Goodread’s Best Books of 2023 of the First Half

The month of June means that we are halfway through 2023. The first six months of the year have flown but authors have been busy releasing books since January 1^st. Luckily for us, we have Goodreads best books of 2023 of the first half so you can see which books are worth reading!

The list was compiled by using data of the most reviewed books as well as which books have been added to users’ Want to Read shelves. As any reader knows, it may take days or even years to get around to reading our to-read books. There are so many books that we want to read and the list of books we want to read just keeps growing!

You can see the full list below. It is separated by genres so you can easily sort through it.

Goodread’s Best Books of 2023

Contemporary Fiction

• Hello Beautiful
• Yellowface
• Someone Else’s Shoes
• Maame
• Pineapple Street
• The Collected Regrets of Clover
• Big Swiss
• Birnam Wood
• Adelaide

Historical Fiction

• Weyward
• The House of Eve
• River Sing Me Home
• The Covenant of Water
• The House Is on Fire
• Hang the Moon
• Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?
• The Trackers
• Lady Tan’s Circle of Women

Mystery

• All the Dangerous Things
• The Housemaid’s Secret (The Housemaid, #2)
• What Lies in the Woods
• I Have Some Questions for You
• Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers
• Homecoming
• The Maid’s Diary
• I Will Find You
• The Bandit Queens

Fantasy

• Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1)
• Hell Bent (Alex Stern, #2)
• A Day of Fallen Night (The Roots of Chaos, #0)
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea (The Cosmere)
• Atalanta
• Witch King
• Victory City
• Clytemnestra

 Science Fiction

• In the Lives of Puppets
• The Ferryman
• Chain-Gang All-Stars
• Ascension
• The Marriage Act
• Some Desperate Glory
• Children of Memory (Children of Time, #3)
• Meru (The Alloy Era, #1)
• The Endless Vessel

Horror

• How to Sell a Haunted House
• Lone Women
• A House with Good Bones
• Don’t Fear the Reaper (The Indian Lake Trilogy, #2)
• Sisters of the Lost Nation
• Natural Beauty
• Bad Cree
• The Haunting of Alejandra
• Looking Glass Sound

Romance

• Happy Place
• Romantic Comedy
• Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)
• Final Offer (Dreamland Billionaires, #3)
• Things We Hide From the Light (Knockemout, #2)
• Exes and O’s (The Influencer, #2)
• Meet Me at the Lake
• The True Love Experiment
• The Right Move (Windy City, #2)

Young Adult

• The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1)
• Chain of Thorns (The Last Hours, #3)
• Song of Silver, Flame Like Night (Song of the Last Kingdom, #1)
• Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute
• These Infinite Threads (This Woven Kingdom, #2)
• The Davenports (The Davenports, #1)
• Divine Rivals (Letters of Enchantment, #1)
• Warrior Girl Unearthed
• Forget Me Not

Nonfiction

• Spare
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
• Poverty, by America
• A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
• The Creative Act: A Way of Being
•  You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
• Quietly Hostile: Essays
• A Living Remedy: A Memoir
• King: A Life

Yellowface

A novel that had many people talking was R. F. Kuang’s Yellowface. It follows two friends, one white named June, one Asian named Athena, and plagiarism. When Athena passes away one night, June steals her manuscript and edits and publishes the novel as her own. What follows is the aftermath as June tries to hide her secret as she navigates the publishing world.

Chain Gang All-Stars

A novel that I saw get a lot of buzz in 2023 was Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. It is a novel about a prison that has commercialized fighting and make prisoners fight to the death for glory and perks. This was a novel that I gave a try and I couldn’t get fully into it. It felt like there were a lot of interesting aspects of this world that weren’t pursued in my opinion.

Fourth Wing

Violet is a 20-year-girl who is forced to enter the Rider Quadrant even though she was supposed to become a scribe. Now, she has to survive against all odds in the war college and become a dragon rider as other contestants try to kill her. I enjoyed this novel a lot and can see why Rebecca Yarros has become a fan favorite as a result. She recently announced the release date for the third book in the Empyrean series.

The Ferryman

As a fan of Justin Cronin, I was excited for The Ferryman and it did not disappoint. Proctor Bennett, is a ferryman who helps people “retire” and board the ferry heading towards the Nursery to be reborn and their memories erased. But when his father gives him a cryptic message before boarding the Ferry, Bennett’s world flips upside down as discovers a truth about his world that contradicts everything he knew.

Conclusion

That is all for Goodread’s best books of 2023 so far. How many of these books have you read or plan to read? Are you excited for the remaining six months? Let us know in the comments below!

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