New month, new Top Ten Tuesday!! Today I’m going to share some of the 2023 debut books I’m excited about. I’m thankful for these kinds of topics, because normally I’m so bad at keeping track of new releases! But these make me actually look up new releases and write them down haha.

Thank you to Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl for hosting/organizing Top Ten Tuesday! Find my past Top Ten Tuesday posts here.

One challenge that is very popular on bookstagram is the “12 book recommendations from 12 friends” challenge. I think the idea is to read one of those 12 for each month of the year. I wanted to do it this year, but I did it a little differently. Since you know that one of my goals is to reduce my physical TBR, I had my friends choose books from my physical TBR!

Happy holidays, book lovers! I’m so excited to talk to you about a recent December release: Where It Rains in Color by Denise Crittendon! I’m still making my way through this book, so all I can say is that the worldbuilding is quite unique and I look forward to reading more. Sci-fi mixed with Afrofuturism? Sign me up 👀

Here’s the synopsis:

Colonized by the descendants of Earth’s West African Dogon Tribe, the planet of Swazembi is a blazing, color-rich utopia and famous vacation center of the galaxy. No one is used to serious trouble in this idyllic, peace-loving world, least of all the Rare Indigo.

But Lileala’s perfect, pampered lifestyle is about to be shattered. The unthinkable happens and her glorious midnight skin becomes infected with a mysterious disease. Where her skin should glisten like diamonds mixed with coal, instead it scabs and scars. On top of that, she starts to hear voices in her head, and everything around her becomes confusing and frightening.

Lileala’s destiny, however, goes far beyond her beauty. While searching for a cure, she stumbles upon something much more valuable. A new power awakens inside her, and she realizes her whole life, and the galaxy with it, is about to change…

It has such a beautiful cover too!

This book is a bit different from what I usually read. I’ve never had to prepare for or weather through a hurricane but reading The Light Pirate gave me a better idea of what it can be like for those who live in places like Florida. The gravity and danger that comes with hurricanes is terrifying, and The Light Pirate didn’t shy away from showing that.

I absolutely loved this. First let me just say that I’m not a huge horror fiction reader – I scare easily and can’t watch horror movies… BUT I’m able to tolerate horror in books better, though they can still creep me out. Lately I’ve been wanting to dabble and read some horror because I haven’t read any in some time and I’m strangely in the mood for it. Seeing as what I read is hugely dictated by my mood, I jumped into T. Kingfisher’s A House with Good Bones and it was exactly what I was looking for.