Though it’s been another banger of a year in genre fiction—-and, yes, Rebecca Yarros’s fantasy juggernaut Fourth Wing is on more than one of our Best Of lists this year—don’t count the good old-fashioned novel out just yet.
Because 2023 has produced some truly excellent works of fiction, from Gothic fairytales and pandemic reflections to uncomfortable explorations of institutions like publishing, the prison system, and Big Tech. Stories that run the gamut from historical fiction to horror, with a little something for everyone in between.
Here are our picks for the best fiction novels of 2022.
Day by Michael Cunningham
The first novel from Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham in nearly a decade (since 2014’s The Snow Queen), Day is a quiet, introspective pandemic story that never actually says the word pandemic at all. The novel never puts a name to the terror creeping through our days in 2020 nor does it attempt to explain the origins of the event that rearranged our lives so thoroughly in the year that followed. But we know, and in that, we bear witness.
As its title implies, the events of Day take place on the fifth day of April across three different years: 2019, in the world we still remember as normal; 2020, in the early months of lockdown; and finally 2021, when the arrival of vaccines convinced many the worst had passed. Set the liminal space of the transition from one kind of world to another, the novel wrestles with traumas both physical and literal. Who we are is no longer who we were, afterward, is it? It couldn’t possibly be, not when we’ve wrestled with death and loss and become people who’ve survived the unimaginable. How do we know when we’ve outgrown who we were? Or recalibrate our idea of who we should become, now that we know time is perhaps more finite than we once thought? If you’ve read Cunningham before, you know that he’s not interested in presenting easy answers to any of those questions, but rather exploring why we’re asking them in the first place.
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
The latest novel from Babel author R.F. Kuang, Yellowface is additive, shocking, compelling, ridiculous, and extremely fun to read by turns. (You’ll finish it in a single sitting. Two, tops.)
The story of a struggling white author who steals an unfinished manuscript from a deceased Chinese-American classmate from Yale and passes it off as her own, rebranding and remaking her image to sound more culturally interesting in the process, the book with hot-button topics in publishing surrounding race, classism, white privilege, and tokenism. Its unlikeable lead characters will not only leave you wondering who—if anyone—we’re meant to be rooting for, but how potentially complicit we are in upholding publishing’s worse tendencies by reading a book called Yellowface in the first place. What I’m saying is, this book is a whole lot, and whether or not it is a book for you is probably going to have to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, but it’s absolutely worth all the hype that has surrounded it since its release this past spring
Loot by Tania James
Full of timely reflections on art, history, and Western attitudes toward who is allowed to tell the story of the past, Loot is a complex tale about the creation of a very strange object. “Tipu’s Tiger” is an eighteenth-century automaton from the Kingdom of Mysore, which depicts a great Tiger enthusiastically mauling a British soldier. This is a real thing, and you can still see it today in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. But how did it get there? Who made it? And why?
Those are just some of the questions at the heart of this novel, which spans multiple decades and continents, features almost half a dozen main characters, and tells a story that walks a fine line between whimsy and tragedy. And the end result is something that is as beautiful and strange as the object at its center.
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi
YA author Rosani Chokshi’s adult debut The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a rich, luxurious, and utterly decadent Gothic fairytale that goes down like the smoothest of dark chocolates.
A cautionary tale about losing ourselves in the things we love, and a strangely hopeful ode to the possibility of allowing others to see us for who we are, this story is told via two alternating POVs and set across two distinct time periods, as a narrator known only as the Bridegroom meets and falls in love with mysterious heiress Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. Their shared passion is built on telling one another stories, but he must promise never to ask about her past. But what kind of fairytale would this be if someone didn’t make a vow we all know they’ll never be able to keep?
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins
Rachel Hawkins’s fiercely feminist thrillers—see also: Reckless Girls and The Wife Upstairs—-are so much fun, but The Villa is far and away her best yet. A wildly creative story that combines a 1970s rock and roll reimagining of the famous summer at Villa Dodati in 1814 that gave birth to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a competitive modern-day summer writing retreat rife with professional jealousies, and a deft exploration of the uncomfortable truths about the way our society views female artists of all stripes, this is a thriller with something substantial to say.
The story touches on everything from the complexity of female friendships to how our society both views and consumes true crime stories, and its carefully intersecting dual timeline builds to a conclusion that feels both tragic and triumphant.
Morgan Is My Name by Sophie Keetch
Sophie Keetch’s Morgan Is My Name is one of the latest entries in the popular publishing subgenre that delights in reexamining and recontextualizing the lives of the most villainous women of myth and folklore. What makes it unique is that it’s one of the few that’s turning its feminist lens on the “good” legend of King Arthur, a myth that is remarkable in that at least more
than one woman plays a central role in the rise of Camelot, offering a new perspective on one of the story’s most problematic and misunderstood figures: Morgan le Fay.
Fierce, headstrong, stubborn, and determined to control her own story, this is a woman who is forthrightly and relatably angry at the fact that her exceptional nature will always come second to her gender, and determined to be something more than she’s told she’s allowed to become. In the novel’s final moments—don’t worry, it’s the first in a series—Morgan literally throws off the chains of the patriarchy to claim her own power, a moment that manages to feel like a cathartic conclusion, a new beginning, and a necessary reckoning all at once. It’s the sort of reinvention that every woman in Arthurian lore deserves—and, with Keetch’s help, will hopefully someday get.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
Whether you’re a regular fantasy reader or not, you’ve probably heard of Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing. Heck, if you’ve stepped foot in a bookstore in the past six months, you’ve probably heard of Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing. A BookTok and social media sensation, the high fantasy romance feels like it everywhere right now—it’s the only title to make multiple Paste Books Best-of lists!—and with the arrival of its sequel Iron Flame just a few weeks ago the hype is unlikely to die down anytime soon.
A sprawling story set at a war college for dragon riders, Fouth Wing has it all: A physically fragile but emotionally ferocious heroine whose indomitable spirit keeps pushing her to stay alive; an entertaining assortment of compelling supporting characters that are easy to connect to; high-stakes political intrigue, fast-paced competitions, and training exercises that see our faves pushed to their limits; a near constant threat of death, and a scorching enemies to lovers romance that pretty much ticks every romantasy trope in existence. What I’m saying is, that the hype is real and very, very deserved.
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Named for Dante’s Inferno, Jesmyn Ward’s Let Us Descend is appropriately hellish, a harrowing journey into the nightmare of American slavery that is rendered with a raw, unflinching, and lyrical honesty that makes it impossible to look away from.
Annis’s journey — she’s sold by her white father and sent to a slave market in New Orleans, traveling through Carolina swamps, Georgia clay, and the worst— takes readers through scenes of incredible brutality, psychological abuse, and death. She finds strength and comfort by turning inward, remembering tales of the warrior women from which she’s descended, the courage of the mother she loved and from whom she was separated, and her spiritual guide connected to her people named Mama Aza. This is not an easy book, and there are certainly moments that feel overwhelming in their horror. But its lyrical litany of sadness is a story that ultimately finds a kind of hope and resilience by the end.
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Crosby
All the Sinners Bleed may depict the rush to solve a series of fictional murders, but it has plenty of real-life truths to share about life in a rural Southern town for people of color and the difficult issues that still plague a part of the country that still (sometimes violently) reckoning with its own racial history.
Set in the ominously named Charon County, the story follows Sheriff Titus Crown, the first Black \man ever elected to the role in his rural Virginia community. The inherent conflict in his role alone would likely be enough to power an entire novel, as Crosby digs into the careful, frustrating ways Titus must navigate the many competing priorities and power struggles of his job. Unlike Crosby’s previous works—Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears—which focused on characters working outside the law, this tale will appeal to those who enjoy a good old-fashioned procedural-style cop drama. But despite the novel’s many cynical edges—you may find yourself rolling your eyes at more than one of the good sheriff’s bleak pronouncements about how irredeemably broken the world, humanity, and the entire concept of organized religion are—the story ends on a surprisingly perfect note of defiant hope.
Lone Women by Victor Lavalle
Victor Lavalle’s genre-defying Lone Women is one part horror story, one part old-school Western, and one part supernatural mystery, an unhinged exploration of isolation, loneliness, family separation, and loss. The story of a Black woman who heads to Montana after an unspeakable horror befalls her parents, she arrives in Big Sky country with baggage of the literal, figurative, and psychological variety in tow, hoping to claim and start over with the property promised by the government to “lone women”.
As a genre, Westerns aren’t usually terribly concerned with the stories of women or marginalized characters, but Lavalle seems determined to change all of that, centering his compelling, disturbingly violent, and tension-drenched narrative around those very voices. The end result is a novel that feels like an instant classic and something completely brand new at the same time. (Is this description as vague as possible? Absolutely. It’s better if Lone Women’s secrets find you in their own time.)
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
An ambitious, bonkers, beast of a novel, Chain Gang All-Stars is set in a post-apocalyptic future where prison inmates must fight one another to the death in a series of gladiator style matches on live television. Called CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, this program promises freedom to those individuals who can survive fighting in it for three years. Most combatants last three months.
Within this fight-to-the-death dystopia, we primarily follow Loretta and Hurricane, a pair of lovers who fight on the same team or “chain,” but the novel deftly expands its perspective outward, encompassing everyone from prison cooks and audience members. In doing so, the story makes everyone complicit in the horror that’s unfolding, right down to those of us reading about it at home.
Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
While Pineapple Street may be slightly less intense than many of the titles on this list, Jenny Jackson’s thoroughly delightful debut gets all the points for style. A skewering of a WASP-y old-money Brooklyn family that will appeal to folks who love Succession and The White Lotus, the story follows the lives of the three Stockton children. There’s Cord, who takes over the family house on Pineapple Street with his new wife Sasha, who doesn’t come from money at all and struggles to adjust unspoken rules of the upper upper class. (His sisters refer to her as “the gold digger”.) There’s Darley, who signed away her inheritance when she married her husband Malcolm without a prenup, but now that he’s lost his cushy banking job, they’re headed toward a financial crisis. And there’s Georgiana, a pampered, spoiled millennial who makes disastrous romantic decisions and responds to a tragic event by trying to divest herself of her fortune despite her parents’ protests.
One part comedy of manners, one part uncomfortable commentary on the lives of the idle rich, the story is full of delicious one-liners, passive aggressive interactions, and scripted WASP family dynamics. Yet, in the end, even as it gently makes fun of the foibles of the characters at its center, neither the book nor the family that stars in it ever entirely loses sight of its heart.
The Future by Naomi Alderman
Naomi Alderman’s award-winning novel, The Power, was first published in early 2016, just before the United States would see a woman run for president, the inaugural Women’s March, the rise of the #MeToo movement, and the premiere of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, all events that would force the country to confront its ideas of gender, misogyny, and power. (Not to mention give women everywhere a new language in which to express their rage.) Her latest novel, The Future, is almost as uncomfortably prescient as its predecessor, exploring a story that begins when three of the richest people on the planet get an early warning that the world is about to end.
But where The Power is a complex exploration of gender dynamics that reads like a female empowerment narrative before spiraling into a dystopian hellscape, The Future is ultimately about something altogether different: Hope. Yes, this book offers an uncomfortably realistic depiction of the likely end of society, but its appeal lies in its insistence that the dark times it depicts are not inevitable. Humanity’s worst possible outcome doesn’t have to happen. The future is not fixed. Change is possible—-but only if we collectively decide we want it to be. Whether that sort of universal belief can ever be enough to stem the ties of humanity’s worst impulses is something that only our own days to come can answer. But the ideas at work in this novel—and Alderman’s unabashed embrace of community and optimism even in the face of our darkest hours—certainly feel like fragments shored against our collective ruin.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB