Book Report: Caitlin’s 2023 reading roundup

everyone's doing it

I love seeing people’s reading roundups this time of year. As much as I love best-of lists, I decided to do a complete roundup of my reading year. It was way harder to figure out than I expected because I didn’t track my reads in any one place. (Kind of wish I had…maybe a gentle goal for the coming year.)

As one might expect, it’s heavy on stuff that falls under the suspense umbrella, but that’s not all I read. You’ll see!

Inspired by Books on Gif, I’ve included a gif review for each one. To really challenge myself, I limited myself to the New Girl universe, because we’ve been re-watching season one the past couple weeks. This also proved harder than I expected, and some of them stretch the meaning of the word “review.”

I’ve linked any PT pieces we have about these reads, for those looking at this list and trying to decide if anything deserves to be on your own TBR for 2024. 

I started the year off with a bang by reading Notes on an Execution, which I gushed about in a piece exploring Danya Kukafka’s character development.

like, the onion of the characters…I promise I won’t explain every single one. Also, every gif is from Tenor.com. I am too lazy to write this image credit over and over. Please forgive me, Tenor.

I also read The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson in January. This one had a bonkers plot but in a really fun way. It also had such a great murder. (If you’ve read it, all I’ll say is…well, well, well.)

It was around this time that I read an early draft of Donna Freitas’s upcoming first adult thriller. I expect there will be news on it in the future…and all I’ll say is:

Donna does not pull punches, I tell you what.

I read Erin Flanagan’s Come with Me, and it did not disappoint. A too-close, too-fast friendship leaves a woman scrambling to protect herself and her child from the woman who was almost their savior. This is me every time Erin has a new book:

I interviewed her here!

My online friend Lang Johnson wrote a sexy romantic thriller, Devil’s Breath, which I also read over the winter. (I had to warm up!)

If you like action-heavy romance, this book is for you. Murder for hire, swanky locales, and seggsy seggs, as the kids say on TikTok.

I read a bunch of books for a lit award in February and March. I’m not naming the books (for reasons) but I read so many books, guys. I wrote some thoughts on the experience here.

I read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History at the end of the winter and I loved it. I plan to write something about it at some point, but just haven’t finished percolating on those crazy kids.

Last year I met Tessa Wegert at a conference and loved her–she was so welcoming to me, the new kid at the table. A prolific writer, she’s written five books in a single detective series since 2020, and I don’t hate her for it at all. 

But really, Tessa’s too likable to hate! In the spring I read her fourth novel, The Kind to Kill—although there was a thriller setup with a missing person, it ultimately read like a mystery, and I had fun puzzling whodunit. It would be a good series for mystery lovers who want a solid backlog of books to enjoy.

Here’s where I really start to lose track of when I read what. (My reading for the year also slowed down, after a book-heavy winter!)

I think I read Mainer Morgan Talty’s Night of the Living Rez in the summer. It was a collection of short stories that read like a novel. The book weaves forward and back through the life of a Penobscot man; several of the stories are deeply unsettling, some are funny, all are emotionally resonant. Talty has won a boatload of awards, and it makes sense.

I know I read What the Neighbors Saw before I interviewed Melissa Adelman for the Substack. This one has a classic domestic suspense setup in a wealthy neighborhood where everyone’s got a motive–I couldn’t stop accusing characters.

But, to me, it shines for its themes of unspoken family history and Adelman’s new perspective (compared to most of the domestic suspense I’ve read) on race and ethnicity in these bougie, murdery neighborhoods. For those who’ve read the book, here is an inside-joke gif:

TRUST ME, THAT’S HILARIOUS IF YOU’VE READ IT.

Speaking of me being hilarious, in a quest for a funny mystery, I tried the first in a series that had randomly fallen on my radar: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London mystery series, in which the rivers of London are personified in gods and goddesses, ghosts exist, and the best detectives do magic. I listened to the first book, Midnight Riot, and it made me laugh and smile and was the perfect thing for gardening and other chores.

I also read Andromeda’s upcoming Deepest Lake, mostly swinging in the hammock in pure bliss. I’d already read Annie and the Wolves, which was like historical fiction meets magical realism, and so when I learned that Andromeda can also write modern suspense that makes me crank my shoulders up to my ears, this was how I felt about her:

Meanwhile, the enigmatic memoirist hosting a borderline abusive writing retreat on a beautiful-but-deadly lake, where a mother is looking for answers about her daughter who died working at that retreat? 

That wolf howl scene, that one really got me. You’ll see when it comes out. You’ll all see!

An uncharacteristic read for me over the summer was Slyvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind, a biography of the famous mathematician John Nash. It was a fascinating book about a fascinating man. I have to say, Nash’s life got the Hollywood treatment in the movie of the same name. I went in thinking I knew the basics, but I only knew one part of a much more flawed, even more interesting life story. I also felt very, very dumb while Nasar was talking about all the math.

Another summer read for me was Daniel Kraus’s Whalefall, which was just my perfect book (and would also be my perfect movie). Monster + family drama = GIMME. I wrote about it here.  Not that I’m explaining the gif, but, here’s the MC trapped in the whale, talking to his dead dad:

Not to be a total tease about ANOTHER Donna Freitas book that doesn’t exist yet but will one day, I read an early draft of her coming-of-age love story and 

I got to read Mo Drammeh’s Where the Cryptids Fled in many stages over the year, and it was a delight to watch a young, talented writer bring his fever dream of an idea into published reality. This book is gory, monster-y, weird and cool, and asks: what happens when the government is allowed to define humanity? 

I do tend to get into a horror mood in the fall, and that’s where Rachel Harrison’s Black Sheep came in. I’d seen the cover of her last book, Such Sharp Teeth, and really wanted to read it but never did. When I got offered an ARC of Black Sheep, I went for it with no clue what I was going to read. It’s a really fun story about a young woman going home to her family and community who are Satanists. Part of what made the story so funny was how many of the Satanists are, otherwise, incredibly normal–some even basic or bland.

There were a couple scenes that genuinely creeped me out, and the rest were just great, fun horror vibes.

I listened to None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, and I have to say, I’ve been recommending it to people with the caveat that they should do it on audio. What made the audio great was that it was so well done–great voice acting and production, with clips and recorded interviews complete with minor sound effects. The story contains many podcast snippets and portions of police interviews, so listening to it was a really immersive experience. I had some mixed feelings about the book overall, but it was an undeniably engrossing audiobook!

This fall I also read What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall–another kids run amok book, in its own way. To me this was a great blend of real-world suspense with a veil of potent, child-like, dark magic drawn over it. I wrote about it a touch in Andromeda and my first conversational piece about how hard it is to write something genuinely frightening.

Pretty recently, I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, an oft-cited Agatha Christie classic. I knew something about the book going in that spoiled the ending, so I didn’t find myself enjoying the story so much as analyzing it. It wasn’t my favorite Christie book (that will probably always be And Then There Were None…is that everyone’s favorite?)

I listened to Emily Ratajkowski’s essay collection, My Body, on a whim, and it was one of my most surprising reads of the year. I was caught off-guard by how incisive I found her, and I ended up loving listening to her reflections on her career as she tried to capitalize on her beauty and sex appeal while longing to be seen as the intelligent, autonomous person she was.

I think that’s everything, but who knows. I’m a bit of a mess.

Speaking of a mess, this is everything I have in progress:

I’m listening to Angie Kim’s Happiness Falls and loving it (thanks, Andromeda!). It’s unapologetically introspective but also riddles over the mystery of a missing father.

I’m reading White Magic on and off before bed. It was recommended by two of my favorite Substackers: Lindsay Merbaum and Elizabeth at What To Read If. I’m not too far in, but Elissa Washuta’s writing is beautiful and really thought provoking, and I love how strange some of the book’s structure is. I picked it up out of curiosity for her thoughts on witchcraft, but that is only one of the many topics Elissa seems to be exploring.

because I do

I’m supposed to be reading Life of Crime with Andromeda but I’m mostly using it as a prop in my office to make me look like I read big books.

And finally, a final category: *~* gone but not forgotten *~* (actually, forgotten but hopefully not gone). These are the books I know I started this year and doubt I’ll finish this year…

I’m saying I’m still reading Woodsqueer by Gretchen Legler because I have trouble admitting to myself that I seem to have abandoned a book. This back-to-the-land collection of essays won the Maine Literary Award in the memoir category this year, and it’s interesting, but also quiet enough that I tend to have trouble reading much at bedtime. (Which is how the book ended up in the guest room on a night I couldn’t sleep—I thought it would help me finally conk out. Then I left it there and started White Magic.)

Very different situation but same result: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig. I was really enjoying this horror novel as an audiobook but I took an unintended pause and then I straight-up forgot about it until I was checking all my apps for this piece. (That’s an issue with audiobooks: they’re not physical so they’re easy to lose track of!) Not a ringing endorsement, I know, but I really am capable of falling out of a book I was truly enjoying. Now that I remember it exists, I plan to finish it once I finish Happiness Falls. (I’m not going to pause hers to finish another and risk repeating myself!) 

That’s me listening to the book but also me discovering the book half-finished and forgotten.

Read any of these? Read anything else I should put on my 2024 list?? To my fellow Substackers and social media people: keep the reading roundups coming. I love ‘em.