An Unexpected Chapter

Between physical books and audiobooks, I have reached a personal new record of books read in one year: 103. Many were excellent. Some were bad. Others were forgettable. Some were full of literary merit but were unpleasant to read and those shall remain nameless. But, of the books I enjoyed the most and would recommend highly, this is my top ten list for the year. Mind you, I wouldn’t recommend these books to anyone and everyone. Some are quite dark, and I have added content warnings where appropriate. As a note, not all of these were published in 2023, but many were.

Presented in alphabetical order by title, they are:

All My Knotted Up Life by Beth Moore

For decades, Beth Moore was the darling of the evangelical world, focusing on Bible studies for women. Conventionally beautiful, squeaky clean, a devoted wife and mother, Moore was everything evangelical Americans liked to see in a woman. In 2016, Moore spoke up about the sexual assault she had experienced, as well as the sexism she experienced in churches. The backlash began immediately, with evangelicals calling her a heretic and a liberal. Conservative pastor, John MacArthur, publicly said that Moore needed to, “Go home.” A new version of Moore appeared on social media, still kind and positive, but unafraid to speak the truth. In her memoir, All My Knotted-Up Life, Moore tells of her turbulent childhood, being raised by an abusive father and a mentally ill mother, by clinging to her faith to keep her going. Decades later, secure in the family she had created with her husband, it was the Southern Baptist Church that turned on her. This memoir is beautifully written and does not shy away from the most painful and complicated aspects of family life and life in the church.

Content warning: Childhood sexual assault (not graphic)

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

SA Cosby is my favorite writer that I’ve discovered this year, and with his most recent novel, All the Sinners Bleed, I feel certain he kicked Flannery O’Connor off the Southern Gothic Throne. After leaving the FBI and his longtime girlfriend, Titus Crown returns to his hometown of Charon, Virginia and is elected Charon’s first Black sheriff. Law enforcement in Charon is predictable but frustrating. A far-right group is eternally organizing protests to protect a Confederate statue that no one has attempted to remove. An infamous local criminal seems to always be one step ahead of law enforcement raids. When a school shooting occurs in Charon, where a former student shoots a popular high school teacher, Titus learns from the cryptic words of the shooter that something bigger, and even more evil, is going on in Charon. Following the shooter’s clues, he learns that a serial killer has been murdering runaway children in Charon for years. This novel could have easily been too dark to read. While it is very dark, Cosby excels at creating flawed but likable heroes. I especially loved the relationship of Titus and his father, Albert. Both Titus and Albert are good men who have very different ways of making Charon a better place. Recovering alcoholic Albert relies on his faith and partners with his church to grow vegetables for food insecure neighbors. Meanwhile, Titus is agnostic and uses his role in law enforcement to make Charon safer and more equitable. He respects his father’s faith but has nothing but scorn for anyone who uses religion to pad their own power and influence. To a money hungry local minister, Titus says, “I wish Jesus was real so he could chase you down the aisle with a goddamn whip.” Dark and beautiful, All the Sinners Bleed is an unflinching depiction of our current age.

Content warning: Violence, violence against children, mentions of torture, sexual abuse, racism

The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston

Florence Day has inherited two things from her undertaker father: an unwavering belief in romantic love and the ability to see ghosts. At thirteen, she solves a local murder with the assistance of a ghost, and when her gift becomes public knowledge, she is bullied by her peers. At eighteen, she leaves the family and home she loves, moving to New York. She finishes college and becomes a ghostwriter for a bestselling romance author. In homesick moments, she tells her boyfriend stories of her childhood, presenting it as her latest idea for a novel. When her boyfriend scores a very lucrative book deal, Florence is shocked to find he stole her life story, only to dump her. After her break up, Florence is depressed and suffering writer’s block, and her handsome and stubborn new editor refuses to allow her a deadline extension. She receives a call from home and learns her father has passed away unexpectedly. When she arrives home, she finds a new hurdle she is not expecting. Her sexy new editor is waiting for her there, and he is a ghost. This genre defying book is delightful, full of quirky Southern characters, and surprisingly life affirming.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

In Lee County, no boy grows up with the name his mama gave him. Named Damon after his dead father, the narrator is known as Demon Copperhead. Growing up in a trailer in Appalachia, Demon explores the countryside with his best friend, Maggott, and raises his newly sober mother as much as she raises him. He doesn’t mind setting the alarm clock for his mother every day; it’s just how they live. Besides, his neighbors and his mother’s landlords, the Peggots, look after Demon and treat him like their own. When Demon loses his mother at a young age, he enters the foster care system. An independent child who fears nothing except bathtubs (not water or showers, but bathtubs specifically), Demon survives predatory foster parents and food scarcity. He learns that athletic ability can bring him small town fame and that injury can take that away. As a teen in the early days of the opioid crisis, Demon must learn to deal with chronic pain and a series of losses without losing himself. Loosely based on Dickens’ David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead is worthy of the Pulitzer Prize (which it won). The novel’s pace feels a bit like childhood. The passages where Demon is a young boy move slowly, entire lifetime’s of events happen to Demon while he is still in his early teens, but the pace picks up quickly the older that he gets. It’s the strength of Demon, as well as his distinct voice, that keeps the reader turning the pages.

Content warnings: Child abuse and neglect, substance abuse, violence, bullying

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon

In a small coastal town, chaos has been unleashed. Three generations of Rubicon women are living under the same roof. Beautiful and youthful grandmother, Lana, is not one for nature or small towns. She thrives as the queen of LA real estate, but a recent cancer diagnosis has led her to relocate north and live with her daughter, a nurse. Beth has built a life she loves after teenage pregnancy, raising her own daughter to be as independent as she is. Fifteen-year-old Jack works as a kayak tour guide for the Kayak Shack, eager to earn money to buy a sailboat. When a local conservationist is found dead, wearing a Kayak Shack life vest, petite Jack becomes a prime suspect. Lana dons a wig and designer heels and charms her way through town, gathering information about the deceased from beach bums, environmentalists, and wealthy ranchers. I love mysteries, so this one was a must read from the time I first heard the title. And while it is definitely a fun mystery to unravel, it’s the relationships between the Rubicon women that had me turning pages. That and trying to figure out what Lana would do next. It’s Gilmore Girls meets Columbo, but in a good way.

Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

Ike and Buddy Lee are Southern men with a traditional view on masculinity. Both have a criminal history from their youthful days and a gay son they don’t understand. When Ike and Buddy Lee’s sons get married, neither father attends the ceremony. When the sons, Isiah and Derek, are murdered, leaving behind a young daughter, the two men finally meet. When Buddy Lee suggests that they team up to find their sons’ killers, as the police will not prioritize the murders of a biracial same-sex couple, Ike is angry. He feels that the white man is trying to get a Black man he views as “scary” to do his dirty work, while Ike and his wife have a granddaughter to raise. When Ike begins to share Buddy Lee’s views on the police investigation, he changes his mind. Ike and Buddy Lee’s vigilante justice turns into a sort of DEI training with firearms, with lessons on systemic racism (for Buddy Lee) and how not to be an asshole to the LGBTQI+ community (for Ike). As two men re-immerse themselves into the world of rural crime, calling in old favors and stirring up trouble, they begin to realize their sons’ murders are part of something bigger than they realized. I loved this story of unexpected friendships, the fierceness of fatherly love, and the dangers of toxic masculinity.

Content warnings: Violence, racism, homophobia, trans phobia, alcohol abuse

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

Tookie has always been a lot. She once moved a dead body over state lines, something she considered to be a favor to a friend. Unfortunately, she didn’t realize there was a substantial amount of drugs on the corpse, and when she was arrested and convicted, the sentence was harsh. Resigned to decades in prison, Tookie becomes a voracious reader, fueled by the reading material a former teacher mailed to her. When Tookie is released early, she secures a job at an independent bookstore in Minneapolis and marries the police officer who arrested her. Life is mostly calm for her, aside from the occasional bookstore patrons who ask weird questions about being Native American. On All Soul’s Day 2019, Tookie’s most frustrating customer, Flora, passes away and haunts the bookstore, focusing on Tookie. Over the next year, Tookie deals with the unwelcome ghost, a pregnant stepdaughter, the pandemic and its effects on business, and the BLM protests in Minneapolis. Luckily, Tookie has always been a lot. I enjoyed this for Tookie’s unique voice and for the depiction of just how surreal life was in the early days of the pandemic. Ultimately, The Sentence is about the power and importance of stories.

Content warnings: police violence, systemic racism, substance abuse

The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

When a vampire moves into a nice Southern neighborhood, the local housewives are both his best friends and worst daymares. The hospitality rules that they live by ensure that the vampire will always be invited into the home, conveniently removing every bloodsucking fiend’s most common hurdle. Unfortunately in the midst of car pools, laundry, book clubs, and dinner parties, they somehow manage to notice everything, jotting down the license plates of unfamiliar vehicles and taking notice when your comings and goings align with the disappearance of local children. The Southern ladies of the book club are endlessly entertaining. They offer their sheltered takes on true crime books (on Helter Skelter: “What is good is free love if no one showers?”), but when their children are in danger, they are the ones who step in to remove the threat. There are two heroes: the narrator and Mrs. Greene, who serves as a nurse to the narrator’s mother-in-law, but really, Mrs. Greene is the true hero, the one who has never been fooled. As a Black woman who lives in a less privileged neighborhood, she is the outsider to the upper middle class white book club, but she’s willing to fight evil before anyone else is willing.

Content warning: Even though I knew Grady Hendrix was a horror writer, I was a bit surprised at how gory this was. Blood, dismemberment, rats, a cockroach crawling into the main character’s ear. Not for Twilight lovers.

Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

Opal is a resident of Eden, Kentucky, which despite its idyllic name, is a town that prosperity forgot. It was stripped for coal by the Gravely family and then polluted by the power plant, also by the Gravely family. Opal never expected to make Eden her home,;it was simply the last place Opal’s nomadic mother, Jewell, brought Opal and her brother Jasper before she passed away. After her mother’s death, Opal dropped out of high school and falsified her age to keep custody of her younger brother. She spends her days lying, stealing, and working shifts at the tractor store, all with the goal of getting her brother out of Eden for good. At night, she dreams of Starling House, the neglected mansion on the edge of town, which once housed E. Starling, an author famous for writing The Underland, a children’s book that is a dark reflection of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. When the reclusive Arthur Starling hires Opal as a housekeeper, she gets the sense that the house welcomes her. The water always turns on at the exact temperature she needs and she never struggles to find a light switch, even though the house was never wired for electricity. One day, outsiders approach Opal, demanding that she provide them with information on both Arthur and Starling House if she wants to keep her brother safe. As Opal snoops, she begins to suspect that everything E. Starling wrote was true. At one point, gothic novels were a shocking percentage of what I read, and then I lost interest, as I no longer felt that the genre was fresh anymore. Harrow’s latest novel could convince me to add more gothics back into my reading material. Fascinating and grotesque, it provides nods to early gothic literature, while freshening the genre with a modern Appalachian setting and social concerns.

We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin

Odette was a teenager when Trumanell Branson went missing, and Odette’s boyfriend (and Trumanell’s brother) was suspected of the crime. Wyatt Branson was cleared of wrongdoing and went on to live an isolated life in the family home, while Odette followed in her father’s footsteps and became a cop. A decade later, Wyatt finds a mute girl abandoned in a field of dandelions, a discovery that brings Odette back into his life. When Odette searches for clues to the silent girl’s identity, she finds herself investigating Trumanell’s disappearance as well and wondering if she should suspect her own father. This was the first book I read for a book club I joined early in 2023, and it wowed me. A missing beauty queen is nothing new in fiction, nor are religious small towns full of dark secrets, but something about the mournful storytelling drew me in. While thrillers are very popular at the moment, and I am guilty of reading too many, so many rely on shock factor or dramatic twists and turns. People, and especially women, read thrillers as a coping mechanism in a fearful world, but there often isn’t enough humanity in these books. If this book was a person, it would be a proper Southern lady who’d had enough of violence against women, who had completed her mourning and was about to change history.

Content warnings: violence

Honorable Mentions

• If We’re Being Honest by Cat Shook
• Abuelita Faith by Kat Armas
• An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten
• The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters