I read 78 books in the first half of 2022. (Which is, I admit, excessive.) Of those, 23 of them have been 5 star reads. (Which is also excessive.) This is in part due to the fact that I’m ridiculously easy to please, but it’s also because I have found some truly phenomenal books (and even new-to-me authors) this year. I wanted to share these with you, in the order that I read them.
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The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is another of those books that’s been sitting on my shelf for years, but news of an upcoming adaption made me finally pick it up. I didn’t expect to love The Essex Serpent. I bought it at a library sale because the cover is stunning, but it sounded more than a bit slow, and I’m not a huge reader of historical fiction. However, when Tom Hiddleston was cast as one of the leads in the television series, I knew I had to finally dust it off and read it. I’m so incredibly thankful that I did, because this novel was gorgeous. I was incredibly surprised by how much I ended up loving it.
“If love were an archer someone had put out its eyes, and it went stumbling about, blindly letting loose its arrows, never meeting its mark.”