It’s one of my favorite weeks of the year- that time between Christmas and New Years when I can find space to think and reflect before a new year rolls around. A new year is nothing magical but there is something about a fresh planner and a fresh calendar month that just give me a newfound energy!

Today is one of my favorite blog posts of the year, where I share my top ten books that I read!!! I’ll also share my bottom five 🙂

Here are my book stats from 2022:

Books Read This Year: 130 books

Fiction: 85 books (66% of my reading)

Non-fiction: 44 books (34% of my reading)

Top 3 Genres: Contemporary, Romance, and Memoir

Print vs. Audio: 97% Print/3% audio

Top Reading Month: December (16 books read)

Lowest Reading Month: April (5 books read)

Average Star Rating: 3.79

And here are the top ten. These are in no particular order because there is just no way I could break them all down like that!

Call Us What We Carry

Genre: Non-Fiction Poetry

I am not much of a poetry reader, but I read this collection back in January 2022 and it has stuck with me the entire year. Amanda Gorman wrote and read the inaugural poem for Biden’s inauguration, and this is her collection of poems. Most of them center around living through a pandemic and the political climate of the United States in the past few years. Although I don’t necessarily align with all of her same thoughts and beliefs, this book of poems felt like a hug from someone who “gets it” and is living it out.

I Must Betray You

Genre: Historical Fiction (YA)

Ruta Septys writes incredible historical fiction and my favorite part about her books is that she picks a lesser known historical event to write about. This book is about the fall of communism in Romania- which happened far more recently than I had realized. I began reading this book the same month that war was declared between Ukraine and Russia and I think those real-life events really gave me a deeper perspective into this story. This author is an auto-read for me and this book was phenomenal!

Little Women

Genre: Classic

I mean, do I need an explanation for Little Women? I actually believe that this is the first time I have actually read Little Women and I thought it would be a slog. I gave myself a few months to try to finish it by the end of year, but once I picked it up I could not put it down and read it in a month! I love the stories and the characters and it’s just a delight! And such a great reminder that I need to pick up and read more classics!

Quit Like a Woman

Genre: Memoir/Self-Help

I was NOT expecting to have this book in my top 10 of the year, but it blew my mind and I can’t stop thinking about it! It’s all about choosing to not drink alcohol as a woman. Not because she is an alcoholic, but because when she really stepped back and looked at all the facts surrounding alcohol, she quickly realized that it is really doing no one any favors. She did make a radical shift from partying and drinking excessively, to being completely sober and while I have never been much of an alcohol consumer, I was really impressed with the research and the self-reflection that went into this book. I HIGHLY recommend reading it!

The Fate of the Yellow Woodbee

Genre: Historical Fiction (Children’s Chapter Book)

If you haven’t heard me talking about this book yet, where have you been? Haha. This is actually a read-aloud I did with the kids and we all loved it so, so much. It’s the story of Nate Saint and the four other American missionaries who were killed by the Woaroani Indians. Because of their sacrifice, the gospel was brought to the Indians and the entire tribe became Christians. It’s a powerful story, and I liked the kids version written by Dave and Neta Jackson. We have been reading lots of other books in this series, but this has been my favorite so far.

Yinka, Where is Your Huzband?

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I read a lot of fiction, but I find that not many fiction books make my top ten lists for the year. I think that this is because fiction can be so subjective. A book that I love means nothing to someone else, and I don’t want to recommend it to everyone simply because I know that it won’t be for everyone. However, this cute and clean contemporary romance is landing in my top ten this year! I loved the main character and all her family members who have made it their mission to find Yinka a Huzband! I loved listening to this on audio and hearing the Nigerian-British accents. The whole book was clean and fun and exactly my time of contemporary romance.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

Genre: Memoir/Self-Help

Ok, this is by the far the book that I have recommend the most to people this year! It is SO, SO good. It’s about a therapist…who needs a therapist. She intersperses stories of some of her clients along with her conversations with her own therapist. She reflects on the human condition and why we sometimes do the things that we do. I laughed out loud, I sobbed, I felt more seen and heard and understood by this book than any other book I read this year. If you pick up ONE book from my top ten, let it be this one!

The Bodyguard

Genre: Fiction

Aw, yay! Another contemporary fiction romance! I loved the characters in this story, I loved how they had more than one dimension. I loved how they fell in love but knew that they shouldn’t. I loved how they had baggage and had to learn how to deal with it properly. And I loved that this was a clean romance- so I can feel safe recommending it to almost anyone! It was fun, it was funny, and I also may have cried some happy tears by the end. Win win win all around!

Take my Hand

Genre: Historical Fiction

Ok, I guess I like historical fiction more than I originally thought! I have found that I have a certain niche of historical fiction that I love: historical fiction that doesn’t have 1000 books set in that historical period (I’m looking at you, WWII books – not my style). But this book is about a social worker in the 1970s south who is working to get social services set up for young black girls in a rural community. She stumbles upon secrets that are being kept and injustices that are being done to many young girls- namely through birth control and eugenics. This story is heart breaking and brought to light so much that I hadn’t thought about before. I cannot believe that Carrie Soto won the Goodreads historical fiction prize over this book because this book was INCREDIBLE and so much more insightful than that tennis one (eye roll).

Unsettled

Genre: Fiction (in verse)

This one scored a place on my top ten list because of how delightfully surprised I was by it! I have read a few other novels in verse, and while I am always amazed by the craft of it, I struggled with some of the content. This content, however, was clean and I felt like I was able to read it all the way through. This is the story of young Muslim immigrant girl who has just moved to the United States with her family. Not only is she navigating middle school, but she is also dealing with navigating being a different ethnicity and religion during this time. As a third culture kid, I could relate to so much of this book and really appreciated the way that she wove the bittersweet emotions into the story.

Bonus: The Measure

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

I am adding this one as a bonus top ten because I just started it yesterday and haven’t finished the entire thing. But I cannot put it down! It is FASCINATING. It has made me think, it makes me want to text everyone around me to read the book so we can discuss what we would do if we found ourselves in this situation! In the story, everyone gets a box with a string in it. People quickly realize that the string is an accurate representation of how long their lives will be. Some people have devastatingly short strings and some have pleasantly long strings. Some choose not to look at their strings at all. This knowledge and information completely upends society and the as the book unfolds people are grappling with what to do with knowing how long they have left to live. It’s fascinating.

Bottom 5 books of 2022:

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

I love TJR, but not this one. Nopers. Not for me. This is the story of rich and powerful Evelyn Hugo, who has been married 7 times. Near the end of her life, she hires a journalist to tell her story. Turns out she has always loved women and married all these men for convenience, not love. And then there is also a plot twist at the end that shows there was a reason Evelyn actually hired that particular journalist. I hated this book. I hoped the plot twist would redeem it, so I read all the way to the end….but it did not. I know this is in many top ten lists, but it’s bottom five for me.

Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Yeah, I have officially confirmed that I am not a Salley Rooney fan. The book was so slow and the characters did nothing except hang out, drink, and hook up. I truly did not get it at all. No, thank you.

The Glass Hotel

This is another hyped author and I am still looking forward to giving another one of her books a try. But this one was a very sad story of a family who is fractured at a young age and just can’t seem to get it together anymore after that. There is drama and betrayal, and overall it was just so dark I felt sad and gross by the time I had finished it.

Olympus, Texas

Another family drama where everyone treats each other like trash and no one knows how to resolve conflict and the whole story is just one big angry family not trying to work anything out. I guess I know exactly what I don’t like after reading this book. Maybe if I was more familiar with Greek mythology I would have liked this one better since the characters are supposed to be real life reflections of how the Greek gods acted towards one another. But overall I just hated this book.

Simplicity at Home

I can usually glean a little something from any non-fiction book, even if the entire book isn’t really for me. But this one had nothing for me. It’s about decor/simplicity/how-to book from a Japenese textile designer and decorator. Let’s just say our styles do not have ANYTHING in common and therefore this book did not have anything for me, either.

So what do you think? Have you read any of these? Do you agree with me or completely disagree? I’d love to hear what your top books of the year were this year!