5-Star Books of 2022
At the beginning of this year, I was determined to get back into reading. It was a hobby I had loved for so much of my life, but I wasn’t making time for it on a consistent basis. Ultimately, having a place to talk about books was one of the main reasons that I started this blog to begin with. So I set a goal for myself: read two books a month for the entire year, then, hop on here and talk about them. While I started off pretty strong, unfortunately I ended the year three books short of my goal. I was hoping to be able to buckle down and speed-read through a few more throughout the month of December, but alas, I guess I will just have to try again next year.
However, I still wanted to highlight my favorite books from 2022. These books earned five out of five stars — which I would argue it's a high bar to reach, as I tend to be picky when it comes to reading. While I’m not always a fan of rereading books multiple times, these are all books that I have or plan to reread in the upcoming year.
Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton
There aren’t a ton of books I would label as “must-reads” but this book easily fits that description. This book really changed my perspective on the importance of prioritizing different types of relationships. I think, so often, we feel this pressure to be in a romantic relationship, to be “in love” — that it’s the most important and long-lasting kind of love. But this book really challenges that ideation in a realistic and truthful way. The author, Dolly, shares her experiences navigating the dating world and the world of female friendships throughout her life and illustrates how she came to realize that sometimes the most important relationship to maintain is the one between yourself and your true friends. While I think that oftentimes this type of message can come off as “preachy,” Alderton is relatable and humorous in her method of unpacking the moral of the story. I truly feel like this is a book that deserves more recognition and I hope that Alderton continues to write more books in the coming years.
Normal People by Sally Rooney [Spoilers Ahead]
I think this book is going to be the number one book of the year for many people this year. While it was published in 2018 and has been around for a few years, Rooney really hit the spotlight this year with both this novel and one of the other novels Conversations with Friends getting on-screen adaptations on Hulu. Normal People has such a special place in my heart, because I would argue it shows a very realistic, and non-glamorized idea of dating. However, I will warn you that this book can also be an incredibly frustrating read. The two main characters Connell and Marianne basically spend years miscommunicating and breaking each other's hearts. I pride Rooney for not giving these two characters your stereotypical “happily ever after” because at the end of the day as much as I would’ve loved to see these two be together, it didn’t make sense for them. After reading this book at the start of the year, I quickly read Rooney’s two other books, which I found to be just as good in terms of writing, but I didn’t love the plot as much as I did with Normal People. Also, if you read and loved this book as much as I did, you should read this short story Rooney wrote about the main characters back in 2016 before she actually wrote the book itself.
The Secret History by Donna Tart
This book made me want to drop everything and go to school in a castle on the cold, northeastern coast of Maine or something. While the book is pretentious, I would argue that it’s well-deserved. The writing style is exquisite, which I’m learning is a common occurrence for Tart, as I’m currently reading another book of hers, The Goldfinch. While I’ll admit to having a difficult time getting into this book at first, once I made it fifty or so pages in, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. I also have a tendency to love books with an unreliable narrator (and Richard is the most unreliable narrator of all), because I would argue that it shows the author but an extra layer of thought into the story. As the narrator, Richard often doesn’t even know what’s going on, so it really feels like you are uncovering the story with him. The ending was unexpected and unpredictable, which is a feat for a thriller (not that this book can be entirely categorized as a “thriller” but it has a huge level of suspense ). One of the unique things about this book is that there is actually an audiobook version of the novel that is narrated by the author herself — chances are if you have seen any “BookTok” videos on TikTok you have probably heard a clip of her reading the “fatal flaw” monologue that the novel opens with. Truthfully, I would love to see this book made into a movie, but seeing as it was published almost thirty years ago, I’m not sure that will ever happen.
Originally, when I began to draft and brainstorm for this post, I was hoping to feature five books, but when it came down to it, I’m not sure I read five books this year that I would consider to be five stars. Ultimately, I could write pages and pages about these three books, but I tried to keep it concise here. Going into 2023, I plan on maintaining the same reading goal that I had this past year, and fingers crossed I will actually be able to complete it. Additionally, I hope that I find a few more five star books in the upcoming year so at this time next year the end of year wrap up can be a little bit longer.
That being said, I’ll need some recommendations to get my 2023 “To Be Read” list started, so if you have any books that you highly recommend, I’m going to leave a little suggestion box here for you to send them over to me!
Thank you all for your love and support of this page in 2022! Happy New Year!