying within the walls of their compound.

How did Yunxian break free and go on to treat women from all classes of society and create remedies that are still used over 500 years later? Lisa See tells her compelling life story in this novel.

Book Summary

When bombings began in London in 1939, 14-year-old Hazel and her 5-year-old sister, Flora, were evacuated to a rural village in the English countryside. Living with a woman and her teenage son in a charming stone cottage, Hazel comforts Flora by telling her stories of a magical fairy tale land. It provides the sisters with a fictional place where they can escape the fears and hardships of war. One day while playing near the banks of the River Thames, Flora disappears. Hazel blames herself and carries the guilt into adulthood. Twenty years later, Hazel’s life looks ideal from the outside – charming boyfriend, a nice flat in London, and a good job at a rare bookstore. But on the eve of her new career at Sotheby’s, she unwraps a package that changes everything.

It’s an illustrated first-edition book called “Whisperwood and the River of Stars.” It’s the imaginary world that she created for Flora – one that she never wrote down and never told anyone else about. What does it mean? Is Flora still alive? And does this fairy tale hold the truth about her disappearance? Hazel embarks on a feverish quest for answers. Along the way, she’ll reconnect with people from her past and put her future in jeopardy.

Book Summary

House of Eve alternates perspectives of two women in 1950s Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Ruby’s story is told in first person perspective as she tries to become the first person in her lower-income family to attend higher education. However, her plans are threatened when she begins to fall for a Jewish boy.

Eleanor’s story is told from the third person perspective as she arrives in DC with equal parts ambition and secrets. Like Ruby, Eleanor’s plans are changed when she falls for a man, William, at Howard University. William is from one of DC’s elite, wealthy Black families, and his parents are picky about who is good enough to join them.

While this setup feels like a romance novel, this is a fast-moving historical fiction novel that will take you into a piece of history you may know little about. Don’t miss the author’s note at the end!

Book Summary

This novel transports you to 1940s rural Colorado and the home of teenager Victoria Nash. Despite her young age, she runs the household as the sole female in a family of troubled men. One day, she meets Wilson Moon, a mysterious young drifter who has been displaced from his tribal land. Their sudden and passionate connection is full of danger and secrets.

Victoria ends up fleeing to the harsh mountain wilderness in a small hut, where she struggles against impossible conditions. As the Gunnison River rises and threatens her homeland, she begins a quest to fight for all she has lost.

Book Summary

Set during the summer of 2020, Lara’s three adult daughters have returned home to quarantine at the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard. As they pick cherries and go about running the family business in isolation, the sisters beg their mother to tell them the story of her long-ago romance with celebrity Peter Duke. When Lara was in her early 20s, she and Peter shared the stage during a Michigan summer stock theater run of the play Our Town.

Lara begins the story with her very first experience on stage in high school and works her way forward through her brief but eventful theater career. As the girls learn more about their mother’s life, they are forced to reconsider everything they thought they knew about her and their father.

Book Summary

In the middle of the 1811 winter social season, Virginia’s planters and their families gathered at the capital for the General Assembly. Just after Christmas, six hundred people packed into the theater for a show.

Newly widowed Sally is in a third-floor box. Cecily is in the colored gallery, happy to briefly escape bad circumstances at home. Stagehand Jack is backstage hoping to earn a permanent job. Blacksmith Gilbert is on the other side of town, trying to make enough money to buy freedom for himself and his wife.

In the middle of the performance, the theater catches fire. The decisions by Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert will impact their futures as well as the lives of countless others.

Based on the true story of a fire in Richmond, Virginia’s theater in 1811, this compelling novel moves from tragedy to redemption as the lives of four people instantly become forever intertwined.

Book Summary

Nineteen-year-old Marion’s dreams come true when she’s cast as a member of the Rockettes, Radio City Music Hall’s precision dance troupe. It’s an honor for any dancer to be selected for the role and given the opportunity to perform at the art deco masterpiece of a theater that is Radio City. But Marion soon learns that, behind the scenes, the days are long and the rehearsals grueling.

One night, in 1956, a bomb explodes in the theater. It’s suspected to be the work of the infamous “Big Apple Bomber” who has been planting bombs in crowded places around the city for the past sixteen years. The police still have no leads, leaving citizens living in fear. At Marion’s urging, the police agree to try psychological profiling, a radical new technique at the time.

While the Rockettes are trained to stay in line, Marion realizes that to help catch the bomber, she’ll have to stand out.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel tells the story of the friendship between two powerful and influential women in American history.

Mary McLeod Bethune, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents, was one of the first black female activists. Through her work as both an activist and an educator, she helped lay a foundation for the civil rights movement. Eleanor Roosevelt shared Mary’s passion for education and women’s rights, and was eager to make her acquaintance. The two became fast friends and confidantes.

After Eleanor’s husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, was elected president in 1932, the two women began to collaborate even more closely. She became quite a controversial First Lady for pursuing her own agenda, separate from FDR, and particularly for her outspoken stance on civil rights.

When Elanor begins to receive threats as a result of her close relationship with Mary, both women use it as motivation to fight even harder for equality.

Book Summary

Clementine has been protecting her heart ever since the worst day of her life. She wants to find love, but she’s scared to get hurt. But then she meets a man with kind eyes, a Southern drawl, and a taste for lemon pies. He’s precisely the kind of man she’d fall for… if only he didn’t exist seven years in the past.

Her late aunt always told her that her apartment was a pinch in time – a place where moments blend together like watercolors. And it seems she was right. When she finds this man standing in the kitchen and realizes she’s living seven years in his future, she knows she shouldn’t let her heart get involved. But she just might anyway.

Book Summary

Charlie greets the women in his family, including his wife and four daughters, by saying “Hello, Beautiful” and truly sees something special in each of them. Unfortunately, Charlie is resented by his wife, Rose, because he’s an alcoholic, which also impacts his ability to provide for the family.

Their oldest daughter, Julie, is smart and ambitious. When she meets William, whose family couldn’t be more different than her own, he’s at college on a basketball scholarship. For William, the sport has been his saving grace and a substitute for the love of family. At least until he meets Julie and her family embraces him in their family unit when they become a couple. Once that happens, the family refuses to give up on him.

The book begins in the main character’s childhood, in the 1960s, and spans into their middle age years.

Book Summary

Sadie is a talented portrait artist, who is finally getting the recognition she deserves as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition. Before her death, her mom was a finalist in the same competition, so Sadie is full of emotions about the new painting she must produce as part of the contest.
However, in one moment, everything changes for Sadie. The only constant is her beloved dog, Peanut. With both her work and her family in chaos, how will Sadie overcome the hardest period in her life?

Book Summary

This dual-timeline novel opens in 2019 at the funeral for BettyKay in a small town in Iowa. BettyKay’s daughters are shocked when Hollywood movie star Kitty Devereaux walks in and places something into their mother’s casket. Over the course of the weekend, BettyKay’s daughters discover a whole other side to their mother as Kitty shares stories of their lifelong friendship, which all began in 1967 at a St. Luke’s Nursing School in the fictional town of Greensboro, Iowa.

BettyKay grew up on a farm in the Midwest and risked everything to attend nursing school against her parent’s wishes. Her assigned roommate, Kitty came to Iowa to escape her past in Atlanta, but already had her sights set on Hollywood. The two, having little in common, became unlikely friends. Another new student, Jenny, completed their trio. Jenny had aspirations of becoming a doctor, but she knew that the combination of being a woman and being Black meant that the odds were stacked against her in the late 60s.

The bond these three women formed at their Iowa nursing school would carry them through the years as their lives led them in different directions – from the jungles of Vietnam to the movie sets of Hollywood.

Book Summary

Kate hasn’t recovered from losing her husband, Cameron, two years ago. She’s back to work, but not at peak performance. Her best friend is trying to get her back on the dating scene, but she’s already overwhelmed trying to care for herself and her young son.

When Kate and her boss, Hugh, are on a flight to a quick business meeting, they have to land in Byron Bay due to a massive storm. The time away may be exactly what she needs to move into the next stage of healing.

While the title of this novel, and even the first couple of chapters, read like a rom-com, don’t go in expecting that vibe throughout. It gets quite deep and covers some very serious, hard, heart-wrenching topics. While it’s not exactly a dual-time, some chapters take you back to Kate’s life with her husband. You’ll tear up as many times as you laugh out loud. There are romantic elements, but it’s also squarely a story about grief and loss.

Book Summary

Sloane is a small-town librarian in Idaho who enjoys her daily visits from the town curmudgeon, Arthur. She loves verbal sparing with him so much that she instantly notices when he doesn’t show up one morning. When another day passes without a visit, her worry intensifies.

When Sloane tracks Arthur down at home and finds him almost bedridden, she needs a way to cheer him up. An impromptu book club with other lonely library patrons soon begins and unlikely friendships form through their shared love of books.

Book Summary

This novel centers around Hollis, a popular food blogger who loses her husband to a car accident. The fight she had with him right before he drove away drives an even deeper wedge between her and her teenage daughter, Caroline.

After learning about a trend called a “Five-Star Weekend,” where one woman organizes a trip for her best friends from each phase of life, Hollis decides to host her own. But gathering her best friend from each decade from childhood through midlife doesn’t turn out to be the joyful Hallmark movie she’d envisioned. But it will definitely be a weekend she’ll never forget.

Book Summary

In this intimate memoir, Prince Harry tells his story, beginning when he learned of his mother’s tragic death at the tender age of 12.

We all remember the image of two young boys – two princes -walking behind their mother’s coffin as the world watched in sorrow and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling—and how their lives would play out from that point on.

For Harry, this is his side of the story finally made public. After his mother’s death, he struggled at school while dealing with anger and loneliness. Because he blamed the press for his mother’s death, he also struggled to accept his prescribed life in the spotlight.

After his teen years, he found purpose and structure during his two combat tours with the British Army. But after the military, he felt more lost than ever. He suffered from post-traumatic stress and became prone to crippling panic attacks.

Above all, Harry dreamed of finding true love and some sense of normalcy. He hoped to start a family of his own and to somehow protect them from the media scrutiny that ended his mother’s story so tragically.

Book Summary

Picture-perfect couple Harriet and Wyn met in college and have been an inspirational duo ever since. But, as their annual week-long Maine vacation with their best friends approaches, they have a big decision to make. Do they finally confess that they broke up six months ago and still haven’t managed to tell their best friends?

The cottage they visit each year is being sold, and it’s the last time they’ll all be together in their sacred spot. It feels wrong to ruin the whole mood with their bad news. So Harriet and Wyn decide they can surely fake being in love for one week. After all, they’ve had years of practice.

This book alternates between chapters titled “Happy Place,” through which you see Harriet and Wyn’s relationship from and grow through the years, and chapters titled “Real Life” where you see them in the current broken-up status.

Book Summary

Thirty-five-year-olds Lewis and Wren are newlyweds with their whole lives ahead of them. But just weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He is slowly turning into a great white shark, but he will continue to retain the qualities that make him most human – his consciousness, memories, and intellect.

This fate, of course, complicates his relationships. His wife struggles with how they can continue to be together, and she begins to recall long-repressed memories from her younger years. The story of Wren’s mother, Angela, is also woven through this story.

Book Summary

Sally is a late 30-something sketch writer for a late-night live comedy show called “The Night Owls.” Time after time, she’s seen talented but dorky men from the writer’s room end up dating glamorous celebrities that they met via the show. She documents the phenomenon in a recurring sketch called “The Danny Horst Rule,” which pokes fun at how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a smart but average-looking woman.

When rock star Noah Brewster is tapped to serve as both the host and musical guest for an episode of Night Owls, Sally pitches a Danny Horst sketch for him to star in. But Noah has sketch ideas of his own, and Sally takes on the role of mentor for the week. Are there sparks between them, or is it just the same charm Noah uses on everyone he meets?

Sally hides behind a shield of sharp humor and sarcasm, while Noah is fighting against the two-dimensional caricature portrayed in the tabloids.

Book Summary

Kerry’s family owns a Christmas tree farm in North Carolina. Each year, her brother and father drive up to NYC to sell their trees at a street corner stand in Greenwich Village. But this year, her father isn’t up for the trip, so Kerry – who is newly unemployed and romantically unattached – reluctantly agrees to take his place. But doing so means she has to live in a tiny camper with her gruff older brother, Murphy, and his dog, Queenie.

Many in the neighborhood know Murphy from his past Decembers at the tree lot, and they are quick to welcome Kerry to their quirky corner of the city. This includes Patrick, a single dad, and his adorable son Austin. Her new friends are starting to feel like family as Kerry gets into the holiday spirit. But with Christmas fast approaching, a secretive elderly neighbor goes missing.

Book Summary

Erica, Claudia, and Anna are lifelong friends and headed to the Maple Sugar Inn in picturesque Vermont for their book club holiday. Each woman is around 40 years old, and the milestone birthday has affected them differently. Over the years, their shared love of books has carried them through life’s ups and downs.

Hattie is a 28-year-old widow who manages the Inn. Between work and her 5-year-old daughter, she has her hands full as the holidays approach. Even with distractions all around, she can see that each woman in the visiting book club trio is packing some major emotional baggage. Can these four women unite to improve each other’s lives and make this the start of a new chapter?

Book Summary

Fifty-something Imogen Fortier is a magazine columnist living on Camano Island outside of Seattle. When she receives a fan letter, containing a gift of saffron, from 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom in LA, she writes back. Thus begins an unlikely friendship between these two women.

As the years pass, their letters to one another help them through the ups and downs of the world – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy – as well as the unexpected twists and turns in their own lives. From world events to romantic relationships, through their letters they discover that food and a good life can’t be separated. Can anything shake the trust they’ve built over their years of correspondence?

This book is fully written in epistolary style, so you’ll be reading the letters back and forth between the women. The author kept the book on the shorter side, hoping it could be enjoyed in one sitting.

Book Summary

This historical fiction novel is based on the remarkable true story of J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, a Black woman who became one of the most powerful women in NYC at the turn of the century by passing as white.

Belle da Costa Greene was working at Princeton University Library when J.P. Morgan’s nephew recommended her for a position curating a collection of rare manuscripts, books, and artbooks for his uncle’s newly built Pierpont Morgan Library. This position of prominence made her one of the most influential people in the art and book world. She became a fixture on the New York social scene.

But Belle had a secret that could change everything. She led people to believe that her dark complexion was the result of her alleged Portuguese heritage. In truth, however, she was born Bella Marion Greener – the daughter of Richard Greener, the first Black graduate of Harvard University.

Book Summary

Four million people inhabit the US island territories spread from the Caribbean to the Pacific. While these lands don’t have the benefits of statehood, like representation in the US Senate, they do have everything from US Post Offices to Little League teams.

When the author of this book realized that he (and most other Americans) knew very little about these territories, he decided to visit each one. After covering 30,000 miles and spending time with locals on each island, he was uniquely equipped to write a book about how the territories are an interesting and important part of America’s story.