Sirius’ Best of 2022 List
And once again my list is not very long, but it truly represents the best and most memorable for me books that I reviewed this year.
1. The Thursday Murder Club series by Richard Osman.
I am linking to the review of the first book, but I reviewed all three books this year and so far the books are only getting better and keep improving and I can wholeheartedly recommend all three. The characters are delightful and the plots are only getting stronger in my opinion. Rather than quote from my review, because I think the next two books are stronger than this one in several ways, I decided to just quote from the blurb because it introduces the characters who already stole my heart from the very beginning:
“Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves
A female cop with her first big case
A brutal murder
Welcome to…
The Thursday Murder Club
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.’
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2. Pack of Lies (Monster Hunter #1) by Charlie Adhara
This is a spinoff from Adhara’s Big Bad Wolf series, which I really love. I do not just put this book on my Best of list because it is a spinoff from the beloved books. I think while it took me awhile to fully enjoy the chemistry between the couple, while I was in, I was all in and story was fun. Eli is such a great character, I hope he and Julien will have a lot of adventure coming up
From my review;
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3. The Hour Glass throne (Tarot Sequence # 3) by K.D. Edwards.
What more can I say besides – I love love these books. Once again probably the best book that I reviewed here last year. Rune and his friends and family and the world they inhabit is something I cannot wait to read more about. Much more hopefully. From my review:
“Rune dealing with his new life as Lord Sun responsible for his court was a joy to read about. I mean the theme of found family started in book one with Max and Quinn and continued in the second book with Corbie and Anna and Corinne appearing and taking their places as part of the family, but I thought that it was getting even better here with kids growing up and being impatient to have more responsibilities and adults wanting them to be kids for a little longer. And Rune is just a good person in my opinion wanting to be a responsible head of his new court and care for his people. Whatever mistakes he made and will make, I think he is trying and often succeeding in behaving as a decent human being.
And let’s not forget that this is the book where powerful magical beings are often at odds with each other and when they fight, there is so much awesome magic and I am the type of reader who loves reading about all kinds of magic, especially when the writer tries to make sure the magic has some consistency in how it works in the world he created and the use of magic without sigils also has consequences for the users and boy we see it even more in this book when Arcana use their Arcana majeure magic (and what is it exactly I can’t tell you, because it is on the need to know basis only :))’
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4. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldtree
A good friend recommended this book and it ended up being one of my favorites as well. Charming, very relaxing fantasy and the beginning of the romance. From my review:
“There are definitely some fantasy elements besides who Viv is and who her friends are – some magical elements that is, I think calling the book “the novel of high fantasy and low stakes” was very appropriate. Overall it was a cute and sweet book, but also very engaging. It was a brand of sweetness that worked very well for me but it must be up to every reader to figure out whether this kind of sweetness will work well for them.
And be prepared to want to eat some baked stuff after and during finishing this story :).
There is also some romance, actually you won’t see an actual romance, you will see a building friendship and couple of kisses, that’s about it, but I still really loved it.”
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5. Agents of Winter ( Agency #2) by Ada Maria Soto.
This was such a lovely follow up on Martin and Arthur’s story. Loved every page of it. From my review :
I enjoyed “His Quiet Agent” and the follow up short story. Honestly I was surprised to see this sequel, but to me as far as sequels go this one came very close to perfection. The author mentioned that this was a slice of life story for Arthur and Martin and maybe I was mistaken in what I thought “slice of life” story was, but I am not sure I agree with her. I am not disputing what author intended to write, obviously she knows the best what she intended. I am just not sure that the only point of this story was to show the ordinary every day happenings in the life of Arthur and Martin.
I mean, to me this story was *packed* with important character development and relationship development for Arthur and Martin, even though yes, it happened and kept happening in a very quiet, ordinary way. We could already see that Martin had changed even when the story began. I dont want to say that he changed for the better, I thought he was perfectly fine before, but for example he was able to go to the neighbors and asked them to change the pattern on the Christmas lights because it was causing Martin to have a horrible migraine. I thought it was huge, and it was done so well and Martin shares it with Arthur after this happened. So Martin was acquiring more survival skills probably?
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Thanks for sharing your list, @Sirius.
Legends and Lattes was fun. I read the ebook when it was self-published so had to get my hands on a paper copy to read the added prequel short story.
I read and enjoyed the first Tarot Sequence book and should get caught up.
So many good books (and only so much time and money!)
I love everything on your list that I’ve read and am looking at the others now. #3 and #5 escaped my notice so I’m off to remedy that. Thanks!
@Kareni: Yes you should imo :)[email protected]Darlynne: Hope the books will work for you.
I recommend The Thursday Murder Club to everyone. I can’t think of a person who wouldn’t enjoy it. I’ve now read all three and agree the series gets better with each one.
I’ve got my eye on the Ada Maria Soto series now – thx Sirius!
(Just curious – The Long Game didn’t make the cut?)
@Jenreads: True that! I am glad books worked for [email protected]Kaetrin: As far I am concerned these are great, hope you end up enjoying them. Heh, I chatted about it with Janine as well. No, it did not, and not because I decided to lower my grade, I still think it is a great book, BUT as I told Janine I only think about it if somebody else brings it up. For me memorability is important criteria and I have to at least want to reread the book in addition to thinking it is a great one. I never was even tempted so thats why it did not.
@Sirius: fair enough. :)
My library can get the Soto books so I plan on asking them to buy them. Thx for the rec!
@Sirius–great list. I really want to get to the murder club books and the Soto ones, and I included the K.D. Edwards on my list as well. I read Legends and Lattes also and thought it was good (more of a B for me, the first half was just a bit too sweet / cute).
@Kaetrin: Like I told Sirius, I reread it four times, LOL. My criteria is the mirror image of that, actually–I don’t give straight A’s to books I haven’t reread or at the very list know I want very much to reread. But if I made that my criteria for including a book on the list, there wouldn’t be a list because I usually only have between one and three books like that in a given year.
@Kaetrin: Let me know if it [email protected]Janine: interesting , we all have different but similar criteria too sometimes.