She has a full-time remote job and her rescue cat Fred. Her best friend Sadie visits with her two children.  There's her online support group, her jigsaw puzzles and favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson poems.  Also keeping her company are treacherous memories of an unstable childhood and a traumatic event that had sent her reeling. 
But something's about to change. First, two new friends burst into her life.  Then her long-estranged sister gets in touch.  Suddenly her carefully curated home is no longer a space to hide.  Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world  is coming to her door...

This is one of my favourite 2022 releases. Meredith hasn’t left her home for over 1000 days. She works from home and lives with her cat Fred, and loves to read, bake, and do jigsaw puzzles in her free time. She has a best friend named Sadie, an online friend Celeste, and Tom, someone sent from a charity organization to be her ‘friend.’ The more we get to know Meredith, the more we peel back the layers of why she doesn’t want to go outside.

A spectacular space opera debut perfect for readers of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice and Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire, inspired by the lives and loves of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar.
Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed not just the crown of their planet Szayet but the Pearl of its prophecy, a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god. Stripped of her birthright, Gracia flees the planet—just as Matheus Ceirran, Commander of the interstellar Empire of Ceiao, arrives in deadly pursuit with his volatile lieutenant, Anita. When Gracia and Ceirran's paths collide, Gracia sees an opportunity to win back her planet, her god, and her throne…if she can win the Commander and his right-hand officer over first.
But talking her way into Ceirran’s good graces, and his bed, is only the beginning. Dealing with the most powerful man in the galaxy is almost as dangerous as war, and Gracia is quickly torn between an alliance that fast becomes more than political and the wishes of the god—or machine—that whispers in her ear. For Szayet's sake, and her own, Gracia will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before—even if it breaks an empire.

This book has the most unreliable narrator I’ve read and I’m here for it. There’s something about a narrator telling you she’s lying but you still end up shocked at certain turns of events. Now that’s some storytelling!

The Secret History
meets Ninth House in this sinister, atmospheric novel following a circle of researchers as they uncover a mysterious deck of tarot cards and shocking secrets in New York’s famed Met Cloisters.
When Ann Stilwell arrives in New York City, she expects to spend her summer working as a curatorial associate at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Instead, she finds herself assigned to The Cloisters, a gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination.
Desperate to escape her painful past, Ann is happy to indulge the researchers’ more outlandish theories about the history of fortune telling. But what begins as academic curiosity quickly turns into obsession when Ann discovers a hidden 15th-century deck of tarot cards that might hold the key to predicting the future. When the dangerous game of power, seduction, and ambition at The Cloisters turns deadly, Ann becomes locked in a race for answers as the line between the arcane and the modern blurs.
A haunting and magical blend of genres, The Cloisters is a gripping debut that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

The Cloisters had me at ‘gothic museum and garden renowned for its medieval art collection and its group of enigmatic researchers studying the history of divination’ but I’m afraid it stopped there. The book wasn’t bad, there were parts I liked, but unfortunately this was a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ kind of situation. I think fans of dark academia will enjoy this one because it’s certainly that, but I wanted more of the gothic, sinister, and atmospheric story I was promised and feel didn’t get.

S.T. Gibson's sensational novel is the darkly seductive tale of Dracula's first bride, Constanta. 
This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. . .
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things.
Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband's dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
"A dizzying nightmare of a romance that will leave you aching, angry and ultimately hopeful." --Hannah Whitten, New York Times bestselling author of For the Wolf

I devoured this in two days. I was absolutely captivated by S.T. Gibson’s writing and the voice of Constanta, Dracula’s first bride.

“You did not let me keep my name, so I will strip you of yours. In this world you are what I say you are, and I say you are a ghost, a long night’s fever dream that I have finally woken up from.”

– A Dowry of Blood, S.T. Gibson

A woman able to communicate with spirits must assemble a ragtag crew to pull off a daring heist to save her community in this timely and dazzling historical fantasy that weaves together African American folk magic, history, and romance.
"Never make a deal with shadows at night, especially ones that know your name.”
Washington D. C., 1925: Clara Johnson can talk to spirits—a gift that saved her during her darkest moments, now a curse that’s left her indebted to the cunning spirit world. So when a powerful spirit offers her an opportunity to gain her freedom, Clara seizes the chance, no questions asked. The task: steal a magical ring from the wealthiest woman in the District.
Clara can’t pull off this daring heist alone. She’ll need the help of an unlikely team, from a handsome jazz musician able to hypnotize with a melody to an aging actor who can change his face, to pull off the impossible. But as they race along DC’s legendary Black Broadway, conflict in the spirit world begins to leak into the human one—an insidious mystery is unfolding, one that could cost Clara her life and change the fate of an entire city.
Praise for The Monsters We Defy:
"Full of mesmerizing magic, The Monsters We Defy weaves together threads of real history with bits of the utterly fantastic." ―P. Djèli Clark, author of A Master of Djinn
"Masterfully crafted, with gorgeous prose, colourful characters, and a compelling plot. This smart and entertaining, magical heist novel hits all the right notes!" ―T.L. Huchu, author of The Library of the Dead
"Leslye Penelope blends magic, mystery, and mayhem in this deliciously complex historical fantasy.” —Veronica Henry, author of Bacchanal 

I love it when books have a mix of genres. The Monsters We Defy is such a great mix of historical fiction and fantasy. Set in the 1920s in Washington DC, some characters and events in the book were actually inspired by real life. I’m not at all familiar with what happened in DC around this time, and while a fictional book isn’t the best source, learning about it was still really cool!