A new year is almost upon us, and I’m trying to pick out a top-reads-of-the-year list. This includes some older books I found in 2022, and is far from all the stories I enjoyed. (Even my Goodreads reviews aren’t caught up on all of those, sorry lovely authors who brought me so much goodness.)
So here, in no particular order, are some favorites:
CS Poe’s Momento Mori mystery series has two books so far, with a third I’m highly anticipating for next year. Beginning with Madison Square Murders this series gives us Everett Larkin, a neuroatypical main character who combines brilliance, social ineptness, a traumatic past, and a passion for justice. He has a photographic memory for his own past but it’s not the bonus you’d think it might be, since it works by dumping him back full strength into the events, sometimes traumatic ones. When his Cold Case detective unit catches the case of a skeleton found beneath the roots of an uprooted tree, Larkin ends up working with Doyle, a police sketch artist. At first, Doyle seems more like a foil for Larkin, but by book 2, he’s acquiring depths as well. Highly recommended for mystery-romance fans.
.
The Loose Lips Sink Ships duo from EM Lindsey – Malicious Compliance and Instant Regret ; despite the slightly odd title choices, these are emotional, slow-burn, contemporary stories. Book 1 gives us Jules, a talented young cellist and composer whose emotionally abusive relationship with an older powerful figure in the British music world almost broke him. Back in the US, penniless, and emotionally lost, he’s living in a dank, freebie basement apartment, while the man on the other side of the wall next door seems determined to drive him crazy with loud tool noises and punk. Their slow progress forward to mutual understanding is rich and engrossing, seen from Jules’s side of the wall. And then book 2 gives us Forrest, on the other side, a man whose retreat into isolation is upended by the sad classical musician he hears through his wall. A lovely HEA is reached, at the end of this duo, with Lindsey doing the realistic characters they write so well.
.
The Taste of Desert Green by Kim Fielding gives us George, who owns a small tourist attraction and souvenir shop which is losing ground, as a bypass takes the traffic away from his small town. He’s hanging on, doing his best to keep the place afloat, when he finds a young man in a yellow skirt, badly beaten, collapsed beside his dumpster. George takes Zephyr in, helps him as much as he can, and doesn’t complain when Zephyr takes to the road again without a backward look. Fielding writes characters stoic in the face of adversity well, and makes me feel the moment when that stoicism cracks. (Note- this is a Dreamspinner book, for those avoiding DSP purchases)
.
Like Real People Do by EL Massey – This was really fun and cute and warm. Two very young men (eighteen and nineteen) meet and fall for each other in a slightly hapless and unintentional way, while fighting the idea. With a hockey player who is the more damaged character and a POC figure skater with a disability (who is shown in realistic black skates, not the pet-peeve-white 🙂 ), this is just fun, with some lines that made me chuckle out loud, two guys I was pulling for, and just enough poignancy to tug a few heartstrings. The book ends on a HFN, and I’m delighted to see that a sequel with these guys is in the works. No on-page sex so far, so suitable for YA.
.
Fang’d by Vin George has a different feel from many in the paranormal genre, more low-key realism, centered in the characters and a very recognizable world that nonetheless is full of paranormal beings. Luc is a werewolf, estranged from his pack and family; Charley is a young man who always didn’t quite fit in with his adoptive parents or his age-mates growing up. He had odd symptoms that made going outside hard for him, and gave him quirks and weirdly intense reactions to mundane things. Turns out, there’s a reason for that. As the two young men go to seek the help of the most powerful local paranormals, and find more than they bargained for, the feel of the story remains intimate and personal, with a fair bit of heat, and a few twists and turns. The MCs feel appropriately young at times, and some bad decisions are part of their inexperience. If realistic paranormal is your jam, as it is mine, try this one.
.
Agents of Winter was the long-awaited sequel to one of my all-time favorite books, His Quiet Agent; you do need to read book 1 first (and the little short Merlin in the Library which comes between them is fun too. In book 1 (perhaps my favorite book with an asexual MC), Arthur slowly befriends Martin, the silent man who sits in the department lunchroom with a thick book, and a single apple, like clockwork every day. Through the course of the book, friendship becomes more, and Martin’s painful closed-off silence gradually opens, with each gift of food and respect, to allow Arthur in. The ending is just an HFN, so this sequel was highly welcome. It also opens a lot more view into Martin’s past, his challenges, and his emotions. The ending is solid HEA, even if as understated as Martin himself, and I closed the book with a satisfied sigh. There are loose ends, because that’s real life. Martin’s journey forward isn’t all laid out. But whatever he decides, Arthur will be at his back and neither he nor the reader can doubt that anymore.
.
Salt Magic, Skin Magic by Lee Welch is a 2018 release I just read. This historical paranormal kept me reading past bedtime, with characters I cared about, a novel magic system, and an engaging plot. The contrast between Soren – a nobleman’s son, kept prisoner by his father by magic – and John – a magician of humble beginnings – resulted in excellent tension. I loved the way John and his materials interacted in the pursuit of his magic. And while there are echoes of other favorite series in the set-up, the world building felt fresh and unique. I had one minor plot quibble with it, that felt alien to the MC and unnecessary, but the story as a whole had me so engaged I feel it belongs on this list, and it sent me on a hunt for more by this author.
.
Names for the Dawn by CL Beaumont This is my second read by this author, and once again, the prose is lovely, at times lyrical, the burn is slow, and the characters’ emotions carry the story. The timeline of Will Avery’s evolution and relationship is split into two consecutive long summers in the Denali Wilderness – when wolf biologist Nikhil Rajawat comes into Will’s professional and then personal life, and changes everything. I wasn’t entirely sold on the alternating, non-linear structure of the book. I thought that it perforce foreshadowed some emotional crises by giving us year two mixed into year one, and that took a little of the impact out of them when they happened on the page. But that’s a quibble, in a book I stayed up way too late reading. And while I can’t speak personally to the authenticity of the transgender portrait here, it feels very believable (and trans readers in reviews seem to approve.) Highly recommended for patient readers who love the slow unfolding of a character and a relationship, to a hard-won HEA.
.
The Long Game by Rachel Reid is another long-awaited sequel, to Heated Rivalry, one of my very favorite hockey and enemies-to-lovers stories. This is book 6 in a series where the first is book 2, and your understanding will be richer for having read the whole series, but IMO you could read books 2 and 6, and fall in love with Ilya and Shane. Here we see the culmination of the time these two men have spent together over more than eleven years, from the first antagonistic attraction as junior players, to the committed couple they have become. We see Ilya’s isolation and frustrations, having moved to a low-ranked team in Ottawa to be close to Shane, and yet having no one there to share either his joys or his sacrifices with, beyond Shane himself. Ilya is brilliant and fun, and snarky, and flirty, but here we see the cost that underlies that facade. Love, even as deep as what he has for Shane, isn’t always enough. I devoured this story start to finish, loving time spent again with Ilya and Shane. And when I was done, I reread the HEA epilogue, because I wasn’t ready to let them go.
.
Jay Hogan has become a solidly auto-buy author for me, and my favorite this year among several great stories was Strut. This is a book 2, but could stand alone with only a small loss of context. This story looks at the underside of modeling – the hold the studios and photographers have on the models, the ease with which objectification can become abuse, and how hard it can be for men with no power to speak up. While I loved Alec, and liked Hunter a lot, they weren’t my all-time favorite Hogan couple (fav = Judah and Morgan from Off Balance), and yet their situation and the story dragged me along into a one-sitting read. As with book 1, sexual abuse is a plot focus, and I thought it was well-balanced here, with both the angst and the consequences (and in some ways, lack thereof.) And the acknowledgement that in other situations, there had been, and would be, no consequences at all. The HEA is solid, not unrealistic, and this book is one more reason I’ll look for other stories from Jay Hogan in 2023.
.
I love AJ Demas’s ability to create a whole world, full of sights and sounds and tastes, customs and history and politics, and to people it with characters I really care about, here in Honey and Pepper an alternate-universe version of the ancient Mediterranean. This story brings together two excellent characters. Nikias is sweet and practical, naive and hopeful. Sold into slavery as a child, he is sympathetically and complexly presented as a man who didn’t recognize his own oppression when he hadn’t known otherwise. Now free, he’s had blinders removed and hangs out with abolitionists, hoping for change. Kallion’s the opposite. A bright and devious man deeply aware of the inherent cruelties of slavery, having experienced many of them, and yet a man who’s so dug into his own immediate troubles that the broader issue of abolition hasn’t interested him. Their romance is handled with a sweet light touch and the secondary characters and day-to-day moments are full of humor, balancing what is in some ways a dark tale, and one full of painful topics, to make it feel hopeful and not grim.
.
The first book of Leighton Green’s Rough Love series is permafree, but you will want to read the whole way through. Learn the Rules begins a tight 4-volume series that is one complete arc in self-discovery and BDSM for two fascinating men – (note that the sections of this book were 5 separate novellas, so book 2 – Obey the Rules – may appear as book 6.) Ben had never really gotten into dating and sex the way some guys did, but he always assumed that was due to not meeting the right girl. Until he finds himself obsessing over his gay co-worker in a coffee shop, in ways he hadn’t expected. Xander is mysterious, gorgeous, a wannabe actor. Xander also has a unique edge to him, a darkness and intensity, that should warn Ben away but somehow… doesn’t. And when a bit of physical contact during a pick-up game gets Ben flustered, he’s willing to experiment a bit. See where it leads. This is LA after all, and half the people he works with are queer. As they explore and experiment, they push deeper into all the aspects of BDSM and pain kink. How much submission outside the bedroom do they each want? How much right does Ben have to know details about Xander’s past? What is good pain, and what is too much? I read this whole series in one fell swoop, to watch these guys work their way through this relationship to a solid HEA.
.
This was the year I finally picked up, and then devoured, Charlie Adhara’s Big Bad Wolf series. Beginning with The Wolf at the Door this has characters who are interesting and engaging, the plots are full of action, and the writing is strong. Despite one minor niggle, the worldbuilding is excellent and a big part of the fun. Cooper is a guy who wanted what his cop father did- law enforcement and justice- but in a different way, and out from under his father’s influence. So he joined the FBI, until a violent encounter with a werewolf left him injured, and open-eyed, aware of the paranormal among us. A new law enforcement group intended to police werewolf crime snapped him up as a new recruit, and he’s been working for them. But his partner and mentor is also a bigot, his own understanding of wolves is clearly faulty, and when he’s partnered with Park, a new agent who is also a powerful werewolf, Cooper begins to be let into a new world. I fell hard for Cooper and Park over the span of the series, and will eagerly await any further story.
.
I had given up on an ending for Tamara Allen’s The Road to Silver Plume due to the author’s life challenges, but this year, she gifted us with Playing the Ace. I do recommend a reread before moving into this sequel, which starts right after the end of the first book. Emlyn Strickland is back in his Treasury office, a bit shaken but undaunted by the dangers of the Colorado adventure. A new case of threats against politicians looking to repeal the silver standard, and a new supercilious partner, both challenge him. Darrow is working for the Treasury in what is meant to be a limited capacity, using his personal knowledge of the counterfeiting business to identify bad bills and their creators. He’s far from popular with his ex-colleagues, for changing sides, and when Emlyn’s case takes him among those folks, Darrow is determined to come along. Whether he’s protection, or a red flag for the anger of the men he once knew, is debatable. It would be possible to put these guys through another adventure together (and I’d read it in a moment) but this book serves to give them the happiness they deserve.
Sadly, the author has put all her books at .99 or free and left social media, so I’m not anticipating more.
.
Ending with another much-anticipated sequel, The Missing Page by Cat Sebastian gives me what I’d hoped to see, for James, the lonely country doctor, and Leo, the increasingly reluctant spy from Hither, Page. James is called back to the home of an uncle he hasn’t seen in over a decade, for the reading of the old man’s will. Since Leo is out of the country on a mission, and James has a mild curiosity (layered over old pain) about his once-family, he decides to go. When Leo returns, he immediately follows James because “family gathered in an old country house” is a traditional recipe for blackmail and murder. And he’s not letting James wade into that, or into the emotional morass it might turn out to be, without him. Between them, with Leo’s skills and experience, they might also solve the mystery. This could serve as their HEA, but I would be delighted to see more of Leo and Jamie, diving into another cozy mystery together.
I could happily list another ten or twenty worthy of recognition, but I’ll stop with those 15, and look forward to more wonderful reading for all of us in the new year.
Very best wishes to you all for a peaceful, productive, fascinating, and healthy 2023, and may the arc of the world bend toward justice, equality, and love.