My Favorite Book of 2023

What is yours?

I’m not going to pick my 10 favorite novels that I read in 2023. I’m going to do the impossible. I will pick one, and then you will have an idea for a book that you just have to read in 2024!

I had many favorites this year, many that I wrote about on Dear Fiction, like The Guest Book by Sarah Blake, I Have Some Questions For You by

Rebecca Makkai

and The Beach at Summerly by Beatriz Williams. But my hands down favorite, the novel whose characters I couldn’t stop thinking about this year, was…

The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry.

This novel was so fantastic! It was expertly crafted and unputdownable.

It’s the story of two young sisters who escape London during the Second World War. They’re sent to live with a stranger and her son in the countryside. When the younger sister goes missing near a riverbank, the older sister feels responsible for her disappearance/death, then and years later. Switching back and forth between two time periods, the narrative also follows the older sister, now a grown woman, who recognizes a fairy tale that she used to tell her sister in the form of a printed book. Suddenly, the elder sister has reason to believe that her younger sister may still be alive, and so begins a hunt for the truth.

Sally Kim, senior vice president at Putnam, once said in an interview that she loved books where there was heart on every single page. I knew exactly what she meant when I read Henry’s The Secret Book of Flora Lea. Between the gripping emotional story and the unfolding of a family mystery, it’s an absolute stunner of a novel.

What was your favorite book you read in 2023? I’m curious to hear.