As ever, this is an incredibly difficult post to write. There were so many good books we both read in the year, that picking only 10 each was a challenge. In the end, I (Charlotte), at least, had to go by the criteria: a) did it stick with me?, and b) how well was it crafted. Tricky criteria still, but it helped.

Once again, we have divided our list into 3 categories: backlist books, books released in 2022 & books to be released in 2023 that we read ARCs of (and, in one case, a 2024 book). Each of these categories, would you believe it, actually has 5 books. For once, we’ve managed to stick to our original plans! (Though there are so many books we still missed out, some of which we featured in our little advent calendar thread we did through December.)

But anyway. Here’s our list of our favourite 25 books of the year! If you want to have a look at the last few years of lists (and how our tastes have or haven’t changed), you can find them here: from 2018, from 2019, from 2020, and from 2021.