"BookTok Made Me Read It!"

I read 67 books in 2023. According to my StoryGraph stats, the top genres I read were contemporary, literary, and thriller, but I also read business books and straight genre romance. 75% of the books I read were fiction. Here’s the full list: 

  • Aesthetica, Allie Rowbottom

  • The Appeal, Janice Hallett

  • Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou

  • Barbara Isn’t Dying, Alina Bronsky

  • The Bone Orchard, Sara A. Mueller

  • Broke Millennial Takes on Investing: A Beginner's Guide to Leveling Up Your Money, Erin Lowry

  • By the Book, Jasmine Guillory 

  • Cherish Farrah, Bethany C. Morrow

  • Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less, James Hamblin

  • The Club, Ellery Lloyd

  • The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  • The Dead Romantics, Ashley Poston

  • Demand-Side Sales 101: Stop Selling and Help Your Customers Make Progress, Greg Engle, Bob Moesta

  • The Devil in Silver, Victor LaVelle

  • Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, Dan Lyons

  • Drinking Games, Sarah Levy

  • The Family Game, Catherine Steadman

  • Financial Freedom: A Proven Path to All the Money You Will Ever Need, Grant Sabatier

  • Flight, Lynn Steger Strong

  • The Guest, Emma Cline

  • The Guncle, Steven Rowley

  • Hell Bent, Leigh Bardugo

  • The Hike, Drew Magary

  • How to Sell a Haunted House, Grady Hendrix

  • Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice, Anthony W. Ulwick

  • The Jobs To Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs,  Michael Schrage, Jim Kalbach, Micahel Tanamachi

  • Killers of a Certain Age, Deanna Raybourn

  • Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh

  • The Last Housewife, Ashley Winstead

  • Lute, Jennifer Marie Thorne

  • The Maid, Nita Prose

  • Mary: An Awakening of Terror, Nat Cassidy

  • Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  • Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work, Uri Gneezy

  • Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett

  • Motherthing, Ainslie Hogarth

  • Mouth to Mouth, Antoine Wilson

  • Ms. Demeanor, Elinor Lipman

  • Natural Beauty, Ling Ling Huang

  • The New Me, Halle Butler

  • The Next CMO: A Guide to Operational Marketing Excellence, Scott Todaro, Peter Mahoney, Dan Faulkner

  • Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

  • Nobody’s Magic, Destiny O. Birdsong

  • None of This Would Have Happened if Prince Were Alive, Carolyn Prusa

  • Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson

  • The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones

  • Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

  • The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher

  • Quit Like a Millionaire: No Gimmicks, Luck, or Trust Fund Required, Bryce Leung, Kristy Shen

  • Quietly Hostile, Samantha Irby

  • The Saturday Night Ghost Club, Craig Davidson

  • Sign Here, Claudia Lux 

  • Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno Garcia 

  • Silver Sparrow, Tayari Jones

  • Siren Queen, Nghi Vo

  • Small Game, Blair Braverman

  • So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love, Cal Newport

  • Super Host, Kate Russo

  • They Wish They Were Us, Jessica Goodman

  • What Moves the Dead, T. Kingfisher

  • Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behind, Fariha Róisín

  • The Wife, Meg Wolitzer

  • The Witch and the Tsar, Olesya Salnikova Gilmore

  • Witches, Brenda Lozano

  • With Teeth, Kristen Arnett

  • The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna

  • The Year of Less: How I Stopped Shopping, Gave Away My Belongings, and Discovered Life Is Worth More Than Anything You Can Buy in a Store, Cait Flanders

Okay, but which of these would I actually recommend?  

2023 Top Reads

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou

I’m late to the party on this one, but I am obsessed with fraudster founders. (When is the WeWork book coming out? Inject that shit into my veins!) I watched the documentary. I watched the Hulu series. So of course I had to read the book. Carreyrou’s investigative narrative really does live up to the hype, and it let me further bask in the schadenfreude of war criminal Henry Kissinger’s terrible judgment. 

Clean: The New Science of Skin and the Beauty of Doing Less, James Hamblin

I got really into Jessica DeFino’s work this year (more on that to come), and her frequent references to this book made me pick it up. Doctor-turned-journalist Hamblin does an excellent job examining the science of our microbiome while exploring everything from the history of soap to current skincare trends. And I’ll take affirmation of my dirty hippie ways anywhere I can find it. 

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble, Dan Lyons

I have never enjoyed being triggered more than I have while reading this book. Dan Lyons recounts his experience going from a journalist to a member of HubSpot’s content team, pre-IPO. If you’ve ever worked in the tech space—particularly in marketing or sales—you will relate to this book in uncomfy ways. (Lest you pity HubSpot for the roasting it receives in this memoir, keep in mind that today it’s a $30 billion company.) 

The Guest, Emma Cline

It’s giving My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which was one of my favorite books of 2018. I love a book about languishing. Though nothing much really happens in this novel about a young woman’s listless summer in the Hamptons, I still devoured it, pulled along by the gravity that seemed to push the heroine forward. 

The Hike, Drew Magary

This was trippy as hell and I loved it. The premise is simple: A man goes on a hike and ends up on a bizarre, metaphysical odyssey. Magary’s prose is immensely readable and the plot is wildly imaginative. 

The Maid, Nita Prose

In a word: Charming. The main character—Molly the maid—has a unique and lovable voice, and the mystery turns it into a page turner. If you liked Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, pick this one up. 

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I loved every Silvia Moreno-Garcia book I read this year, but Mexican Gothic was my first, and my favorite. After appearing in several “best of” lists and my TikTok feed alike, I was skeptical it could live up to the hype, especially since I wasn’t especially drawn to the premise. But the book went from “this is perfectly fine” to “can’t put this down” only a quarter of the way through. The characters were intriguing and the atmosphere was perfect. 

Now Is Not the Time to Panic, Kevin Wilson

I have not seen Kevin Wilson miss yet. His charming book about some teen antics—all spurred around a mysterious sentence—was so delightful. “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers. We are fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” 

Now, for something new…

2023’s Biggest Disappointments

These weren’t the worst books I read in 2023—The Bone Orchard would be on this list otherwise—but they were the books that let me down the most based on the hype they received on “best of” lists and TikTok.

Lapvona, Ottessa Moshfegh

I loved My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and I saw Lapvona recommended enough that I gave it a try despite being skeptical about the plot. It was…not enjoyable. It was bleak without any real resonance. 

Lute, Jennifer Marie Thorne

This one got lots of hype on TikTok, and while I didn’t hate it, I found it completely underwhelming, especially for how intriguing the premise is. (An idyllic island must pay a “tithe” every seven years, which involves the mysterious deaths of seven inhabitants.) 

Nightbitch, Rachel Yoder

We love a book about feminine rage, but perhaps this one was just a tad overhyped? This book—in which a woman, a mother, turns into a dog—just didn’t do it for me. 

The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones

I will admit that this one’s on me—the book was well-written and it’s won lots of awards, but I simply could not enjoy it due to all the animal violence and deaths. 

Siren Queen, Nghi Vo

Very hyped on BookTok. I suppose I can see why, but the book’s characters lacked dimension and its particular flavor of magical realism just didn’t work for me. 

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, Sangu Mandanna

Another BookTok fave that didn’t work for me. I like me some cozy fantasy—I lost my mind over how much I loved TJ Klune’s House In the Cerulean Sea—but this one felt like pure fluff with none of the emotional depth. 

My 2024 TBR

…is still a work in progress. But it includes:

  • A Certain Hunger

  • Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier

  • Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story

  • The Truth and Other Hidden Things

But if you’re out there, you tell me—what should I add to the pile?