July 1995, April and Eddie have taken a wrong turn. They’re looking for the small resort town where they plan to spend their honeymoon. When they spot what appears to be a lone hitchhiker along the deserted road, they stop to help. But not long after the hitchhiker gets into their car, they see the blood seeping from her jacket and a truck barreling down Atticus Line after them.

When it comes to love, Emma is cursed. Every guy she dates finds his true love after they break up. But it turns out she’s not the only one afflicted with this condition…

Eileen “Elsy” Merriweather loves to get lost in a good happily ever after. The fictional kind, anyway. Because at least imaginary men don’t leave you at the altar. She feels safe in stories. At home in books. Which might be why she’s so set on going to her book club’s annual retreat this year - she needs good friends, cheap wine, and grand romantic gestures - no matter what.

Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there - but many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.

Contract killer Lachlan Kane wants a quiet life working in his leather studio and forgetting all about his traumatic past. But when he botches a job for his boss’s biggest client, Lachlan knows he’ll never claw his way out of the underworld. At least, not until songbird Lark Montague offers him a deal: use his skills to hunt down a killer and she’ll find a way to secure his freedom. The catch? He has to marry her first. And they can’t stand each other.

Liska knows that magic is monstrous, and its practitioners are monsters. She has done everything possible to suppress her own magic, to disastrous consequences. Desperate to be free of it, Liska flees her small village and delves into the dangerous, demon infested spirit-wood to steal a mythical fern flower. If she plucks it, she can use its one wish to banish her powers. Everyone who has sought the fern flower has fallen prey to unknown horrors, so when Liska is caught by the demon warden of the wood - called the Leszy - a bargain seems better than death: one year of servitude in exchange for the fern flower’s wish.

Thirteen-year-old Anna, an orphan, lives inside the formidable walls of Constantinople in a house of women who make their living embroidering the robes of priests. Restless, insatiably curious, Anna learns to read, and in this ancient city, famous for its libraries, she finds a book, the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky. This she reads to her ailing sister as the walls of the only place she has ever known are bombarded in the great siege of Constantinople. Outside the walls is Omeir, a village boy, miles from home, conscripted with his beloved oxen into the invading army. His path and Anna’s will cross.

Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Forbes may have labeled For Grant the World’s Hottest Billionaire, but all he cares about is escaping the press and opening a recording studio in gorgeous small-town Rose Hill. Something that comes to a screeching halt when he ends up face-to-face with a young girl who claims he’s her biological father. Now, he spends his days balancing business with parenting a sullen twelve-year-old, all while trying desperately to keep his hands the hell off his best friend’s sister, Rosie Belmont.

In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers that the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to better the family’s social position.

As shells rain down on Flanders and ghosts move among those yet living, Laura’s and Freddie’s deepest traumas are reawakened. Now they must decide whether their world is worth salvaging - or better left behind entirely.

Bound in an unwanted marriage, Freya spends her days gutting fish, but dreams of becoming a warrior. And of putting an axe in her boorish husband’s back. Freya’s dreams abruptly become reality when her husband betrays her to the region’s jarl, landing her in a fight to the death against his son, Bjorn. To survive, Freya is forced to reveal her deepest secret: She possesses a drop of a goddess’s blood, which makes her a shield maiden with magic capable of repelling any attach.

Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast - again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange - again…

When Gemma gets dumped by her long-term boyfriend, she reacts the way any reasonable twenty-eight-year-old would: by getting drunk with her sister, her kooky aunt, and her best friend, Dax. After one too many margaritas, they decide to perform a love-cleansing spell that promises to erase Gemma’s ex from her memory. They follow all the instructions, including a platonic kiss from Dax to seal the deal.

Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. Thatis, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.

We’ve successfully made it through another year and this one was a great reading one for me. Here are my top reads of 2023:

Deeply introverted Catriona Campbell wants the right to vote and a professorship at Oxford. She dreams of romance, too, but since all her attempts at love have ended badly, she now keeps her desires firmly locked inside her head - until she climbs out of a Scottish loch after a good swim and finds herself face-to-face with a stranger… who turns out to be her father’s attractive new colleague.

Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she finally has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle.

But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out… but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.

Signa, a girl who has been plagued by Death since birth makes it her goal to defeat him once and for all when she lands at her final foster families estate. Death has been alone for a millenia, and in Signa, he finally meets someone who has the potential to be his equal, he will do anything to keep her in his life.

Viola Marek is a struggling real estate agent, and a vampire.

Fox D’Mora is a medium, and though he is also most definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses - seeing as he’s actually the godson of Death.

When Viola seeks out Fox to help her with the ghost-infested mansion, he becomes inextricably involved in a quest that neither he nor Vi expects (or wants).