The Best Books I Read This Winter

New year, new seasons, new roundup! Welcome to the first installment of The Best Books I Read This Season for 2023. This past winter proved to be quite some productive reading time for me, which I’m assuming we can chalk up to post-grad ennui since I’m pleased to report that I have finished university since I last recommended books! Since reading time is happy time, I won’t even feel bad about the days I spent lying in bed reading all afternoon. Because if I hadn’t done that, would I even have a good enough winter roundup to show for it? Probably, because I read all the time no matter what. I forget the point I was trying to make here. Anyway, read on for some of the best books I got into this snowy season.

Deliberate Cruelty: Truman Capote, the Millionaire’s Wife, and the Murder of the Century by Roseanne Montillo
When Ann Woodward shot her husband, banking heir Billy Woodward, in the middle of the night in 1955, her life changed forever. Though she claimed she thought he was a prowler, few believed the woman who had risen from charismatic showgirl to popular socialite. Everyone had something to say about the scorching scandal afflicting one of the most rich and famous families of New York City, but no one was more obsessed with the tale than Truman Capote. Acclaimed for his bestselling nonfiction book ‘In Cold Blood’, Capote was looking for new material and followed the scandal from beginning to end. Like Ann, he too had ascended from nobody to toast of the town, but he always felt like an outsider, even among the exclusive coterie of high society women who adored him. He decided the story of Ann’s turbulent marriage would be the basis of his masterpiece — a novel about the dysfunction and sordid secrets revealed to him by his high society “swans” — never thinking that it would eventually lead to Ann’s suicide and his own scandalous downfall.

I wrote about some of the events in Deliberate Cruelty for Book Riot here!

Our Favorite Songs by Anita Kelly
Perfect for fans of Heartstopper who are looking to fill the void, as well as one of the most erotic gay YA books I’ve ever read and I’m certainly not mad about it. Restless and disillusioned with his life, Aiden McCarstle is ready for a night out at The Moonlight Café with his best friend Penelope: one night to not think about how much he hates grad school, to watch queer people make fools of themselves singing karaoke. A simple, reliable escape. For Kai Andrews, moving back home after his mother’s death has been harder and lonelier than he anticipated. And running into McCarstle again? That had certainly never been in his plans. But he deserves a night out, away from the responsibilities and grief that have been weighing him down. Sure, it appears McCarstle still hates his guts, for reasons Kai has never quite understood. But maybe, with a decent dose of pop music and Moonie’s magic, Kai can finally, finally make Aiden smile. Just this once. Just for tonight. As a surprising, intimate night at Moonie’s brings Aiden and Kai closer together, a winter storm moves in. And what was meant to be a simple night out turns into over 24 hours of being snowed in together. Through confessions, memories, and games of Boggle, Aiden and Kai have to figure out if this unexpected second chance at connection was merely a temporary interlude — or if they can each come out better on the other side of the storm.

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
Frances Janvier spends most of her time studying. Everyone knows Aled Last as that quiet boy who gets straight As. You probably think that they are going to fall in love or something. Since he is a boy and she is a girl. They don’t. They make a podcast. In a world determined to shut them up, knock them down, and set them on a cookie cutter life path, Frances and Aled struggle to find their voices over the course of one life-changing year. Will they have the courage to show everyone who they really are? Or will they be met with radio silence?

Signal Fires by Dani Shapiro
Signal Fires opens on a summer night in 1985. Three teenagers have been drinking. One of them gets behind the wheel of a car, and, in an instant, everything on Division Street changes. Each of their lives, and that of Ben Wilf, a young doctor who arrives on the scene, is shattered. For the Wilf family, the circumstances of that fatal accident will become the deepest kind of secret, one so dangerous it can never be spoken. On Division Street, time has moved on. When the Shenkmans arrive — a young couple expecting a baby boy — it is as if the accident never happened. But when Waldo, the Shenkmans’ brilliant, lonely son who marvels at the beauty of the world and has a native ability to find connections in everything, befriends Dr. Wilf, now retired and struggling with his wife’s decline, past events come hurtling back in ways no one could ever have foreseen.

The Gilded Razor by Sam Lansky
By the age of 17, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out. Yet as he journeyed from the glittering streets of Manhattan, to a wilderness boot camp in Utah, to a psych ward in New Orleans, he only found more opportunities to create chaos — until finally, he began to face himself.

Destination Unknown by Bill Konigsberg
It’s 1987 in New York City, and Micah is at a dance club, trying to pretend he’s more out and outgoing than he really is. C.J. isn’t just out–he’s completely out there, and Micah can’t help but be both attracted to and afraid of someone who travels so loudly and proudly through the night. A connection occurs. Is it friendship? Romance? Is C.J. the one with all the answers… or does Micah bring more to the relationship that it first seems? As their lives become more and more entangled in the AIDS epidemic that’s laying waste to their community, and the AIDS activism that will ultimately bring a strong voice to their demands, whatever Micah and C.J. have between them will be tested, strained, pushed, and pulled — but it will also be a lifeline in a time of death, a bond that will determine the course of their futures.

Superfan: How Pop Culture Broke My Heart by Jen Sookfong Lee
For most of Jen Sookfong Lee’s life, pop culture was an escape from family tragedy and a means of fitting in with the larger culture around her. Anne of Green Gables promised her that, despite losing her father at the age of twelve, one day she might still have the loving family of her dreams, and Princess Diana was proof that maybe there was more to being a good girl after all. And yet as Jen grew up, she began to recognize the ways in which pop culture was not made for someone like her — the child of Chinese immigrant parents who looked for safety in the invisibility afforded by embracing model minority myths. Ranging from the unattainable perfection of Gwyneth Paltrow and the father-figure familiarity of Bob Ross, to the long shadow cast by The Joy Luck Club and the life lessons she has learned from Rihanna, Jen weaves together key moments in pop culture with stories of her own failings, longings, and struggles as she navigates the minefields that come with carving her own path as an Asian woman, single mother, and writer.

The Radcliffe Ladies’ Reading Club by Julia Bryan Thomas (June 2023)
Massachusetts, 1954. With bags packed alongside her heavy heart, Alice Campbell escaped halfway across the country and found herself in front of a derelict building tucked among the cobblestone streets of Cambridge. She turns it into the enchanting bookshop of her dreams, knowing firsthand the power of books to comfort the broken-hearted. The Cambridge Bookshop soon becomes a haven for Tess, Caroline, Evie, and Merritt, who are all navigating the struggles of being newly independent college women in a world that seems to want to keep them in the kitchen. But when a member of the group finds herself shattered, everything they know about themselves will be called into question.

Thank you to Sourcebooks for the advance copy!

Solitaire by Alice Oseman
In case you’re wondering, this is not a love story. My name is Tori Spring. I like to sleep and I like to blog. Last year — before all that stuff with Charlie and before I had to face the harsh realities of A-Levels and university applications and the fact that one day I really will have to start talking to people — I had friends. Things were very different, I guess, but that’s all over now. Now there’s Solitaire. And Michael Holden. I don’t know what Solitaire are trying to do, and I don’t care about Michael Holden. I really don’t.

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
Portia de Rossi weighed only 82 pounds when she collapsed on the set of the Hollywood film in which she was playing her first leading role. This should have been the culmination of all her years of hard work — first as a child model in Australia, then as a cast member of one of the hottest shows on American television. On the outside she was thin and blond, glamorous and successful. On the inside, she was literally dying. In this searing, unflinchingly honest book, de Rossi captures the complex emotional truth of what it is like when food, weight, and body image take priority over every other human impulse or action.

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
The Infernal Devices trilogy were among my favorite books in high school, and I recently decided to dive back in for a second time, because why not? The year is 1878. Tessa Gray descends into London’s dark supernatural underworld in search of her missing brother. She soon discovers that her only allies are the demon-slaying Shadowhunters — including Will and Jem, the mysterious boys she is attracted to. Soon they find themselves up against the Pandemonium Club, a secret organization of vampires, demons, warlocks, and humans. Equipped with a magical army of unstoppable clockwork creatures, the Club is out to rule the British Empire, and only Tessa and her allies can stop them.