From a much anticipated new Emily Henry novel, to exciting debuts from authors like Julia Bartz, 2023 is shaping up to be a great year for book lovers. Through the bookstore I work at, I am lucky enough to be given Advanced Reader Copies of many unreleased books. Based on what I have read of these new releases and heard about others, compiled is a list of my most anticipated novels of 2023.
February will be a great month for readers with two novels, The Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin and When Trying to Return Home by Jennifer Maritza McCaule. Florin’s debut novel is set at a New England college centered around a woman who takes solace in her professor after a non-consensual encounter with a peer. Deeply moving and insightful, this was one of my favorite ARCs I got a chance to read. McCaule’s is also a debut, but this time a collection of stories about Black Americans and Afro-Latinos living all over the world, grappling with identity, love, and family.
March too, is promising with McKenzie Wark’s Raving and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum. Wark’s Raving is a non-fiction examination of the New York queer and trans rave scene while Rum’s is an exploration of Palestinian-American women. For those who loved Rum’s bestselling 2019 novel, A Woman is No Man, this is no doubt worth a pre-order.
Emily Henry’s newest novel is set to release in April. Titled Happy Place, the fourth in Henry’s beloved line of romcoms is about a couple that breaks up but hides it to salvage a vacation they have annually with their best friends. As I haven’t had a chance to read this, it is one that I am maybe the most excited for.
May has two exciting books out as well, as Book Prize finalist, Brandon Taylor, is back with The Late Americans and Joanna Biggs returns with her second biography, A Life of One Own’s. I am especially excited for Biggs’s exploration of nine influential female authors that she revists in the wake of her divorce.
Finally and most exciting – to me – is Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Woods. Set to release in August, this is Atwood’s second book of stories, and one that is reviewed to have a grand scale of life and experience but which stays true to Atwood’s signature feminist themes and extraordinary writing.