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2023 New Book Releases You Definitely Need (Adult & Young Adult!) Part 1

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Let’s talk books, specifically — new books coming out in 2023!

Admittedly, this post is late since somehow it’s February and I meant to start posting about new releases in, like, January. But this year has been weirdly busy and I’ve turned into a creature who is constantly behind. Secretary wanted. My current one (dog) just naps. Will not swap places with me. Always rude??

This post will feature Young Adult & Adult books coming out from January to April! It isn’t an exhaustive list of course. This are ones that caught my eye, that I’m excited for.

Also with book prices being…exorbitant to say the least, I feel it’s fair to note that I will likely not get many of these books. đŸ€Ł This post may be a lot of wishful thinking. (I refuse to pay $50 for a paperback. Australia!! Fix urself.)

All links go to Goodreads.

Title: The Stolen Heir by Holly Black
Release Date: January 3, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Had to put this one first even though I’m pretty sure we all know it exists. But SO excited to go back to Holly Black’s version of fairyland!!

A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that may destroy them both.
Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.
Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.
Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.
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Title: A Ruinous Fate by Kaylie Smith
Release Date: January 3, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
I’m a sucker for chaos ensemble casts, and I’ve heard people say it’s a really fun one.

Fate does not choose the weak. Fate chooses the ready.
Calliope Rosewood is a witch with a long streak of bad luck. Like all witches in Illustros, her fate is directly tied to Witch’s Dice—powerful artifacts that have blessed her kind with limitless magic but also set them on a path toward destruction. Cursed with unspeakable powers that terrify even the most dangerous witches and fae, Calla deserted her coven four years ago and has been in hiding with her two best friends since. But Calla is also hiding a grave secret: She is only three Rolls away from becoming the last Blood Warrior and starting the Final War that will decimate her people and eradicate their magic.
After a betrayal from her ex leads her one step closer to fulfilling that age-old prophecy, Calla is desperate to do whatever it takes to reset her fate . . . even if that means journeying into the deadly Neverending Forest with said ex and his enticing, yet enigmatic older brother to find the one being who can help her forge her own path. As Calla ventures farther into the enchanted woods, she finds her heart torn between her past desires and the alluring new possibilities of her future and learns that choosing your own destiny may come with deadly consequences.
Featuring a charming and chaotic ensemble cast of characters, this first book in a planned series by debut author Kaylie Smith will sweep readers away with its utterly immersive world building, swoon-worthy romance, and action-packed storytelling.
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Title: Song Of Silver Flame, Like Night by Amelie Wen Zhao
Release Date: January 3, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Chinese folklore meets fantasy with demons!! It seems really beautiful.

In a fallen kingdom, one girl carries the key to discovering the secrets of her nation’s past—and unleashing the demons that sleep at its heart. An epic fantasy series inspired by the mythology and folklore of ancient China.
Once, Lan had a different name. Now she goes by the one the Elantian colonizers gave her when they invaded her kingdom, killed her mother, and outlawed her people’s magic. She spends her nights as a songgirl in Haak’gong, a city transformed by the conquerors, and her days scavenging for what she can find of the past. Anything to understand the strange mark burned into her arm by her mother in her last act before she died.
The mark is mysterious—an untranslatable Hin character—and no one but Lan can see it. Until the night a boy appears at her teahouse and saves her life.
Zen is a practitioner—one of the fabled magicians of the Last Kingdom. Their magic was rumored to have been drawn from the demons they communed with. Magic believed to be long lost. Now it must be hidden from the Elantians at all costs.
When Zen comes across Lan, he recognizes what she is: a practitioner with a powerful ability hidden in the mark on her arm. He’s never seen anything like it—but he knows that if there are answers, they lie deep in the pine forests and misty mountains of the Last Kingdom, with an order of practitioning masters planning to overthrow the Elantian regime.
Both Lan and Zen have secrets buried deep within—secrets they must hide from others, and secrets that they themselves have yet to discover. Fate has connected them, but their destiny remains unwritten. Both hold the power to liberate their land. And both hold the power to destroy the world.
Now the battle for the Last Kingdom begins.
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Title: City Of Nightmares by Rebecca Schaeffer
Release Date: January 10, 2023
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Goodreads
I’m actually currently reading this and nearly at the end! It reminds me of This Savage Song, and the two main characters have a snappy relationship which is fun so far.

Gotham meets Strange the Dreamer in this thrilling young adult fantasy about a cowardly girl who finds herself at the center of a criminal syndicate conspiracy, in a city where crooked politicians and sinister cults reign and dreaming means waking up as your worst nightmare.
Ever since her sister became a man-eating spider and slaughtered her way through town, nineteen-year-old Ness has been terrified—terrified of some other Nightmare murdering her, and terrified of ending up like her sister. Because in Newham, the city that never sleeps and the only other home Ness has known, dreaming means waking up as your worst fear.
Whether that means becoming a Nightmare that is only monstrous in appearance but is otherwise able to live a semi-normal existence, to transforming into a twisted, unrecognizable creature that terrorizes the citizens of Newham, no one is safe. Ness will do anything to avoid becoming another victim, even if that means lying low among the Friends of the Restful Soul, a seedy organization that may or may not be a cult.
But being a member of the Friends of the Restful Soul has a price. In order to prove herself, Ness cons her way into what’s supposed to be a simple job for the organization—only for it to blow up in her face. Literally. Tangled up in the aftermath of an explosive assassination, Ness and the only other survivor—a Nightmare boy who Ness suspects is planning to eat her—must find their way back to Newham and uncover the sinister truth behind the attack.
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Title: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia Of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Release Date: January 10, 2023
Genre: Adult Historical Fiction Fantasy
Goodreads
Have just started reading this too and cannot say how much I love the premise of grumpy reclusive professor researches fairies!!

A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.
Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party–or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.
So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.
But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones–the most elusive of all faeries–lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all–her own heart.
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Title: Friday I’m In Love by Camryn Garrett
Release Date: January 10, 2023
Genre: YA LGBT Contemporary
Goodreads
This book looks so downright JOYFUL that I am so keen for it. I also really enjoyed the author’s debut!

It’s too late for a Sweet Sixteen but what if Mahalia had a Coming Out Party? A love letter to romantic comedies, sweet sixteen blowouts, black joy and queer pride.
Mahalia Harris wants.
She wants a big Sweet Sixteen like her best friend Naomi.
She wants the super cute new girl Siobhan to like her back.
She wants a break from worrying–about money, snide remarks from white classmates, pitying looks from church ladies . . . all of it.
Then inspiration strikes: It’s too late for a Sweet Sixteen, but what if she had a Coming Out Party? A singing, dancing, rainbow-cake-eating celebration of queerness on her own terms.
The idea lights a fire in her, and soon Mahalia is scrimping and saving, taking on extra hours at her afterschool job, trying on dresses, and awkwardly flirting with Siobhan, all in preparation for the Coming Out of her dreams. But it’s not long before she’s buried in a mountain of bills, unfinished schoolwork, and enough drama to make her English Lit teacher blush. With all the responsibility on her shoulders, will Mahalia’s party be over before it’s even begun?
A novel about finding yourself, falling in love, and celebrating what makes you you.
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Title: We Are All So Good At Smiling by Amber McBride
Release Date: January 10, 2023
Genre: YA Contemporary
Goodreads
I actually have this preordered but no one will ship my copy so SIGH. But it sounds and looks emotional and beautiful with mental health rep, my kind of book.

They Both Die at the End meets The Bell Jar in this haunting, beautiful young adult novel-in-verseabout clinical depression and healing from trauma, from National Book Award Finalist Amber McBride.
Whimsy is back in the hospital for treatment of clinical depression. When she meets a boy named Faerry, she recognizes they both have magic in the marrow of their bones. And when Faerry and his family move to the same street, the two start to realize that their lifelines may have twined and untwined many times before.
They are both terrified of the forest at the end of Marsh Creek Lane.
The Forest whispers to Whimsy. The Forest might hold the answers to the part of Faerry he feels is missing. They discover the Forest holds monsters, fairy tales, and pain that they have both been running from for 11 years.
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Title: The Things We Do To Our Friends by Heather Darwent
Release Date: January 10, 2023
Genre: Adult Dark Academia, Thriller
Goodreads
Dark academia with messed up characters doing terrible things!! Here for it. Also adore this cover.

She’s an outsider desperate to belong, but the cost of entry might be her darkest secret in this intoxicating debut of literary suspense following a clique of dangerously ambitious students at the University of Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, Scotland: a moody city of labyrinthine alleyways, oppressive fog, and buried history; the ultimate destination for someone with something to hide. Perfect for Clare, then, who arrives utterly alone and yearning to reinvent herself. And what better place to conceal the dark secrets in her past than at the university in the heart of the fabled, cobblestoned Old Town?
When Clare meets Tabitha, a charismatic, beautiful, and intimidatingly rich girl from her art history class, she knows she’s destined to be friends with her and her exclusive circle: raffish Samuel; shrewd Ava; and pragmatic Imogen. Clare is immediately drawn into their libertine world of sophisticated dinner parties and summers in France. The new life she always envisioned for herself has seemingly begun.
And then Tabitha reveals a little project she’s been working on, one that she needs Clare’s help with. Even though it goes against everything Clare has tried to repent for. Even though their intimacy begins to darken into codependence. But as Clare starts to realize just what her friends are capable of, it’s already too late. Because they’ve taken the plunge. They’re so close to attaining the things they want. And there’s no going back.
What is the cost of an extraordinary life if others have to pay? Reimagining the classic themes of obsession and striving with an original and sinister edge, The Things We Do to Our Friends is a seductive thriller about the toxic battle between those who have, and those who covet–between the desire to truly belong, and the danger of being truly known.
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Title: How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
Release Date: January 17, 2023
Genre: Adult Horror
Goodreads
You know I love my horror, and am particularly keen on all haunted house content so!! Keen.

Grady Hendrix takes on the haunted house in a thrilling new novel that explores the way your past—and your family—can haunt you like nothing else.
When Louise finds out her parents have died, she dreads going home. She doesn’t want to leave her daughter with her ex and fly to Charleston. She doesn’t want to deal with her family home, stuffed to the rafters with the remnants of her father’s academic career and her mother’s lifelong obsession with puppets and dolls. She doesn’t want to learn how to live without the two people who knew and loved her best in the world.
Most of all, she doesn’t want to deal with her brother, Mark, who never left their hometown, gets fired from one job after another, and resents her success. Unfortunately, she’ll need his help to get the house ready for sale because it’ll take more than some new paint on the walls and clearing out a lifetime of memories to get this place on the market.
But some houses don’t want to be sold, and their home has other plans for both of them

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Title: Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
Release Date: January 19, 2023
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
This is one is already so hyped!! And Waterstones had a special edition I maaay not have been able to resist.

Kissen kills gods for a living, and she enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skediceth, god of white lies, who is connected to a little noble girl on the run.
Elogast fought in the god war, and helped purge the city of a thousand shrines before laying down his sword. A mysterious request from the King sends him racing back to the city he destroyed.
On the way he meets a godkiller, a little girl and a littler god, who cannot find out about his quest.
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Title: The Black Queen by Jumata Emill
Release Date: January 31, 2023
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
This sounds bloody and excellent and would like to read immediately.

Nova Albright was going to be the first Black homecoming queen at Lovett High—but now she’s dead. Murdered on coronation night. Fans of One of Us Is Lying and The Other Black Girl will love this unputdownable thriller.
Nova Albright, the first Black homecoming queen at Lovett High, is dead. Murdered the night of her coronation, her body found the next morning in the old slave cemetery she spent her weekends rehabilitating.
Tinsley McArthur was supposed to be queen. Not only is she beautiful, wealthy, and white, it’s her legacy—her grandmother, her mother, and even her sister wore the crown before her. Everyone in Lovett knows Tinsley would do anything to carry on the McArthur tradition.
No one is more certain of that than Duchess Simmons, Nova’s best friend. Duchess’s father is the first Black police captain in Lovett. For Duchess, Nova’s crown was more than just a win for Nova. It was a win for all the Black kids. Now her best friend is dead, and her father won’t fact the fact that the main suspect is right in front of him. Duchess is convinced that Tinsley killed Nova—and that Tinsley is privileged enough to think she can get away with it. But Duchess’s father seems to be doing what he always does: fall behind the blue line. Which means that the white girl is going to walk. Duchess is determined to prove Tinsley’s guilt. And to do that, she’ll have to get close to her.
But Tinsley has an agenda, too.
Everyone loved Nova. And sometimes, love is exactly what gets you killed.
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Title: She Is A Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran
Release Date: February 28, 2023
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
Literally so excited for this and have it preordered — because horror AND haunted houses? Always a yes.

A house with a terrifying appetite haunts a broken family in this atmospheric horror, perfect for fans of Mexican Gothic.
When Jade Nguyen arrives in Vietnam for a visit with her estranged father, she has one goal: survive five weeks pretending to be a happy family in the French colonial house Ba is restoring. She’s always lied to fit in, so if she’s straight enough, Vietnamese enough, American enough, she can get out with the college money he promised.
But the house has other plans. Night after night, Jade wakes up paralyzed. The walls exude a thrumming sound, while bugs leave their legs and feelers in places they don’t belong. She finds curious traces of her ancestors in the gardens they once tended. And at night Jade can’t ignore the ghost of the beautiful bride who leaves her cryptic warnings: Don’t eat.
Neither Ba nor her sweet sister Lily believe that there is anything strange happening. With help from a delinquent girl, Jade will prove this house—the home her family has always wanted—will not rest until it destroys them. Maybe, this time, she can keep her family together. As she roots out the house’s rot, she must also face the truth of who she is and who she must become to save them all.
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Title: Such Pretty Flowers by K.L. Cerra
Release Date: February 7, 2023
Genre: Adult Horror
Goodreads
It’s horror. It’s murdery. There are carnivorous plants. The cover is my THING. Nothing more to say but I would like.

“Get it out of me.”
It was the last message Holly received from her brother, Dane, before he was found cleaved open in his fiancĂ©e’s lavish Savannah townhouse. Police ruled his death a suicide sparked by psychosis, but Holly can’t shake the idea that something else must have happened… Something involving another message he sent that night, the one that mentioned a “game” his fiancĂ©e, Maura, wanted to play

Determined to discover the truth, Holly begins to stalk Maura—a magnetic, black-eyed florist with a penchant for carnivorous plants. But what begins as an investigation quickly veers into a darker fixation, one that lures Holly into the depths of Maura’s world: Savannah high society, eerie black roses, and a whisper of something more sinister. Soon, Holly is feeling a dark attraction to the one woman she shouldn’t trust. As Holly falls deeper for Maura and her secrets, she’s left with only one choice: find out what happened to Dane… before she meets the same fate.
A woman investigating her brother’s apparent suicide finds herself falling for her prime suspect—his darkly mysterious girlfriend—in this edgy Southern gothic thriller.
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Title: Seven Faceless Saints by M.K. Lobb
Release Date: February 7, 2023
Genre: YA
Goodreads
Pitched as “dark fantasy with a murder-mystery twist” and it’s also queer!

In the city of Ombrazia, saints and their disciples rule with terrifying and unjust power, playing favorites while the unfavored struggle to survive.
After her father’s murder at the hands of the Ombrazian military, Rossana Lacertosa is willing to do whatever it takes to dismantle the corrupt system—tapping into her powers as a disciple of Patience, joining the rebellion, and facing the boy who broke her heart. As the youngest captain in the history of Palazzo security, Damian Venturi is expected to be ruthless and strong, and to serve the saints with unquestioning devotion. But three years spent fighting in a never-ending war have left him with deeper scars than he wants to admit
 and a fear of confronting the girl he left behind.
Now a murderer stalks Ombrazia’s citizens. As the body count climbs, the Palazzo is all too happy to look the other way—that is, until a disciple becomes the newest victim. With every lead turning into a dead end, Damian and Roz must team up to find the killer, even if it means digging up buried emotions. As they dive into the underbelly of Ombrazia, the pair will discover something more sinister—and far less holy. With darkness closing in and time running out, will they be able to save the city from an evil so powerful that it threatens to destroy everything in its path?
Discover what’s lurking in the shadows in this dark fantasy debut with a murder-mystery twist, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Kerri Maniscalco.
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Title: title
Release Date: February 14, 2023
Genre: Adult Dystopian
Goodreads
Dystopian featuring trans main character and AIs and found family! Very curious for this.

Valentine Weis is a salvager in the future wastelands of Utah. Wrestling with body dysphoria, he dreams of earning enough money to afford citizenship in Salt Lake City – a utopia where the testosterone and surgery he needs to transition is free, the food is plentiful, and folk are much less likely to be shot full of arrows by salt pirates. But earning that kind of money is a pipe dream, until he meets the exceptionally handsome Osric.
Once a powerful AI in Salt Lake City, Osric has been forced into an android body against his will and sent into the wasteland to offer Valentine a job on behalf of his new employer – an escort service seeking to retrieve their stolen androids. The reward is a visa into the city, and a chance at the life Valentine’s always dreamed of. But as they attempt to recover the “merchandise”, they encounter a problem: the android ladies are becoming self-aware, and have no interest in returning to their old lives.
The prize is tempting, but carrying out the job would go against everything Valentine stands for, and would threaten the fragile found family that’s kept him alive so far. He’ll need to decide whether to risk his own dream in order to give the AI a chance to live theirs.
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Title: The Last Tale Of The Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi
Release Date: February 14, 2023
Genre: Adult Gothic
Goodreads
Roshani Chokshi’s writing is always gorgeous, so keen to see what she does with a lavish gothic setting as well.

A sumptuous, gothic-infused story about a marriage that is unraveled by dark secrets, a friendship cursed to end in tragedy, and the danger of believing in fairy tales—the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after—and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.
But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor’s extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo’s dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife’s secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.
Combining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.
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Title: Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah
Release Date: February 21, 2023
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
If it’s horror and has murderous plants, I just need it. (This is also queer!)

Andrea Hannah’s Where Darkness Blooms is a supernatural thriller about an eerie town where the sunflowers whisper secrets and the land hungers for blood.
The town of Bishop is known for exactly two things: recurring windstorms and an endless field of sunflowers that stretches farther than the eye can see. And women—missing women. So when three more women disappear one stormy night, no one in Bishop is surprised. The case is closed and their daughters are left in their dusty shared house with the shattered pieces of their lives. Until the wind kicks up a terrible secret at their mothers’ much-delayed memorial.
With secrets come the lies each of the girls is forced to confront. After caring for the other girls, Delilah would like to move on with her boyfriend, Bennett, but she can’t bear his touch. Whitney has already lost both her mother and her girlfriend, Eleanor, and now her only solace is an old weathervane that seems to whisper to her. Jude, Whitney’s twin sister, would rather ignore it all, but the wind kicks up her secret too: the summer fling she had with Delilah’s boyfriend. And more than anything, Bo wants answers and she wants them now. Something happened to their mothers and the townsfolk know what it was. She’s sure of it.
Bishop has always been a strange town. But what the girls don’t know is that Bishop was founded on blood—and now it craves theirs.
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Title: The Thorns Remain by J.J.A. Harwood
Release Date: February 23, 2023
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
Sounds like very lush writing, with fae and magic. Also cannot deny how much I love this cover.

From the Sunday Times bestselling historical fantasy author of THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS comes a tour-de-force of faerie bargains, perfect for fans of THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LA RUE, MEXICAN GOTHIC, and TEN THOUSAND DOORS OF JANUARY.
A dance with the fae will change everything
1919. In a highland village forgotten by the world, harvest season is over and the young who remain after war and flu have ravaged the village will soon head south to make something of themselves.
Moira Jean and her friends head to the forest for a last night of laughter before parting ways. Moira Jean is being left behind. She had plans to leave once – but her lover died in France and with him, her future. The friends light a fire, sing and dance. But with every twirl about the flames, strange new dancers thread between them, music streaming from the trees.
The fae are here.
Suddenly Moira Jean finds herself all alone, her friends spirited away. The iron medal of her lost love, pinned to her dress, protected her from magic. For the Fae feel forgotten too. Lead by the darkly handsome Lord of the Fae, they are out to make themselves known once more. Moira Jean must enter into a bargain with the Lord to save her friends – and fast, for the longer one spends with the Fae, the less like themselves they are upon return. If Moira Jean cannot save her friends before Beltine, they will be lost forever

Completely bewitching, threaded with Highland charm and sparkling with dark romance, this is a fairytale that will carry you away.
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Title: Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
Release Date: February 28, 2023
Genre: YA
Goodreads
The Haunting of Hill House comp!! The cover!! Horror!! All my things.

The Haunting of Hill House meets Sadie in this evocative and mind-bending psychological thriller following two teen girls navigating the treacherous past of a mysterious mansion ten years apart.
Daisy sees dead people—something impossible to forget in bustling, ghost-packed Toronto. She usually manages to deal with her unwanted ability, but she’s completely unprepared to be dumped by her boyfriend. So when her mother inherits a secluded mansion in northern Ontario where she spent her childhood summers, Daisy jumps at the chance to escape. But the house is nothing like Daisy expects, and she begins to realize that her experience with the supernatural might be no match for her mother’s secrets, nor what lurks within these walls

A decade later, Brittney is desperate to get out from under the thumb of her abusive mother, a bestselling author who claims her stay at “Miracle Mansion” allowed her to see the error of her ways. But Brittney knows that’s nothing but a sham. She decides the new season of her popular Haunted web series will uncover what happened to a young Black girl in the mansion ten years prior and finally expose her mother’s lies. But as she gets more wrapped up in the investigation, she’ll have to decide: if she can only bring one story to light, which one matters most—Daisy’s or her own?
As Brittney investigates the mansion in the present, Daisy’s story runs parallel in the past, both timelines propelling the girls to face the most dangerous monsters of all: those that hide in plain sight.
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Title: If I Can Give You That by Michael Gray Bulla
Release Date: February 28, 2023
Genre: YA
Goodreads
Always keen for more queer contemporary! This one caught my eye for sure.

For fans of Kacen Callender and Mason Deaver comes a heart-tugging coming-of-age YA debut that takes a poignant look at gender identity, sexuality, friendship, and family—both the one we’re born into and the one we find for ourselves.
Seventeen-year-old Gael is used to keeping to himself. Though his best friend convinces him to attend a meeting of Plus, a support group for LGBTQIA+ teens, Gael doesn’t plan on sharing much. Where would he even start?
Between supporting his mother through her bouts of depression, dealing with his estranged father, and navigating senior year as a transgender boy at a conservative Tennessean high school, his life is a lot to unload on strangers.
But after meeting easygoing Declan, Gael is welcomed into a new circle of friends who make him want to open up. As Gael’s friendship with Declan develops into something more, he finds himself caught between his mother’s worsening mental health and his father’s attempts to reconnect.
After tragedy strikes, Gael must decide if he can risk letting the walls around his heart down and fully opening up to those who care for him.
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Title: A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Genre: Adult Horror
Goodreads
Always keen for more T Kingfisher gothic horror!

Dark and twisted family roots threaten to strangle their home’s foundations in this chilling haunted house novel from the award-winning master of modern horror, T. Kingfisher.
Samantha Montgomery pulls into the driveway of her family home to find a massive black vulture perched on the mailbox, staring at the house.
Inside, everything has changed. Gone is the eclectic warmth Sam expects; instead the walls are a sterile white. Now, it’s very important to say grace before dinner, and her mother won’t hear a word against Sam’s long-dead and little-missed grandmother, who was the first to put down roots in this small southern town.
The longer Sam stays, the stranger things get. And every day, more vultures circle overhead

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Title: My Dear Henry by Kalynn Bayron
Release Date: March 7, 2023
Genre: YA Classics Retelling
Goodreads
Gothic Jekyll & Hyde retelling!! I also really enjoy Kalynn Bayron’s previous works, so time for more (and this is queer).

In this gothic YA remix of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, a teen boy tries to discover the reason behind his best friend’s disappearance—and the arrival of a mysterious and magnetic stranger—in misty Victorian London.
London, 1885. Gabriel Utterson, a 17-year-old law clerk, has returned to London for the first time since his life— and that of his dearest friend, Henry Jekyll—was derailed by a scandal that led to his and Henry’s expuslion from the London Medical School. Whispers about the true nature of Gabriel and Henry’s relationship have followed the boys for two years, and now Gabriel has a chance to start again.
But Gabriel doesn’t want to move on, not without Henry. His friend has become distant and cold since the disastrous events of the prior spring, and now his letters have stopped altogether. Desperate to discover what’s become of him, Gabriel takes to watching the Jekyll house.
In doing so, Gabriel meets Hyde, a a strangely familiar young man with white hair and a magnetic charisma. He claims to be friends with Henry, and Gabriel can’t help but begin to grow jealous at their apparent closeness, especially as Henry continues to act like Gabriel means nothing to him.
But the secret behind Henry’s apathy is only the first part of a deeper mystery that has begun to coalesce. Monsters of all kinds prowl within the London fog—and not all of them are out for blood…
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Title: The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten
Release Date: March 7, 2023
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
Lush fantasy and death magic has me very intrigued.

When Lore was thirteen, she escaped a cult in the catacombs beneath the city of Dellaire. And in the ten years since, she’s lived by one rule: don’t let them find you. Easier said than done, when her death magic ties her to the city.
Mortem, the magic born from death, is a high-priced and illicit commodity in Dellaire, and Lore’s job running poisons keeps her in food, shelter, and relative security. But when a run goes wrong and Lore’s power is revealed, she’s taken by the Presque Mort, a group of warrior-monks sanctioned to use Mortem working for the Sainted King. Lore fully expects a pyre, but King August has a different plan. Entire villages on the outskirts of the country have been dying overnight, seemingly at random. Lore can either use her magic to find out what’s happening and who in the King’s court is responsible, or die.
Lore is thrust into the Sainted King’s glittering court, where no one can be believed and even fewer can be trusted. Guarded by Gabriel, a duke-turned-monk, and continually running up against Bastian, August’s ne’er-do-well heir, Lore tangles in politics, religion, and forbidden romance as she attempts to navigate a debauched and opulent society.
But the life she left behind in the catacombs is catching up with her. And even as Lore makes her way through the Sainted court above, they might be drawing closer than she thinks.
In this lush, romantic new epic fantasy series from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Whitten, a young woman’s secret power to raise the dead plunges her into the dangerous and glamorous world of the Sainted King’s royal court.
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Title: Flowerheart by Katherine Bakewell
Release Date: March 14, 2023
Genre: YA
Goodreads
So this is pitched as “cottagecore fantasy” and I absolutely want that!! I really hope it is soft and lovely.

Perfect for fans of Margaret Rogerson and Tamora Pierce, this standalone YA debut is a stunning cottagecore fantasy romance about a girl with powerful and violent magic, which she must learn to control—or lose everything she loves.
Clara’s magic has always been wild. But it’s never been dangerous. Then a simple touch causes poisonous flowers to bloom in her father’s chest.
The only way to heal him is to cast an extremely difficult spell that requires perfect control. And the only person willing to help is her former best friend, Xavier, who’s grown from a sweet, shy child into a mysterious and distant young man.
Xavier names a terrible price in return, knowing Clara will give anything to save her father. As she struggles to reconcile the new Xavier with the boy she once loved, she discovers their bargain is only one of the heavy secrets he’s hiding. And as she hunts for the truth, she instead finds the root of a terrible darkness that’s taken hold in the queendom—a darkness only Clara’s magic is powerful enough to stop.
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Title: Greymist Fair by Francesca Zappia
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
Lesser known Grimm fairytales! Plus I have enjoyed Zappia’s previous (heartbreaking) books.

The people of Greymist Fair know that the woods are a dangerous and magical place, and that they should never set foot off the road. But when a young tailor discovers a body on the road, her search for the culprit reveals even more strange and dark happenings around her town. From acclaimed author Francesca Zappia, Greymist Fair is a suspenseful and inventive murder-mystery inspired by the lesser-known fairytales of the Brothers Grimm. Greymist Fair will bewitch readers of Rachel Vincent’s Red Wolf, Liz Braswell’s A Twisted Tale series, and fans of Into the Woods.
Features chapter decorations by the author throughout, as well as a map.
Two roads lead into a dark forest. They meet at Greymist Fair, the village hidden in the trees, a place kept alive by the families that never leave. The people of Greymist Fair know the woods are a dangerous and magical place, and to set foot off the road is to invite trouble.
When Heike, the village’s young tailor, discovers a body on the road, she goes looking for who is responsible. But her quest only leads to more strange happenings around Greymist Fair.
Inspired by the original, bloody, lesser-known fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, acclaimed author Francesca Zappia crafts an enthralling murder-mystery that will keep readers turning the pages. Told from multiple points of view, with each narrative building on the crime discovered by Heike, Greymist Fair examines the themes of childhood fears, growing into adult responsibilities, and finding a place to call home amid the trials of life and death.
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Title: The Memory Eater by Rebecca Mahoney
Release Date: March 14, 2023
Genre: YA Contemporary Fantasy
Goodreads
Looks like it wants to make us cry so!! Let’s go.

A teenage girl must save her town from a memory-devouring monster in this piercing exploration of grief, trauma, and memory, from the author of The Valley and the Flood.
For generations, a monster called the Memory Eater has lived in the caves of Whistler Beach, Maine, surviving off the unhappy memories of those who want to forget. And for generations, the Harlows have been in charge of keeping her locked up—and keeping her fed.
After her grandmother dies, seventeen-year-old Alana Harlow inherits the family business. But there’s something Alana doesn’t know: the strange gaps in her memory aren’t from an accident. Her memories have been taken—eaten. And with them, she’s lost the knowledge of how to keep the monster contained.
Now the Memory Eater is loose. Alana’s mistake could cost Whistler Beach everything—unless she can figure out how to retrieve her own memories and recapture the monster. But as Alana delves deeper into her family’s magic and the history of her town, she discovers a shocking secret at the center of the Harlow family business and learns that tampering with memories never comes without a price.
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Title: The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller
Release Date: March 28, 2023
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
I do like some tricksy wicked fae and their bargains so hoping this delivers that. Am keen!

On Prospect Hill, you can get nearly anything you want from the Fae—if you know how to ask and if you can pay the price.
There is no magic on Prospect Hill—or anywhere else, for that matter. But just on the other side of the veil is the world of the Fae, and all their magic. Generations ago, the first farmers on Prospect Hill learned to bargain small trades to make their lives a little easier—a bit of glass to find something lost, a cup of milk for better layers in the chicken coop.
Much of that old wisdom has been lost as the riverboats gave way to the rail lines and the farmers took work at the copper works and the cotton mill. Alaine Fairborn’s family, however, was always superstitious, and she still hums the rhymes to find her lost shoe and ensure dry weather on her sister Delphine’s wedding day.
But when Delphine confides her new husband is not the man she thought he was, Alaine will stop at nothing to help her sister escape his abuse. Small bargains buy them time, but the progress of locomotives and factories hasn’t given way to equitable laws for women. A major bargain is needed, but the price for sweeping change may be more than they’re willing to pay
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Title: Into The Light by Mark Oshiro
Release Date: September
Genre: YA Thriller
Goodreads
The comps on this one have me intrigued and I do like wilderness stories!

It’s been one year since Manny was cast out of his family and driven into the wilderness of the American Southwest. Since then, Manny lives by self-taught rules that keep him moving—and keep him alive. Now, he’s taking a chance on a traveling situation with the Varela family, whose attractive but surly son, Carlos, seems to promise a new future.
Eli abides by the rules of his family, living in a secluded community that raised him to believe his obedience will be rewarded. But an unsettling question slowly eats away at Eli’s once unwavering faith in Reconciliation: Why can’t he remember his past?
But the reported discovery of an unidentified body in the hills of Idyllwild, California, will draw both of these young men into facing their biggest fears and confronting their own identity—and who they are allowed to be.
For fans of Courtney Summers and Tiffany D. Jackson, Into the Light is a ripped-from-the-headlines story with Oshiro’s signature mix of raw emotions and visceral prose—but with a startling twist you’ll have to read to believe.
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Title: Midnight Strikes by Zeba Shahnaz
Release Date: March 14, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Seems an exciting romp, with time travel and rougish princes!

In this explosive fantasy debut with a time-loop twist, a provincial girl must work with a roguish prince to stop an attack on the royal family and escape a nightmarish curse that forces them to relive the same night again and again.
Seventeen-year-old Anaïs just wants tonight to end. As an outsider at the kingdom’s glittering anniversary ball, she has no desire to rub shoulders with the nation’s most eligible (and pompous) bachelors—especially not the notoriously roguish Prince Leo. But at the stroke of midnight, an explosion rips through the palace, killing everyone in its path. Including her.
The last thing AnaĂŻs sees is fire, smoke, chaos . . . and then she wakes up in her bedroom, hours before the ball. No one else remembers the deadly attack or believes her warnings of disaster.
Not even when it happens again. And again. And again.
If she’s going to escape this nightmarish time loop, AnaĂŻs must take control of her own fate and stop the attack before it happens. But the court’s gilded surface belies a rotten core, full of restless nobles grabbing at power, discontented commoners itching for revolution, and even royals who secretly dream of taking the throne. It’s up to AnaĂŻs to untangle these knots of deadly deceptions . . . if she can survive past midnight.
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Title: The Insatiable Volt Sisters by Rachel Eve Moulton
Release Date: April 4, 2023
Genre: Adult Thriller
Goodreads
Twisty, dark family dramas are exactly what I need on my TBR pile.

From the author of Tinfoil Butterfly, a blazingly original novel about sisters who return to the remote island they grew up on to face the monsters lurking in their family history.
It’s the summer of 1989 and Beatrice and Henrietta Volt are coming of age on remote Fowler Island in Lake Erie, their ancestral home and wild playground. Thicker than thieves, they plot their futures while their parents pick their marriage apart piece by piece. The girls have no idea that their parents are separating. Or that the plan is to separate them.
Ten years pass and Henrie gets a desperate call from her sister–their father has died suddenly and B.B. needs Henrie to come back to the island for the funeral. When Henrie arrives, the island seems even stranger than she remembers. But the truth is, she doesn’t remember much about the island, and nothing at all about the night she left. She just feels a vague and perplexing sense of dread and a sharp fear of the quarry pond behind the house.
Told from the perspectives of four flawed, fascinating women, The Insatiable Volt Sisters is a lush, enthralling fable about monsters real and imagined and the sometimes painful bonds of sisterhood. From the unbounded imagination of Rachel Eve Moulton, the critically acclaimed author of Tinfoil Butterfly, comes another eerie, terrifying exploration of family and legacy: Will the Volt sisters inherit the horrors of their past or surpass them?
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Title: Hungry Ghost by Victoria Ying
Release Date: April 25, 2023
Genre: YA Contemporary, Graphic Novel
Goodreads
This is a graphic novel, and it sounds like it’ll be absolutely beautiful and heart-wrenching, with mental illness rep and a healing arc. Need!

A beautiful and heart-wrenching young adult graphic novel takes a look at eating disorders, family dynamics, and ultimately, a journey to self-love.
Valerie Chu is quiet, studious, and above all, thin. No one, not even her best friend Jordan, knows that she has been binging and purging for years. But when tragedy strikes, Val finds herself taking a good, hard look at her priorities, her choices, and her own body. The path to happiness may lead her away from her hometown and her mother’s toxic projections—but first she will have to find the strength to seek help.
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Title: The Last Heir To The Blackwood Library by Hester Fox
Release Date: April 4, 2023
Genre: Adult Gothic Fantasy
Goodreads
When the pitch is “young woman inherits a mysterious library” I’m THERE simply because wish that was me.

With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.
The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.
Lush, atmospheric and transporting, The Last Heir to Blackwood Library is a skillful reflection on memory and female agency, and a love letter to books from a writer at the height of her power.
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Title: The Sharp Edge of Silence by Cameron Kelly Rosenblum
Release Date: April 11, 2023
Genre: YA Thriller
Goodreads
Seems like it will have dark academia vibes, while tackling the toxicity of elitism, so am keen to try  it.

Tradition meets Pretty Little Liars in this timely and haunting YA contemporary standalone that tackles the contagious nature of toxic masculinity at an elite boarding school clinging to its past, and the sexual assault that changes everything.
WHO WILL YOU BE AT LYCROFT PHELPS?
This is the question all Lycroft applicants want to be asked. It means they’ve been accepted to one of the most elite private high schools in the nation. Over 150 years is plenty of time for traditions to bake into the campus’s bricks and ivy. Ceremonies. Athletic rivalries. Secret societies. Pranks taken too far. But navigating it all will make Charlotte (perfect, straight-A student), Max (scholarship kid and STEM whiz), and Quinn (artist, dreamer, Lycroft legacy) question all they thought they knew about themselves
and the school.
Especially when Quinn’s sexual assault becomes public and implicates one of the top-tier athletes on campus.
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Title: Sisters Of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Genre: Adult Mythological Horror
Goodreads
Indigenous American horror!! Very much want to try this.

A young Native girl’s hunt for answers about the women mysteriously disappearing from her tribe’s reservation lead her to delve into the myths and stories of her people, all while being haunted herself, in this atmospheric and stunningly poignant debut.
Anna Horn is always looking over her shoulder. For the bullies who torment her, for the entitled visitors at the reservation’s casino…and for the nameless, disembodied entity that stalks her every step–an ancient tribal myth come-to-life, one that’s intent on devouring her whole.
With strange and sinister happenings occurring around the casino, Anna starts to suspect that not all the horrors on the reservation are old. As girls begin to go missing and the tribe scrambles to find answers, Anna struggles with her place on the rez, desperately searching for the key she’s sure lies in the legends of her tribe’s past.
When Anna’s own little sister also disappears, she’ll do anything to bring Grace home. But the demons plaguing the reservation–both ancient and new–are strong, and sometimes, it’s the stories that never get told that are the most important.
Part gripping thriller and part mythological horror, author Nick Medina spins an incisive and timely novel of life as an outcast, the cost of forgetting tradition, and the courage it takes to become who you were always meant to be.
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Title: The Cherished by Patricia Ward
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
MORE HORROR. Because you know I cannot get enough. And this one involves inheriting creepy houses.

For fans of Claire Legrand, Rory Power, and Danielle Vega comes a visceral horror thriller in the vein of Midsommar, as one girl inherits a mysterious house from her estranged grandmother—and a letter with sinister instructions.
Jo never expected to be placed in her absent grandmother’s will—let alone be left her house, her land, and a letter with mysterious demands.
Upon arriving at the inherited property, things are even more strange.
The tenants mentioned in the letter are odd, just slightly
off. Jo feels something dark and decrepit in the old shack behind the house. And the things that her father used to talk about, his delusions
 Why is Jo starting to believe they might be real?
But what Jo fears most is the letter from her grandmother. Because if it’s true, then Jo belongs here, in this strange place. And she has no choice but to stay.
With a deadly enemy that cannot be seen, a world that may only be unlocked by a chosen few, and a chilling past that must be unearthed at any cost, The Cherished is an original, hypnotizing contemporary horror—one that will thrill readers of White Smoke, Wilder Girls, and The Hazel Wood.
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Title: A Hunger Of Thorns by Lili Wilkinson
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Witches and monsters!! Enough said. Also keen for more Aussie fantasy authors.

Maude is the daughter of witches. She spent her childhood running wild with her best friend, Odette, weaving stories of girls who slayed dragons and saved princes. Then Maude grew up and lost her magic—and her best friend.
These days, magic is toothless, reduced to glamour patches and psychic energy drinks found in supermarkets and shopping malls. Odette has always hungered for forbidden, dangerous magic, and two weeks ago she went searching for it. Now she’s missing, and everyone says she’s dead. Everyone except Maude.
Storytelling has always been Maude’s gift, so she knows all about girls who get lost in the woods. She’s sure she can find Odette inside the ruins of Sicklehurst, an abandoned power plant built over an ancient magical forest—a place nobody else seems to remember is there. The danger is, no one knows what remains inside Sicklehurst, either. And every good story is sure to have a monster.
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Title: Pieces Of Me by Kate McLaughlin
Release Date: April 18, 2023
Genre: YA Contemporary
Goodreads
Hoping this is good and accurate rep for DID, so keen to try it.

The next gut-punching, compulsively readable Kate McLaughlin novel, about a girl finding strength in not being alone.
When eighteen-year-old Dylan wakes up, she’s in an apartment she doesn’t recognize. The other people there seem to know her, but she doesn’t know them – not even the pretty, chiseled boy who tells her his name is Connor. A voice inside her head keeps saying that everything is okay, but Dylan can’t help but freak out. Especially when she borrows Connor’s phone to call home and realizes she’s been missing for three days.
Dylan has lost time before, but never like this.
Soon after, Dylan is diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and must grapple not only with the many people currently crammed inside her head, but that a secret from her past so terrible she’s blocked it out has put them there. Her only distraction is a budding new relationship with Connor. But as she gets closer to finding out the truth, Dylan wonders: will it heal her or fracture her further?
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Title: The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst
Release Date: April 25, 2023
Genre: YA Thriller
Goodreads
I do love a good thriller and this sounds really hooky.

Yellowjackets meets One of Us Is Lying in this masterful survival thriller from award-winning author Sarah Beth Durst.
Claire’s grown up triple-checking locks. Counting her steps. Second-guessing every decision. It’s just how she’s wired-her worst-case scenarios never actually come true.
Until she arrives at an off-the-grid summer camp to find a blackened, burned husk instead of a lodge-and no survivors, except her and two other late arrivals: Reyva and Mariana.
When the three girls find a dead body in the woods, they realize none of this is an accident. Someone, something, is hunting them. Something that hides in the shadows. Something that refuses to let them leave.
Irresistible and action-packed until the very final page, The Lake House will have readers glued to their seats as tension builds and danger mounts-and a final, shocking twist is revealed.
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Best Books Read in 2022 (Yearly Recap!)

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2022 is nearly over, which means it’s time for my favourite thing.

Which is to say: book stats and charts and lists. 😌 I am a simple creature with simple loves, what can I say.

I always love looking back on my reads of the year and seeing how my habits have changed and what types of books I gravitated to. I will admit this wasn’t my best reading year in terms of quality. I just didn’t find many new favourites? 5-star reads were slim and I had a frustrating amount of 1-stars (who we won’t name, but it was a salty time). But the books I did fall in love with gave me all the ferally affection feels, and am excited to talk about them.

But you know what did work out for me this year? WRITING. đŸ˜©đŸ™ŒđŸ» I sold my first YA horror to Feiwel & Friends (Macmillan, USA). Skeleton Boys is coming out in 2024!! Still pretty surreal tbh. My first book deal (with Hachette UK) was in 2016 and the years and years of rejections on 4+ projects (that ended up trunked or discarded) were wearing holes through my heart. I was even rereading my recap from 2021 just now and wow I was so sad this time last year. đŸ„ș Christmas 2021 had me on the floor from the amount of rejections, and I was seriously considering setting aside writing for a while. I was that low. Then it sold in June to a dream publisher. Still cannot believe how lucky I am.

Also, I sold Skeleton Boys in June and then immediately began work on another horror (adult this time), and let’s just say a book deal is very motivating for one’s productivity. đŸ€Ł I wrote an ambitious 130K book in 4 months. And I am planning to work my guts out in 2023 because this feels like my second chance in publishing (a chance I wasn’t sure I’d get) and I’m so determined keep my little author career going. Let’s do this. đŸ€šđŸ‘ŒđŸ»


SOME HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

  • Obviously GETTING ANOTHER BOOK DEAL AFTER 6 YEARS OF TRYING.
  • Read 200 books despite it being quite hard to keep up this year.
  • Published The Kings of Nowhere myself on Patreon (after my old publisher wouldn’t take it). I was also rewriting it as I was posting it and may I just say that pressure was very stressful 😂 (though satisfyingly fun). This book is my whole heart and I didn’t think anyone would get to read it, but they can. And the love for it has been amazing.
  • Hit 100,000 followers on instagram and 9,400 followers on Tiktok.
  • Wrote 90,000-word YA contemporary and 130,000-word adult horror.
  • Outlined 3 wips (15-20K each outline).
  • Wrote pitches for 10+ new wips.
  • The Boy who Steals Houses got a special edition in German!
  • Worked on over 100+ tours with Melissa and MTMC.
  • Managed to keep creating content for Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok, and put reviews up on this blog…which is a lot of work honestly so am proud.

and you can catch my old yearly recaps here → 2021. 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 and 2015.

Every year I tell myself I’m going to read “the books I own and get my tbr under control” and absolutely every year I do not. Beginning to suspect I don’t actually even try. But you know what? NEXT YEAR. That will be my year. đŸ€šđŸ™ŒđŸ» Watch out.

Next year I’m going to aim for 150 instead, but am proud I got to the 200 this year despite some months where I barely read more than 5 books. It was…not a consistent time. 😂

STAR RATINGS

Yeah we did…not have the best time lmao. I think one thing that bothered me in books this year was just the sheer lack of world building, and also some really selfish featuring characters. Personally preferences of course. I’m just not interested to read about selfish people being mean. 😂 But I’ve had a lot of 4-stars this December so taking that energy into 2023 I hope!!

 

 

GENRES READ

As always contemporary and fantasy are my two biggest genres consumed! If I combined all the fantasy subgenres it would win, but contemporary is definitely hold its own. Also horror is fast creeping (heheh) up as one of my favourite genres, and those are some of the reads that have stuck with me the most this year.

 

 

 

READING FORMAT

Last year I read 49 audiobooks and this year I only read 32 đŸ˜© so a bit sad, but also I struggled to find audios that kept me engaged. But I maintained roughly my usuals for paperbacks and ebooks, though read a few more hardcovers than usual.

 

 

Where Did I Get My Books?

YET AGAIN…library wins. I am trying not to wheeze to death over here because I swear it is my most senseless habit that I buy books and then only read library books.

But it’s also helpful to see that while I’m reading 200+ books per year, that would be very expensive if I was buying everything. So as you can see I’m very much not. 😂 I also was a rep for the book box so I didn’t have to buy those.

 

Age Category

This one is probably my most changed from last year! I read 27% adult books last year and this year it’s bumped up to 32%. I maintained an average of 9% for middle-grade reads, so it was YA that was slightly lower.

I do want to read more MG next year though, because I found some of my favourites there this year.

 

 

YEAR PUBLISHED

I’m actually surprised I read 91 books of 2022 releases, because I feel SO BEHIND on all the new books. My tbr is stacked with 2022-releases that I didn’t get to. Sir how. đŸ„č I read so much and yet nothing apparently.

But I definitely gravitate toward newer books while the backlist dwindles.

Also this is pretty similar to what I read last year too, though last year I did read a few more new releases.

 

Diversity

As always, this is my hardest one to track because I haven’t found a satisfying way to do it yet. Someday I’ll fix my spreadsheet to be more detailed. But for now this is roughly what we ended up with. I definitely want to read more books by authors of colour next year (more indigenous authors too) and as always I crave more disability rep. Good disability rep, if I may be so bold as to plead for it. I did read a lot of queer books, and I do appreciate how many more identities are getting featured in books now. But would trade a soul (someone else’s) for more asexual rep.

This year I’m dividing up my top reads by genre; and as always I’m only talking about the books I loved (though I might forget some but forgive me and my holely memory.)

EPIC FANTASY

Slim pickings this year, but these four definitely took hold of my heart. Bone Weaver ruined me, by the way. I was listening to the audiobook and got stabbed in the chest and had to pause it for like a week to recover. A Strange And Stubborn Endurance was like a queer slice-of-life fantasy with politics and a dash of mystery, which was nice. Admittedly The House Of Always is my first book in the series that I didn’t rate 5-stars (le sigh) but I still enjoyed my favourites. And A Magic Steeped In Poison was captivating!

 

MODERN FANTASY

The Atlas Six & The Atlas Paradox are my #1 favourites of the year. The absolutely delight I find in pretentious clever horrible little magicians who are going to break the world simply because they can while also having various gay crises is [chef’s kiss] just my thing. Our Crooked Hearts was gorgeously written, the prose alone is divine (though the cover is no my favourite). The Boy With A Bird In His Chest is rather allegorical for hiding your queer self and it’s incredibly moving.

 

 

HORROR

Aka my new favourite genre and you can obviously see I couldn’t narrow down the favourite list very much because these were all so, so good. Some were lighter horror, some a bit cosy, others absolutely disgustingly disturbing. 10/10, am delighted.

THRILLER

These are all so, so fantastic. Special shout out to The Butterfly Assassin (written by a friend) which was brilliance, and The Final Gambit (an excellent finale, though am also glad there’s more Hawthorne brother books coming). And Tripping Arcadia was poisonous and gothic and I very much liked. Wicked Little Deeds was also a surprise favourite!? Cover does not do it justice; it’s so addictive.

 

CONTEMPORARY

So, so many good ones here (most of them queer tbh) and The Stars And The Blackness Between Them and Dark Room Etiquette are both still haunting me. Also The Greatest Thing will fix any Heartstopper hangovers, and Sasha Masha was a delightful little queer-questioning story.

 

HISTORICAL FICTION / FANTASY

I don’t read a lot of historical, but these were definitely amazing (also realise I stan the historical cover styles these days). A Marvellous Light was so fun and perfectly captured the jock/nerd romance with Edwardian style magic.

 

SCI-FI & DYSTOPIAN

Another of my lesser read genres, but these are all so so good?! A Psalm For The Wild-Build is the actual cosiest story, and Iron Widow was a heart-stopping violently explosive story that I adored. Bitter was the perfect prequel, and I’m still thinking about it tbh. The Darkness Outside Us had an unforgettable, jaw-dropping twist.

 

MIDDLE GRADE STORIES

I do want to know why MG books just want to make you cry but HI, these three do, and they broke my heart and I love them incredibly so. Highly recommend all of these and also a box of tissues.

 

REREADS

I only reread 7 books so that was pretty bad. But just did not have time?! I felt the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland this whole year, I swear, just forever out of time. Anyway these are comfort favourites, some with a bit of murder (as is usual for comfort reads) and I very much loved them all…except maybe I liked We Were Liars a little less 6+ years later lmao.

 

SHOULD HAVE READ THIS YEAR…BUT DIDN’T

I looked back at my list from last year for this category and…I ended up reading only 3 of tose. 💀 I so so did not have it together this year. Anywho, that is in the past now đŸ˜Ș I am a changed person, as of the last 2 seconds. 

So these books (!!) I did not get to in 2022 when I really should have. But I will (for sure this time) get to them in 2023.

 

HIGHLY ANTICIPATED UPCOMING 2023 RELEASES

Am so so excited for these and already have 5 of them preordered. Hopefully will actually read them all in 2023 for once. (Although taking a second to stress about rising book prices…especially for adult fiction. It’s very 💀 The library is eternally my friend.)

 

 

Happy new year, everyone!! I’d love to hear about your favourite reads of the year in the comments. And what other things happened in your 2022?

 

 

2022 New YA & Adult Book Releases (Part 3)

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Hello, hello, it’s time for Part 3 of my annual new young adult & adult book releases round up!

Wherein I just write these posts to pine over books now, but you know. What else is life for but to wistfully dream of books. As always everything is linked to Goodreads! And I’m doing a culmination of YA and Adult because these days I have my eyes on both. Like, as if my TBR pile didn’t have enough on it already.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of my 2022 releases lists!

Title: Direwood by Catherine Yu
Release Date: September 20th 2022
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
it said ’90s GOTHIC HORROR and I cried with want and need for it. That is all. Please give me.

In this velvet-clad 1990s gothic horror, Aja encounters a charming vampire who wants to lure her into the woods—just like her missing sister.
No one ever pays attention to sixteen-year-old Aja until her perfect older sister Fiona goes missing. In the days leading up to Fiona’s disappearance, Aja notices some extraordinary things: a strange fog rolling through their idyllic suburban town, a brief moment when the sky seems to rain blood, and a host of parasitic caterpillars burrowing their way through the trees. Aja’s father, the neighbors, and even her ex-friend Mary all play down this strange string of occurrences, claiming there must be some natural explanation. It seems everyone is willing to keep living in denial until other teens start to go missing too.
Aja is horrified when she meets Padraic, the vampire responsible for all the strange occurrences. His hypnotic voice lures her to the window and tells her everything she’s longed to hear—she’s beautiful and special, and he wants nothing more than for Aja to come with him. Aja knows she shouldn’t trust him, but she’s barely able to resist his enthrallment. And following him into the woods may be the only way to find Fiona, so she agrees on one condition: He must let her leave alive if she is not wooed after one week. Though Aja plans to kill him before the week is out, Padraic has his own secrets as well.
In the misty woods, Aja finds that Padraic has made his nest with another vampire in a dilapidated church infested by blood-sucking butterflies. Within its walls, the vampires are waited on and entertained by other children they’ve enthralled, but there is no sign of Fiona. Before her bargain is up, Aja must find a way to turn her classmates against their captors, find her sister, and save them all—or be forced to join the very monsters she wants to destroy.  
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Title: The Weight Of Blood by Tiffany D. Jackson
Release Date: September 6th 2022
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
I’m such a huge fan of this author!! I think I’ve read all of her books so far too đŸ‘€đŸ‘ŒđŸ» And very pleased she’s headed from thriller into horror (though her thrillers are also my absolutely favourites.)

New York Times bestselling author Tiffany D. Jackson ramps up the horror and tackles America’s history and legacy of racism in this suspenseful YA novel following a biracial teenager as her Georgia high school hosts its first integrated prom.
When Springville residents—at least the ones still alive—are questioned about what happened on prom night, they all have the same explanation . . . Maddy did it.
An outcast at her small-town Georgia high school, Madison Washington has always been a teasing target for bullies. And she’s dealt with it because she has more pressing problems to manage. Until the morning a surprise rainstorm reveals her most closely kept secret: Maddy is biracial. She has been passing for white her entire life at the behest of her fanatical white father, Thomas Washington.
After a viral bullying video pulls back the curtain on Springville High’s racist roots, student leaders come up with a plan to change their image: host the school’s first integrated prom as a show of unity. The popular white class president convinces her Black superstar quarterback boyfriend to ask Maddy to be his date, leaving Maddy wondering if it’s possible to have a normal life.
But some of her classmates aren’t done with her just yet. And what they don’t know is that Maddy still has another secret . . . one that will cost them all their lives.  
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Title: Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
Release Date: September 1st 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
I read Deeplight last year and it’s one of my new favourite books so I absolutely need the author’s latest!

A dark YA fantasy about learning to use your power and finding peace, from award-winning author Frances Hardinge.
In a world where anyone can create a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them.
Kellen does not fully understand his talent, but helps those transformed maliciously—including Nettle. Recovered from entrapment in bird form, she is now his constant companion and closest ally.
But Kellen has also been cursed, and unless he and Nettle can remove his curse, Kellen is in danger of unravelling everything—and everyone—around him . . . 
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Title: Shades Of Rust And Ruin by A.G. Howard
Release Date: September 6th 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
A Halloween steampunk book? Sign me up, quite frankly. Plus I always have fond memories of A.G. Howard’s Splintered series from back circa 2012.

Embrace the mysterious. Invoke the magical. Enter the Mystiquiel…
Phoenix “Nix” Loring knows her family is under a Halloween curse. When she was three, her parents tragically died on October 31st. Eleven years later, her twin sister Lark suffered a similar fate.
Ever since, Nix has battled survivor guilt. She can’t even find comfort in Clarey, Lark’s boyfriend and the one person who understands her pain, because Nix’s hidden feelings for him go far beyond friendship. All that remains are her sketches, where she finds solace among the goblins and faeries in her imaginary world of Mystiquel. When her depression starts affecting her ability to see color, Nix all but gives up on her art, until her uncle goes missing on Halloween day. Hot on his trail, Nix and Clarey step through a portal, becoming trapped inside a decaying version of their town filled with Nix’s own sketches come to life.
As Nix and Clarey search for her uncle within the sinister and dangerous world of Mystiquel, Nix discovers there’s more to her family curse and otherworldly artwork than she ever imagined—and unless she can solve the Goblin King’s maze before the clock strikes midnight, her life won’t be the only one the curse claims next.
Set in a gritty, steampunk-inspired fantasy world, New York Times bestselling author A.G. Howard launches a thrilling new duology full of romance, twists, and betrayals.  
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Title: Bone Weaver by Aden Polydoros
Release Date: September 20th 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
The City Beautiful was such a favourite from last year that the author is currently an auto-buy decision for me. 😂

A haunting fantasy following Toma, adopted daughter of the benevolent undead, making her way across a civil war-torn continent to save her younger sister as she discovers she might possess magical powers herself.
The Kosa empire roils in tension, on the verge of being torn apart by a proletarian revolution between magic-endowed elites and the superstitious lower class, but seventeen-year-old Toma lives blissfully disconnected from the conflict in the empire with her adoptive family of benevolent undead.
When she meets Vanya, a charming commoner branded as a witch by his own neighbors, and the dethroned Tsar Mikhail himself, the unlikely trio bonds over trying to restore Mikhail’s magic and protect the empire from the revolutionary leader, Koschei, whose forces have stolen the castle. Vanya has his magic, and Mikhail has his title, but if Toma can’t dig deep and find her power in time, all of their lives will be at Koschei’s mercy. 
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Title: House Of Hunger by Alexis Henderson
Release Date: September 27th 2022
Genre: Adult Historical Fantasy
Goodreads
Gothic sapphic vampires, say no more, truly. I will just have it. (Actually have it preordered.)

WANTED – Bloodmaid of exceptional taste. Must have a keen proclivity for life’s finer pleasures. Girls of weak will need not apply.
A young woman is drawn into the upper echelons of a society where blood is power, in this dark and enthralling gothic novel from the author of The Year of the Witching.
Marion Shaw has been raised in the slums, where want and deprivation is all she knows. Despite longing to leave the city and its miseries, she has no real hope of escape until the day she spots a peculiar listing in the newspaper, seeking a bloodmaid.
Though she knows little about the far north—where wealthy nobles live in luxury and drink the blood of those in their service—Marion applies to the position. In a matter of days, she finds herself the newest bloodmaid at the notorious House of Hunger. There, Marion is swept into a world of dark debauchery—and at the center of it all is her.
Countess Lisavet, who presides over this hedonistic court, is loved and feared in equal measure. She takes a special interest in Marion. Lisavet is magnetic, and Marion is eager to please her new mistress. But when her fellow bloodmaids begin to go missing in the night, Marion is thrust into a vicious game of cat and mouse. She’ll need to learn the rules of her new home—and fast—or its halls will soon become her grave.  
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Title: Lark And Kasim Start A Revolution by Kacen Callender
Release Date: September 27th 2022
Genre: YA Contemporary
Goodreads
I’ve loved two books by this author! (King And The Dragonflies and Felix Ever After) So definitely want more from them, plus this one has neurodivergent main characters I’ve heard.

Lark Winters wants to be a writer, and for now that means posting on their social media accounts––anything to build their platform. When former best friend Kasim accidentally posts a thread on Lark’s Twitter declaring his love for a secret, unrequited crush, Lark’s tweets are suddenly the talk of the school—and beyond. To protect Kasim, Lark decides to take the fall, pretending they accidentally posted the thread in reference to another classmate. It seems like a great idea: Lark gets closer to their crush, Kasim keeps his privacy, and Lark’s social media stats explode. But living a lie takes a toll—as does the judgment of thousands of Internet strangers. Lark tries their best to be perfect at all costs, but nothing seems good enough for the anonymous hordes––or for Kasim, who is growing closer to Lark, just like it used to be between them . . .
In the end, Lark must embrace their right to their messy emotions and learn how to be in love. 
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Title: Notorious Sorcerer by Davina Evans
Release Date: September 13th 2022
Genre: Adult Spec Fic
Goodreads
More queer specfic and the cover is giving me darker shade of magic vibes which sounds fun. Plus an Australian author!

Since the city of Bezim was shaken half into the sea by a magical earthquake, the Inquisitors have policed alchemy with brutal efficiency. Nothing too powerful, too complicated, too much like real magic is allowed–and the careful science that’s left is kept too expensive for any but the rich and indolent to tinker with. Siyon Velo, a glorified errand boy scraping together lesson money from a little inter-planar fetch and carry, doesn’t qualify.
But when Siyon accidentally commits a public act of impossible magic, he’s catapulted into the limelight. Except the limelight is a bad place to be when the planes themselves start lurching out of alignment, threatening to send the rest of the city into the sea.
Now Siyon, a dockside brat who clawed his way up and proved himself on rooftops with saber in hand, might be Bezim’s only hope. Because if they don’t fix the cascading failures of magic in their plane, the Powers and their armies in the other three will do it for them. 
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Honourable Mentions

Title: The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake
Release Date: October 25th 2022
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
This is definitely one of my top anticipated releases for 2022 now, since I loved The Atlas Six so much. Plus it landed on a cliffhanger and sir, I am owed answers.

The Atlas Paradox is the long-awaited sequel to dark academic sensation The Atlas Six—guaranteed to have even more yearning, backstabbing, betrayal, and chaos.
Six magicians. Two rivalries. One researcher. And a man who can walk through dreams. All must pick a side: do they wish to preserve the world—or destroy it? In this electric sequel to the viral sensation, The Atlas Six, the society of Alexandrians is revealed for what it is: a secret society with raw, world-changing power, headed by a man whose plans to change life as we know it are already under way. But the cost of knowledge is steep, and as the price of power demands each character choose a side, which alliances will hold and which will see their enmity deepen?” 
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Title: The Wolves Are Watching by Natalie Lund
Release Date: October 4th 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy Mystery
Goodreads
It said “chilling mystery” and “forest” so I am here for it. Plus it sounds like it’ll have a touch of magical realism.

The night little Madison disappears from her crib, Luce sees a pair of eyes–two points of gold deep in the forest behind her house–and feels certain they belong to a wolf. Her town, Picnic, Illinois, is the kind of place where everyone knows one another and no one locks their doors. It’s not the kind of place where a toddler goes missing without a trace, where wolves lurk in the shadows.
In town, people are quick to blame Madison’s mom. But when Luce’s English teacher shares an original script about the disappearance of another little girl in Picnic back in 1870, Luce begins to notice similarities that she can’t ignore. Certain that something deeper is going on, Luce tracks the wolf she saw into the woods and uncovers the truth about her town: magical animal-women, who have remained hidden in shadows for centuries, have taken her cousin for their own purposes–and they have no intention of bringing her back.
A chilling mystery that weaves elements of magical realism, drama, and folklore into a story of one teen’s bravery as she confronts her town’s past and tries to save the future.
 
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Title: Lavender House by Lev AC Rosen
Release Date: October 18th 2022
Genre: Adult Historical Thriller
Goodreads
I’ve seen this comped as for fans of Knives Out, so that’s meeee. And I’ve enjoyed this author’s YA so am keen to see what they do for adult historical!

Lavender House, 1952: the family seat of recently deceased matriarch Irene Lamontaine, head of the famous Lamontaine soap empire. Irene’s recipes for her signature scents are a well guarded secret – but it’s not the only one behind these gates. This estate offers a unique freedom, where none of the residents or staff hide who they are. But to keep their secret, they’ve needed to keep others out. And now they’re worried they’re keeping a murderer in.
Irene’s widow hires Evander Mills to uncover the truth behind her mysterious death. Andy, recently fired from the San Francisco police after being caught in a raid on a gay bar, is happy to accept – his calendar is wide open. And his secret is the kind of secret the Lamontaines understand.
Andy had never imagined a world like Lavender House. He’s seduced by the safety and freedom found behind its gates, where a queer family lives honestly and openly. But that honesty doesn’t extend to everything, and he quickly finds himself a pawn in a family game of old money, subterfuge, and jealousy—and Irene’s death is only the beginning.
When your existence is a crime, everything you do is criminal, and the gates of Lavender House can’t lock out the real world forever. Running a soap empire can be a dirty business. 
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Title: The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew
Release Date: October 18th 2022
Genre: YA Paranormal
Goodreads
Not sure if this counts as dark academia exactly but it IS set in college and the protagonist is Deaf (plus it’s by a Deaf author!)

The Raven Boys meets Ninth House in the most exciting debut of 2022 — a dark, atmospheric fantasy about a Deaf college student with a peculiar connection to the afterlife.
Delaney Meyers-Petrov is tired of being seen as fragile just because she’s Deaf. So when she’s accepted into a prestigious program at Godbole University that trains students to slip between parallel worlds, she’s excited for the chance to prove herself. But her semester gets off to a rocky start as she faces professors who won’t accommodate her disability, and a pretentious upperclassman fascinated by Delaney’s unusual talents.
Colton Price died when he was nine years old. Quite impossibly, he woke several weeks later at the feet of a green-eyed little girl. Now, twelve years later, Delaney Meyers-Petrov has stumbled back into his orbit, but Colton’s been ordered to keep far away from the new girl… and the voices she hears calling to her from the shadows.
Delaney wants to keep her distance from Colton — she seems to be the only person on campus who finds him more arrogant than charming — yet after a Godbole student turns up dead, she and Colton are forced to form a tenuous alliance, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of deeply buried university secrets. But Delaney and Colton discover the cost of opening the doors between worlds when they find themselves up against something old and nameless, an enemy they need to destroy before it tears them — and their forbidden partnership — apart. 
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Title: Road Of The Lost by Nafiza Azad
Release Date: October 18th 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Anything that says “perfect for fans of the cruel prince” is clearly talking to me, so I cannot ignore. I also appreciate how it’s part of the Faces With Floral Covers trend.

Croi is a brownie, glamoured to be invisible to humans. Her life in the Wilde Forest is ordinary and her magic is weak—until the day that her guardian gives Croi a book about magick from the Otherworld, the world of the Higher Fae. Croi wakes the next morning with something pulling at her core, summoning her to the Otherworld. It’s a spell she cannot control or break.
Forced to leave her home, Croi begins a journey full of surprises
and dangers. For Croi is not a brownie at all but another creature entirely, enchanted to forget her true heritage. As Croi ventures beyond the forest, her brownie glamour begins to shift and change. Who is she really, who is summoning her, and what do they want? Croi will need every ounce of her newfound magic and her courage as she travels a treacherous path to find her true self and the place in the Otherworld where she belongs.
Perfect for fans of The Cruel Prince, this gorgeous young adult fantasy follows a girl who discovers she’s spent her life under an enchantment hiding her true identity on her quest into the magical Otherworld to unlock her powers and discover her destiny.  
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Title: The Restless Dark by Erica Waters
Release Date: October 4th 2022
Genre: YA Horror
Goodreads
Tf

People say Cloudkiss Canyon is cursed. It takes everything you’ll give it: murders, sins, secrets.
Two years ago, Lucy watched the Cloudkiss Killer leap into its depths, after he attempted to murder her. The canyon took his life, but no one ever found his body. Now, Lucy is back, competing in a macabre contest hosted by a true crime podcast to locate the killer’s remains. If she finds his bones, maybe his ghost will stop haunting her.
She’s not the only contestant hoping to leave something behind.
Sweet-faced Carolina has a rage that prowls beneath her skin.
Friendly, charismatic Maggie has a dark past she’d rather stay buried.
The canyon takes everything you give it, but evil is hard to let go of. As the three girls are drawn together, the hunt for the killer’s bones becomes something more.
The longer they stay in the canyon, the more it whispers to them of their dark impulses, their wicked hearts. The longer they stay in the canyon, the easier it is to believe the whispers, and the harder it is to leave.  
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Title: The Art Of insanity by Christine Webb
Release Date: October 11th 2022
Genre: YA Contemporary
Goodreads
I’m always interested in books with mental health rep, especially from ownvoices authors, and I believe this is! The MC has bipolar. Would definitely like to try  it.

High schooler Natalie Cordova has just been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Her mom insists she keep it secret.
Putting up a front and hiding her mental illness from her classmates is going to be the hardest thing Natalie’s ever done. It’s her senior year, and she’s just been selected to present her artwork at a prestigious show. With the stress of performing on her shoulders, it doesn’t help when Natalie notices a boy who makes her heart leap. And then there’s fellow student Ella, who confronts Natalie about her summer car “accident” and pressures her into caring for the world’s ugliest dog. Now Natalie finds herself juggling all kinds of feels and responsibilities. Surely her newly prescribed medication is to blame for the funk she finds herself in. But as Natalie’s plan to self-treat unravels, so does the perfect façade she’s been painting for everyone else.
Written from experience, this contemporary YA is a heartfelt and candid exploration into the shame surrounding mental illness and offers an uplifting narrative where the protagonist doesn’t die at the end. 
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Honourable Mentions

Title: Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Genre: Adult Sci-Fi
Goodreads
It’s set in the same world as Winter’s Orbit!! I am hoping for cameos from my faves. đŸ˜‚đŸ‘ŒđŸ» Plus this is more gays in space with fake dating, so that’s what we’re here for.

Rich socialite, inveterate flirt, and walking disaster Tennalhin Halkana can read minds. Tennal, like all neuromodified “readers,” is a security threat on his own. But when controlled, readers are a rare asset. Not only can they read minds, but they can navigate chaotic space, the maelstroms surrounding the gateway to the wider universe.
Conscripted into the military under dubious circumstances, Tennal is placed into the care of Lieutenant Surit Yeni, a duty-bound soldier, principled leader, and the son of a notorious traitor general. Whereas Tennal can read minds, Surit can influence them. Like all other neuromodified “architects,” he can impose his will onto others, and he’s under orders to control Tennal by merging their minds.
Surit accepted a suspicious promotion-track request out of desperation, but he refuses to go through with his illegal orders to sync and control an unconsenting Tennal. So they lie: They fake a sync bond and plan Tennal’s escape.
Their best chance arrives with a salvage-retrieval mission into chaotic space—to the very neuromodifcation lab that Surit’s traitor mother destroyed twenty years ago. And among the rubble is a treasure both terrible and unimaginably powerful, one that upends a decades-old power struggle, and begins a war.
Tennal and Surit can no longer abandon their unit or their world. The only way to avoid life under full military control is to complete the very sync they’ve been faking.
Can two unwilling weapons of war bring about peace?  
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Title: Even Though I Knew The End by C.L. Polk
Release Date: November 8th 2022
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Goodreads
I’ve not read anything by this author yet, but I keep meaning to as they come highly recommended! This is also queer and has vampires so. đŸ˜ŒđŸ™ŒđŸ»

C. L. Polk turns their considerable powers to a fantastical noir. A magical detective dives into the affairs of Chicago’s divine monsters to secure a future with the love of her life. This sapphic period piece will dazzle anyone looking for mystery, intrigue, romance, magic, or all of the above.
An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother’s life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can’t resist — the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves. To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago’s most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await. 
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Title: We Deserve Monuments by Jas Hammonds
Release Date: November 29th 2022
Genre: YA Contemporary
Goodreads
Okay this just sounds amazing (PLUS the cover is beautiful) and seems like it will be an emotional and complex family saga. Also queer!

Seventeen-year-old Avery Anderson is convinced her senior year is ruined when she’s uprooted from her life in DC and forced into the hostile home of her terminally ill grandmother, Mama Letty. The tension between Avery’s mom and Mama Letty makes for a frosty arrival and unearths past drama they refuse to talk about. Every time Avery tries to look deeper, she’s turned away, leaving her desperate to learn the secrets that split her family in two.
While tempers flare in her avoidant family, Avery finds friendship in unexpected places: in Simone Cole, her captivating next-door neighbor, and Jade Oliver, daughter of the town’s most prominent family—whose mother’s murder remains unsolved.
As the three girls grow closer—Avery and Simone’s friendship blossoming into romance—the sharp-edged opinions of their small southern town begin to hint at something insidious underneath. The racist history of Bardell, Georgia is rooted in Avery’s family in ways she can’t even imagine. With Mama Letty’s health dwindling every day, Avery must decide if digging for the truth is worth toppling the delicate relationships she’s built in Bardell—or if some things are better left buried.
Family secrets, a swoon-worthy romance, and a slow-burn mystery collide in We Deserve Monuments, a YA debut from Jas Hammonds that explores how racial violence can ripple down through generations. 
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Title: Cruel Illusions by Margie Fuston
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
I mean vampires and secret societies and it is queer…sounds like I need to try it. Also the pitch of Caraval meets Buffy does have me intrigued. 😂

Ever since a vampire murdered her mother, Ava has been determined to get revenge. This all-encompassing drive has given her the fuel she needed to survive foster home after foster home.
But it’s been ten years since anyone’s seen a vampire, and Ava has lost hope that she’ll ever find one
until she stumbles across a hidden magic show where she witnesses impossible illusions. The magicians may not be the bloodsuckers she’s hunting, but Ava is convinced something supernatural is at play, so she sneaks backstage and catches them in acts they can’t explain.
But they’ve been waiting for her.
The magicians reveal they’re part of an ancient secret society with true magic, and Ava has the same power in her blood that they do. If she joins them, they promise to teach her the skills she needs to hunt vampires and avenge her mother. But there’s a catch: if she wants to keep the power they offer, she needs to prove she’s worthy of it. And to do so, she must put on the performance of her life in a sinister and dangerous competition where illusion and reality blur, and the stakes are deadly.
Caraval meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this deliciously dark young adult fantasy about a girl who makes a deal with a magical secret society to enter a potentially deadly competition for the chance to avenge her mother’s death.
 
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Title: The Vermilion Emporium by Jamie Pacton
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
A Howl’s Moving Castle comp!! And it just sounds utterly fairy-tale-esque and enchanting with sewing dresses out of starlight and it seems like it’ll be a quiet fantasy!

The heart-wrenching story of The Radium Girls meets the enchanting world of Howl’s Moving Castle. Jamie Pacton’s fantasy debut is a story of timeless love and deadly consequences.
It was a day for finding things . . .
On the morning Twain, a lonely boy with a knack for danger, discovers a strand of starlight on the cliffs outside Severon, a mysterious curiosity shop appears in town. Meanwhile, Quinta, the ordinary daughter of an extraordinary circus performer, chases rumors of the shop, The Vermilion Emporium, desperate for a way to live up to her mother’s magical legacy.
When Quinta meets Twain outside the Emporium, two things happen: One, Quinta starts to fall for this starlight boy, who uses his charm to hide his scars. Two, they enter the store and discover a book that teaches them how to weave starlight into lace.
Soon, their lace catches the eye of the Casorina, the ruler of Severon. She commissions Quinta and Twain to make her a starlight dress and will reward them handsomely enough to make their dreams come true. However, they can’t sew a dress without more material, and the secret to starlight’s origins has been lost for centuries. As Quinta and Twain search the Emporium for answers, though, they discover the secret might not have been lost—but destroyed. And likely, for good reason. 
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Title: The Luminaries by Susan Dennard
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
Creepy FORESTSSSSSS. Aka one of my top weaknesses in all books. I got approved for an eARC of this, so will be reading soon!

Hemlock Falls isn’t like other towns. You won’t find it on a map, your phone won’t work here, and the forest outside town might just kill you.
Winnie Wednesday wants nothing more than to join the Luminaries, the ancient order that protects Winnie’s town—and the rest of humanity—from the monsters and nightmares that rise in the forest of Hemlock Falls every night.
Ever since her father was exposed as a witch and a traitor, Winnie and her family have been shunned. But on her sixteenth birthday, she can take the deadly Luminary hunter trials and prove herself true and loyal—and restore her family’s good name. Or die trying.
But in order to survive, Winnie enlists the help of the one person who can help her train: Jay Friday, resident bad boy and Winnie’s ex-best friend. While Jay might be the most promising new hunter in Hemlock Falls, he also seems to know more about the nightmares of the forest than he should. Together, he and Winnie will discover a danger lurking in the forest no one in Hemlock Falls is prepared for.
Not all monsters can be slain, and not all nightmares are confined to the dark.
From Susan Dennard, the New York Times bestselling author of the Witchlands series, comes a haunting and high-octane contemporary fantasy, about the magic it takes to face your fears in a nightmare-filled forest, and the mettle required to face the secrets hiding in the dark corners of your own family.
 
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Title: Lady Night by Rita A. Rubin
Release Date: November 1st 2022
Genre: YA  Fantasy
Goodreads
I read the first book in the series (Amulet of Wishes) earlier this year and it was really lovely, so keen for the sequel!

Derek Draco is finally learning to put the past behind him and enjoy life with his friends and as a Guardian. But when news of a string of recent murders reaches them, Derek finds himself having to return to the place he had hoped to never set foot in again—Windfell. The town where his parents died.
Meanwhile, Jared, the Prince of Aloseria and Derek’s best friend, finds himself helping to uncover a sinister plot brewing in the shadows. It soon becomes clear that not only could the fate of their world be under threat, but that dark plans may lie in wait for his friend.
Lady Night will be the second installment in the Chronicles of the Guardians series.  
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Honourable Mentions

Title: The Poison Season by Mara Rutherford
Release Date: December 6th 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
Goodreads
This gets 10/10 for the cover for being, again, my fave trend of faces and florals. It also seems like it might be a sibling story? Which I always want more of.

Leelo has spent her whole life on Endla, coexisting with the bloodthirsty forest and respecting the poisonous lake that protects her island from outsiders who seek to destroy it. But as much as Leelo cares for her community, she struggles with the knowledge that her brother will be exiled and forced to live with the outsiders unless he gains enchantment powers before his next birthday.
Then comes the day that Leelo sees a young outsider on the verge of drowning in the lake. She knows she is supposed to leave him to his fate, but, instead, she betrays her family, her best friend, and her whole community by helping nurse the young man, Jaren, back to health, understanding that discovery could lead to unthinkable consequences for both of them.
As they grow closer, Leelo and Jaren discover that not all danger comes from beyond the lake—and they can only survive if Leelo is willing to question the very fabric of her society, her people, and herself.  
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Title: A History Of Fear by Luke Dumas
Release Date: December 6th 2022
Genre: Adult Thriller
Goodreads
When the pitch is “harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student” I know I am wanting it.

Grayson Hale, the most infamous murderer in Scotland, is better known by a different name: the Devil’s Advocate. The twenty-five-year-old American grad student rose to instant notoriety when he confessed to the slaughter of his classmate Liam Stewart, claiming the Devil made him do it.
When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along?
Unnervingly, Hale doesn’t fit the bill of a killer. The first-person narrative that centers this novel reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger, but has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson’s world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he’s working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership.​​
A History of Fear is a propulsive foray into the darkness of the human psyche, marrying dread-inducing atmosphere and heart-palpitating storytelling.
An eerie literary suspense debut following the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student who’s been nicknamed the Devil’s Advocate for his sensational crime: murdering a classmate, then claiming the Devil made him do it.  
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Title: A Million To One by Adiba Jaigirdar
Release Date: December 13th 2022
Genre: YA Historical Fiction
Goodreads
Heist book!! Heist book!! I’ve only read contemporaries by Adiba Jaigirdar before so am keen to try her historical fiction!

Adiba Jaigirdar, author of one of Time‘s Best YA books of all time, gives Titanic an Ocean’s 8 makeover in a heist for a treasure aboard the infamous ship that sank in the Atlantic many years ago.
A thief. An artist. A acrobat. An actress. While Josefa, Emilie, Hinnah, and Violet seemingly don’t have anything in common, they’re united in one goal: stealing the Rubaiyat, a jewel-encrusted book aboard the RMS Titanic that just might be the golden ticket to solving their problems.
But careless mistakes, old grudges, and new romance threaten to jeopardize everything they’ve worked for and put them in incredible danger when tragedy strikes. While the odds of pulling off the heist are slim, the odds of survival are even slimmer . . .
Perfect for fans of Stalking Jack the Ripper and Girl in the Blue Coat, this high-seas heist from the author of The Henna Wars is an immersive story that makes readers forget one important detail— the ship sinks. 
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Let me know if any of these are on your TBR, or what upcoming releases you’re excited for?

 

2022 Mid Year Book Freak-Out Tag

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A little late (okay maybe…by a month) but I wanted to do a mid-year recap on what I’ve been reading.

It’s tradition and I cannot let it slide!! Even though I know the blog has gone rather quiet of late. But I’m voraciously active on instagram, if you want to keep up with the day-to-day debacles. I also will admit I’m not having the greatest reading year and haven’t had any new 5-stars which just seems sad. To read so much and yet so badly 🧐 Sir. Do better. (This being me, needing to pick better apparently.) But I want to talk about the books I have been loving and ones I’m excited for, so here we go:

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1. How much have you read?

This time last year I’d only read 90 books so I am quite happy with this đŸ‘ŒđŸ» I’ve also written a 100K book and written 70K of another wip and kept up with my reading challenge? Who is this.

2. What have you been reading?

A few pie charts!! Here are my average star ratings and also the genres I’ve been reading the most. I have to admit it’s not been a good reading year for me regarding finding new favourites 💀 am slowly dying in the drought from five-stars. However I’m super excited that I’ve been reading a ton of horror this year and LOVING it.

3. Best book you’ve read so far in 2022

Follow Me To Ground is a horror novella that was just so unsettling and gorgeously written and I’m still thinking about it 6 months later. The aesthetics also [chef’s kiss] Tripping Arcadia is like an eat-the-rich gothic poison story and it’s absolutely unhinged and I loved it. Iron Widow actually surprised me with how much I adored it (solely because scifi isn’t my go-to genre) but like, it hit all the right notes for villain origin story. Zetian’s level of unhinged was my favourite. And of course The Atlas Six was destined to be a fave because dark academia!!! I love it. The characters were stunningly complex, and the whole story is so twisted.

 4. Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2022

I realised I’ve read a grand total of 8 sequels so far this year…that’s 8 out of 114. 💀 Someone isn’t into sequels apparently. I’m actually sort of cheating and nominating two PREQUELS. Loved these two. Bitter was phenomenal and left me so emotional.

5. New release you haven’t read yet, but want to

This is just me calling out myself because there’s zero reason I haven’t read these yet. But I haven’t. And I angst.

6. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

I unsurprisingly have so many. Why must books sound (and look) so good.

7. Out of Your Comfort Zone

At Certain Points We Touch is an adult queer literary novel about the of a trans woman and it was so compelling and I loved it, but am definitely new to the genre. (It also is part memoir, I think?) I’ve also started getting into more adult historical and really enjoyed Mrs England!

8. Biggest surprise

I loved The Darkness Outside Us. The twist was jaw-on-the-floor style.

9. New Favourite author (debut or new to you)

I wil definitely read more from Freya Marske after A Marvellous Light! It was so good (Edwardian magic murder mystery with incredible characters and jock/nerd queer romance). The Butterfly Assassin is technically not a ~new~ favourite author because my friend wrote it and I’ve read their work for years đŸ˜ŒđŸ‘ŒđŸ» always love it. This is such a compelling and amazing assassin story (queer and disabled rep!) and more people need to read it. I also loved The Death of Jane Lawrence and would definitely like to read more from Caitlin Starling.