Yup, I voted for some of my favourite books of the year on Goodreads, and just like years before Goodreads did NOT deliver what it needed to in terms of stellar reads in my opinion. But as my dad would say ‘a suh it go.’ So of course you know I had to make a list..
I still often struggle with the lack of diverse reads on some of the big lists but truly I think that if people want to diversify and decolonize their reading list, they should know by now that these lists will not aid in that goal, just saying! But I digress.
For me, 2023 was one of my BEST reading years to date! I am not sure what I did differently but I plan on creating a post on some of my strategies and tactics. But while I read tons of books I also couldn’t just sum it up to top five or top ten, but rest assured these are just the best books I read this year.
These are in no particular order because that’s pretty much impossible for me at this point. But here are the BEST books I read in 2023.
All I Wanted All I Needed by A.E Valdez
For me, this was one of the books I read this year that truly reignited my love and need for Black love and Black romance. This is an enemies-to-lovers story and what I loved most is that the two main characters, Harlow and Acyn, weren’t looking for anything, they were merely living their separate lives then boom, they met and things happened naturally.
The story starts with Harlow turning down her professional athlete boyfriend’s marriage proposal, then setting out on a journey to rediscover herself and what she wants now that she’s out of the vortex and shadow of her boyfriend.
Her friends convince her to come on a trip with them to Bali on a Yoga retreat and during the retreat gets offered a job teaching yoga in Seattle. She decides that this is the fresh start she needs and takes the job. While there she meets Acyn, through her friend, and at first she finds him annoying and rude. But sparks fly and their love story is oh so good.
If you want a feel-good, Black love story then this one is for you!
This book was the first book I read in 2023 and it still has my heart. What a beautiful story, what a beautiful journey, what an experience. The premise of the story is that these two people, Lowra and Dikembe (Celestine), are connected because once upon a time they were both locked in the same attic decades apart. Their stories are told in interment chapters. The story follows both characters and how they came to call this attic home. Lowra who is merely surviving in 1995 has lost both her parents. Now that her stepmother has also passed away she inherits her childhood home close to the sea, which also holds years of abuse for her. Afraid to even enter the house she visits it to have it sold and retrieves only two things from the allusive attic a necklace and a doll. Thus begins her journey to find out how those items ever got there.
Dikembe’s story is heart-wrenching and unbelievable in a very believable way. Taken from his family in the Congo in the early 1900s and brought to England to live as a companion to a drunk explorer. He is forced to navigate this new life while clinging to the reminder of his old one.
What this book does, and I think the true beauty of it is that it does not shy away from the ugliness of the world it shines a light on it, on the horrors of life and humanity but it also shows that through pain and unfair circumstances, there can be the beauty that grows and love that flourishes. And in some ways, everything happens for a reason and we as people are more connected to each other than we realize.
This is one of those books that truly stick with you.
The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini
I spoke on a panel at the beginning of the year and someone referenced this book, it sounded amazing so right after that panel I bought it and read it in one sitting. Set in Trinidad, we meet forty-year-old Alethea Lopez who is the manager of a fashion boutique in Downtown, Port of Spain. Alethea is very much a loner and doesn’t get close to many people. On the outside, she looks like a regular working woman, doing pretty well for herself, but her life is filled with secrets. She spends much of her time hiding from her past and hiding the bruises she receives from her common-law husband. When she witnesses a woman killed in cold blood right in front of her she begins to question herself and her choices, knowing that she could very well be that woman.
So many themes are examined in this book and I truly loved taking a look into the life of a woman who was trying so hard to make the best out of her situation. What I also loved about this book was that the author wrote in the Trinidadian dialect. While I know that this may scare some readers I loved that element and the true authenticity.
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy
This memoir gave me all the feels and opened my eyes to how we connect to the earth. It explores the connection between humanity and the natural world, specifically the soil beneath our feet.
Camille Dungy is a nature writer and poet and through her book, she explores how she shows up in the world with the many hats she wears. She moves to a small predominately white town with her husband and daughter and sets to create a lavish garden, a project that is seemingly more difficult than she expected.
While it is her memoir, she does an excellent job at highlighting the importance of the environment and its relationship to Black people and communities. More importantly, Soil examines how humans have nurtured and damaged the soil over time and how our relationship with the earth is integral to survival.
Only For the Week by Natasha Bishop
This book was an unexpected but beautiful read. In this book, we meet Jannelle who is the maid of honour to her needy and over-the-top sister who is getting married to… wait for it… Janelle’s ex-boyfriend, (side-eye) But Janelle isn’t the least bit bothered about it because she doesn’t want that man, she’s over it. But her sister and mother most certainly are not.
So anyway the entire wedding party travels to Tulum to turn up a little bit before the wedding happens on the island and sparks begin the fly between Janelle and the best man Rome. Listen I wasn’t ready for this beautiful connection between Rome and Janelle. I loved everything about the two of them, and their relationship seemed so genuine and authentic and I was so into it.
Rome made it to the very top of my book-boyfriend list when he took Janelle on a date and rented a yacht so she could read in the sun all day, without interruption. WOW! Listen every woman needs a Rome in their life. He was just on point throughout the book.
While the story is about Rome and Janelle, it’s also really about Janelle standing up for herself and being okay with doing that. I loved how it also shed light on mother-daughter relationships and how they can be complicated especially when sisters are treated differently from each other.
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
I began this book at the beginning of the year and abandoned it because of its size and because it didn’t grip me in the beginning. I re-visited it a few months later after some encouragement from my sister and I was so happy that I did.
This is a story of family, a family seemingly cursed over generations, cursed by the water that surrounds them, as well as other issues that plague them. Their story begins in 1900, in Travancore, South India, and weaves through generations blending elements of fantasy and adventure into family folklore. Through the generations, we see how one person dies by drowning, and through different circumstances, we see how water ails them, so much so that they are forbidding their children to go near it.
The story felt incredibly real, and while there were so many characters, I felt I knew and spent time with all of them in a very real way. This book is so well written you can feel that the author took his time crafting and editing. It was beautiful!
Songs of Irie by Asha Bromfield
This book was perfect. Filled with young romance and history I didn’t want it to end. It’s 1976 and Jamaica is in the middle of a political war that has the island split in two. Irie and Jilly come from very different backgrounds: Irie is from the heart of Kingston, where poverty and fighting in the streets are common. Jilly is from the hills, where the wealthy islanders live. They meet at a prestigious school they both attend. Irie is attending because of a program where lower-class Jamaicans are given access to education. The girls bond through reggae music, but beyond that and their school life they don’t truly know each other.
Their families and their lives are opposite, while Jilly is waiting to be accepted to her dream school in England so she can leave the island, Irie knows that her future is bleak. Her mother has left for America, and her father owns a record store that is popular but doesn’t make enough for him to fund her education. In addition, their families are on different sides of a political war, a war that is claiming lives close to them. As tensions begin to build across the island they see how they live in two very different Jamaicas.
I adored this book, I loved how it showed the disparities on the island, something that’s not highlighted too often, and shed light on such a pivotal time in Jamaica’s history.
Things I Have Withheld by Kei Miller
This book left me in awe! What a stunning collection. I can’t believe I didn’t read this sooner. If you like Miller’s previous work you’ll love this collection, Miller speaks about being Black, male, gay, and Jamaican, and his body is viewed in the spaces he occupies. His opinions and experiences were so fascinating to me and I loved the way he presented his thoughts. One of the things that struck me is the notion of being gay in Jamaica and how so many different smaller communities exist within the larger community. Even with the LGBTQ community in Jamaica, there’s such a diversion in class and privilege. While the poor have to live in secret or be tossed out of their families and communities, the wealthy can live out loud.
If you’ve never read Miller before you are in for an all-consuming treat, a voyage to literary excellence. This collection is gorgeous, it is brilliant, it is truthful, it is raw, it is emotional, it is just everything!
The Tradition by Jericho Brown
I read a few poetry collections this year but this one was by far the one that stuck with me the most.
This collection examines the grief, angst, weight, and warfare of the Black body. This whole collection was deep and touched the depths of my soul making me feel seen, angry, and powerful all at the same time. This is a collection I will revisit because it is so layered yet beautiful. This is the first piece of work I’ve read by Jericho Brown and I was instantly a fan, his writing is superb.
Black Love Letters Edited by Cole Brown and Natalie Johnson
This is a collection about Black love in all its beauty and glory, I don’t know what I expected when I read this, but I didn’t expect it to enthrall me.
From the very beginning, with an introduction written by John Legend, this book moved me. The letter he wrote to his wife was touching and while the letter was for her it resonated so deeply because he proclaimed something that truly stuck with me, essentially that love is the core of everything he does. I thought this was a beautiful sentiment. To live and be guided by love in all that we do.
I devoured this book, each letter added a different layer of beauty and a different layer of how we love as Black people. How we love through pain, through difficult times, and adversity.
All the letters are different, some are to lovers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, fathers, mothers and the list goes on. The sentiment I was left with was that Black love in all its forms is beautiful.
Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America by Michael Harriot
Listen this book needs to be shared and read widely across the US and Canada for that matter.
This book hit hard. As Canadians, we are so influenced by America, and while we know that America is built on racism, Harriot shows us just how true that is. I learned a lot and laughed all the way through at the same time. Harriot is truly a skillful storyteller who presents the facts in a truly unique way as he shows how the story of America, from the very beginning, has been altered and crafted to fit a particular narrative; and you better believe that he has the evidence to back it up.
As I read this book I couldn’t help but think of a quote from one of my favourite books, Homegoing by Yaa Ghasi,
“We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must always ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth?”
This book was phenomenal.
How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair
This book was also on my list of must-reads in 2023 and it was hands down the best memoir I read for the year. In it, Sinclair explores her childhood and adulthood living in a strict Rastafarian household in Jamaica where she and especially her sisters were subjected to numerous rules to maintain and keep their purity. Through her experiences, she showed how her upbringing impacted every part of her life. The writing was dazzling and all-encompassing and I love that Sinclair also throws in many aspects of Rastafaranism through her stories.
I’m always so excited to read something by Jesmyn Ward. Her writing is so beautiful, so poetic, so filled with emotion. And even though reading yet another slavery narrative is not on my list of things to do, this one felt different in some ways. I loved how she weaved magical elements into the story.
In it we meet Annis, who is the daughter of a slave owner and her enslaved mother. After working in their master’s home, her mother takes Annis into the trees and teaches the lessons her mother once taught her. One day when Annis is a teen her mother is sold and she is heartbroken. Eventually, she is then sold too. She and other slaves set out on a gruesome and unforgiving walk from the Carolinas to New Orleans to be put on the block there. The journey is gruesome and along the journey, she meets an ancestor who begins to speak to her.
This book is beautiful and a truly interesting take on lineage during slavery.
Demon’s Dream: An Unexpected Love by Ella Kayson
This was the last book I read in 2023, and it gripped me from start to finish. I first heard about this one through the girlies on TikTok and I put it on my TBR, but once I read the first three pages I couldn’t put it done until I was done.
The book was filled with drama, murder, love, family and so much messiness and I was here for it all. I thought I was over my urban fiction days but this book proved me completely wrong.
Essentially though it is a love story about a high-rolling heiress and a murderous thug. Stay with me though, it’s good. The book opens with murder, as we meet Demon who is feared by everyone he comes in contact with. As part of a crime family murder is part of the job and his cold demeanor and thug life are just who he is after having a hard life as the son of a prostitute and addict. Then there’s Dream, who is a daughter of a crime boss but she’s also a university grad and runs her own business. When her brother elopes to the daughter of another crime family Dream sets out to make things right and as a result, she’s promised to Demon for 30 days, I know right?! Crazy! But sparks begin to fly and Dream is hell-bent on making the best out of the situation, and Demon begins to enjoy her company. This book was great. Then ending though! I’m still annoyed and mad about it but trust me just read it.
Well, those are the best books I read in 2023. Let me know if you read and loved any of them or if you’re adding any to your list.
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What do you think?