my favourite reads in 2022
Answers in the Pages by David Levithan
Censorship and book banning is getting worse here and in the US (and other parts of the world!) now, although many in my life tend to brush it off because banning queer books doesn't affect them. They'll be like "it is what it is" or "you've got to suck it up for the greater good of everyone else" and I am so very glad to be reading this book about young Donovan who is thinking about all this in a different way. I've said before that this may be my favourite David Levithan yet and it's still true now. I love the different stories in it, and how they come together at the end.
Cold by Mariko Tamaki
This book is kind of bleak and, well, cold, and I'm still haunted by it. I already love Mariko Tamaki's writing even before this (honestly I may not have picked this book up if it wasn't for her name on the cover) but this! Cold is a contemporary YA (I think) but as someone who was a teen in the 90s this book rings so very true? Maybe it's the small town environment (living in KL is honestly more isolating and inconvenient than the US small towns I've been in), or the fact that kids are kids, or the fact that Mariko Tamaki is only like 8 years older than me. It's one of the truest books I've read about what it's like growing up queer and isolated.
The Grimoire of Grave Fates created by Hanna Alkaf & Margaret Owen
I didn't think 2022 would be a year in which I read not one, but TWO magic school books that would completely take up space in my brain forever, but here we are. This is a book with multiple authors writing multiple POVs but it's very much one story, so I do think of it more of a novel than an anthology. It's amazing that they accomplished this, I don't think I've read an "interconnected short stories" book that worked this well. And as for the school - I just love everything about Galileo Academy and its students that I've read so far, and am using it as a base for my Strixhaven D&D campaign. And the fact that there are multiple authors who are each writing their own characters, this book fulfills so many aspects of me that I want to see represented in books? Like, okay, there are the types of characters I will kill for (Diego) and the types of characters I would die for (Changmin) and there are enby characters and trans characters and characters with complicated post-co feels and characters that hyperfocus to a degree that I related to so much and I just love them all okay. There are so many characters I want to read up more about (please can there be novels focusing on each of these students, as well as more anthologies) and I can't want for this book to be officially out (June 2023!!) so that I could have a physical copy in my hands.
The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang
Like most of my faves, this book just deeply resonated with me. I enjoyed both of Helen Hoang's previous books in this series, but The Heart Principle is my favourite of the three, because I related to it the most. It had me crying so much, it was so relatable - that feeling of being overwhelmed and masking too much and everything just piling up and finally breaking down and having a complete autistic burnout... basically, if you knew me around 2003-2009 and wondered what was up, just read this. And as much as I'm a romance fan, the romance in this book is just incidental for me, I love it for everything else.
I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston
Yet another amazing book about queer isolation, but this one is a lot more happy (I was going to say "wholesome" but err... Heartstopper it is NOT, lol. Shara Wheeler is fucking twisted.) It's also about found families and things can get better (for some of us), which I guess is a pretty good and comforting thing to read? It's funny because this is very much a happy ending book and Mariko Tamaki's Cold is less optimistic, and I love these two almost equally, but while Cold made me feel comforted and understood in its bleakness, I Kissed Shara Wheeler made me feel a lot of grief because I don't live in an alternate reality where it does get better, lol.
The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen
This isn't a new book - I've had it on my shelf since before it was published and I'm still kicking myself mentally for not reading it sooner. But this graphic novel is lovely, and it's about being a teen and queer and Vietnamese American and having a complicated relationship with your mom because of generational trauma and loving fairy tales and being more familiar with European fairy tales than the stories from your own culture and it starts out light but soon just drowns you in feels, I love this book.
Magical Boy Vol. 1-2 by The Kao
An accidental discovery (it wasn't being offered by our supplier who supplies us Scholastic's graphic novels) that I find hilarious and heartwarming. This book reprints the webcomic about Max, a trans boy who finds himself in a pickle when he's informed that he's from a long line of magical girls and is expected to come into power soon. I tend to love stories that subverts tropes from genres I already love and am familiar with in brilliant ways, so this is right up my alley.
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
A romantic fantasy set in an alternative Edwardian England. This book is Diana Wynne Jonesian in the best of ways, which is to say with the way the characters are managed and developed (I really can't explain without writing another 2,000 words on this but the way Maia is handled in The Goblin Emperor is one example, and the way Cat Chant is handled in Charmed Lives is another), and a magical system that is declared to be one thing and then turns out to be another thing entirely. I love Robin and Edwin (I fully expected to glom on to Robin when I started, but soon enough Edwin became my fave because I find him and his relationship with his family a little too reminiscent of my childhood.)
A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
This is a sequel to A Marvellous Light and I love it almost as much, and the only reason I love it slightly less is because I related to Edwin so much more than the two MCs in this book, Maud and Violet. But! This book has magic! A locked-room murder mystery! (Well, since it happened on a ship it counts as one right?) A shipboard romance! And a thrilling adventure that needs to be solved before the characters reach their destination! So many exclamation points! I enjoyed this so much, and somehow I've become very invested in Hawthorne, who appeared briefly in A Marvellous Light and is one of the MCs in this book and I am hoping he will be the MC in the next.
Nightwing Vol. 1: Leaping Into the Light by Tom Taylor and Bruno Redondo
I like Tom Taylor's comics a lot, and he's one of my favourite current comics writers, but let's be honest, Bruno Redondo's art MADE this book. I don't think I've loved Dick Grayson this much until now. He's almost tied with Damian as my favourite Robin now. (So is Tim, and okay Tim might end up winning now that he's finally come out - although sadly not dating Connor Kent who I ship him with - and has a really good solo book by Meghan Fitzmartin).
The One Who Loves You the Most by Medina
Look I read so many good middle grades in 2022, and I wish I could add them all in this list but I can't add every single one of them when I'm making a "best of" list. So this is the best of the many, many amazing middle grade books I read last year that is a coming-of-age story of someone coming to terms with their gender feels. (Kyle Lukoff's Different Kinds of Fruit is a close second.) Just these lines: "I have never felt like I belonged to my body. Never in the way rhythm belongs to a song or waves belong to an ocean." So. Effing. Relatable! This is also another found family book and is very heartwarming.
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland
If you mixed the political intrigue of Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor with the best fanfic that fills you with absolute joy, this is probably what you'd end up with. A romantic fantasy (fantastical romance?) that's just so fun and ended too soon for me (who usually prefers shorter books these days) despite it being 500+ pages long, with a too-true depiction of anxiety that I see too rarely in fantasy fiction. What else do I need? (Answer: More!)
Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues by H.S. Valley
The other amazing magic school book I read in 2022. Tim Te Maro is technically not new, but somewhat newly translated? This is a very different kind of magic school book than The Grimoire of Grave Fates, but it's similar in the sense that it's way more realistic, and with that, more diverse and interesting. I love how they mix mundane real-life school stuff with magic, and okay, I just like the enemies-to-lovers trope and the fake-dating trope and this is kind of both, so yay?
The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison
I reread Witness for the Dead before reading The Grief of Stones and it's all just so good, but I think this goes without saying, because this is Katherine Addison whose The Bone Key (released under Sarah Monette) is still one of my favourite fantasy short story collections. Now that I've said this, yeah, I do feel like both these books, while being set in the world of The Goblin Emperor, has some things in common with The Bone Key. It's like... The Bone Key if Booth is not neurodivergent and the mysteries aren't all creepy and Lovecraftian. I love these two books and I want more.
That's my 15 favourite books (I cheated a bit by including both vols of Magical Boy but it's ONE story!) that I read in 2022! Do tell me what's yours.
Stay safe!