The best books of 2023

This list is part of the best books of 2023.

Join 1,707 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2023

Book cover of I Have Some Questions for You

Stephanie Vanderslice Why did I love this book?

I love, love, love a book that keeps me engaged from start to finish and makes me think at the same time. I Have Some Questions for You is the rare book that does precisely that.

Deftly moving between eras—the 90s and the 20teens, the former of which was marked by heart-wrenching tragedy in Bodie Kane's life, she perceptively captures the inner world of the “outsider” at a private school, casting a piercing light on women’s victimization while seamlessly weaving in the #Metoo and Black Lives Matter movements. This book has it ALL—it makes you think on every single page and keeps you turning them. I found myself revisiting my own school memories, thinking about my own #Metoo experiences and differences between then and now. It all fits together as naturally as the air we breathe—never once did any of the issues that arose feel forced into the narrative.

Rebecca Makkai is writing at the height of her powers, knocking another one out of the park. I don’t know how she does it, but each of her books is wildly different from the others, and I consider that a great talent. The Great Believers is one of my favorite books of all time, and I Have Some Questions for You is a completely different book, but it did not disappoint.

By Rebecca Makkai,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked I Have Some Questions for You as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FOR OPRAH DAILY, TIME, NPR, USA TODAY, BUSTLE, STAR TRIBUNE, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING AND MORE**

'Whip-smart and uncompromising' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

'Quietly riveting' IRISH TIMES

'It's the perfect crime' NEW YORKER

'Impressive and complex' GUARDIAN

'Addictive' OPRAH DAILY

The riveting new novel from the author of The Great Believers, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award

A successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past: the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the 1995 murder…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Forgotten Girls: A Memoir of Friendship and Lost Promise in Rural America

Stephanie Vanderslice Why did I love this book?

How do rural areas fail young women? Monica Potts relentlessly pursues this question in The Forgotten Girls because, while she escaped this particular kind of failure, her best friend did not.

This is an uncompromising look at the challenges of growing up in Clinton, AR, a typical small southern town that soaks its young people in a particular and complex bath of religiosity and rural politics with a generous handful of toxic sexism thrown in. I felt like Pott's burning questions had become my own. How did we get here? How do we stop this and enable young women to pursue their goals and dreams? Why does this happen and what can we do about it? It didn't hurt that I have lived about 39 miles south of Clinton—I have met and taught these women. I know what they're up against.

Even though anyone who reads the reviews knows how it "ended" for the characters, I was completely absorbed by Potts' questioning and her deft integration of memoir and data—I could not put this book down.

By Monica Potts,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Forgotten Girls as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An acclaimed journalist tries to understand how she escaped her small town in Arkansas while her brilliant friend could not, and, in the process, illuminates the unemployment, drug abuse, sexism, and evangelicalism killing poor, rural white women all over America.

“The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged, ultra-religious, and left-behind places in America.”—Beth Macy, author of Dopesick

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over…


My 3rd favorite read in 2023

Book cover of The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Stephanie Vanderslice Why did I love this book?

David Grann has a unique talent for getting granular with archival research and laying bare the true stories that read stranger than fiction. In this case, the voyage of The Wager was ill-fated from the beginning, and this tale of shipwreck, folly, and mutiny grows more absurd with each page.

It’s an absurdity that mirrors our own times and leads the reader to the realization that every era is as marked by its failures as much as its successes.

Talk about worldbuilding. Grann patiently zooms in and out of the historical contexts through which the story of the Wager plays out so that the reader never doubts the power of hubris in the making and destruction of men and their society.

By David Grann,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked The Wager as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'The beauty of The Wager unfurls like a great sail... one of the finest nonfiction books I've ever read' Guardian

'The greatest sea story ever told' Spectator

'A cracking yarn... Grann's taste for desperate predicaments finds its fullest expression here' Observer

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER

From the international bestselling author of KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and THE LOST CITY OF Z, a mesmerising story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.

On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The Lost Son

By Stephanie Vanderslice,

Book cover of The Lost Son

What is my book about?

How does a mother survive the unsurvivable? After her husband and the baby's nurse kidnap her infant son, Nicholas, and take him back to their native Germany, Julia Kruse must completely rebuild her life in America.

The Lost Son chronicles Julia's journey from Depression-Era Queens, NY, through World War II as she struggles to provide for herself and her remaining son, Johannes.

Over the years, her search for Nicholas is thwarted at every turn until she falls in love with chauffeur Paul Burns, whose boss might have the political connections to find her son and bring him home from the German front, where Johannes is also fighting for the Allies.