Welcome to our last issue of 2023, where we bring you the Top 20 Books of the Year as selected by our subscribers, along with our Award Winners across four categories. Among the featured Top 20 are two books we’ve reviewed especially for this issue due to a high number of write-in votes for both: Matthew Desmond’s Poverty, by America, a brilliant and compassionate dissection of systemic inequality in the United States, and Shelley Read’s Go as a River, a compelling story set in a Colorado peach orchard that follows a woman navigating adulthood from the 1940s to the 1970s.
Our Top Debut award this year goes to In Memoriam by Alice Winn, the poignant tale of a romance between two young British men set amid the horrors of World War I.
The winner of the Top Fiction award is Abraham Verghese’s captivating The Covenant of Water, which unfolds alongside multiple generations of a family living in South India as they suffer from a strange affliction.
Our subscribers’ pick for Top Nonfiction is David Grann’s The Wager, an extraordinary account of the mutiny, fight for survival and eventual trial following the 18th-century wreck of a British warship, the HMS Wager.
And the winner of our Top YA award is Jacqueline Woodson’s Remember Us, an evocative coming-of-age story set in Bushwick, New York, during a period of the 1970s when the neighborhood was plagued by relentless housefires.
The remainder of the Top 20 features impactful books by established authors, including Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward, The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride. A notable debut making the list is Wendy Chin-Tanner’s work of historical fiction King of the Armadillos, which focuses on Chinese American teenager Victor Chin as he receives treatment for Hansen’s disease (leprosy) in a federal institute in 1950s Louisiana. Chin-Tanner’s novel is just one of many books reviewed by our First Impressions readers this year, all of which you can browse in this issue.
Plus, unwind and test your literary knowledge with two quizzes: Our annual Big Holiday Wordplay, now a beloved tradition for 22 years; and a new quiz to see if you can match the Best of Year books to their opening lines!
Thank you for supporting BookBrowse as a member, and thank you to everyone who voted for the Top 20 this year!
Davina Morgan-Witts
BookBrowse Publisher
