Expand Your 2022 Reading List With These Intriguing Books

Sep 28, 2022 Book reviews

If you have skipped any books, from top writers' newest works to sparkling new releases, here are some of our suggestions for 2022. Librarika recommends adding these latest books to your 2022 booklist.

The Attic Child

Book 1: The Attic Child Hardcover – April 28, 2022

Author: Lola Jaye Category: Black & African American Historical Fiction

"The Attic Child" by Lola Jaye is a poignant, profoundly passionate, and unique novel about the perspectives of Black British history on secretive familial relationships, compassion, and grief. Celestine, a twelve-year-old child, passes the bulk of the time trapped in an upstairs chamber of a massive seaside mansion. Brought from his homeland and abused as a destitute servant, he thinks about his family in Africa, even though, as time passes, he fails to recall his mother's face and, at times, his actual identity.

Lowra, a small homeless girl born into an affluent household who leads a life of luxury, is deported to a similar basement years later. The chamber's floorboards conceal a vintage plastic doll, a one-of-a-kind knotted hand bracelet, and intriguingly, an engraved message on the side of an old wardrobe in an unknown alphabet. She experiences a strange joy from these things, which gives her the impression that she isn't the only child imprisoned there.

Find out what mystery links these two youngsters stuck in the same attic.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

Other Birds

Book 2: Other Birds: A Novel Hardcover – August 30, 2022 

Author: Sarah Addison Allen Category: Mothers & Children Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction, Contemporary Women Fiction

“Other Birds” has it all: suspense, amusing protagonists, and a strong sense of the region. In this book, the author engages the readers in this island realm, along with consciousness, haunting memories, and the pleasure of submitting to what we are capable of and cannot regulate. The author has built an enthralling cast of characters for her latest gem of a narrative, all with grim backstories and buried mysteries, all set in a picturesque Southern resort city famed for its marshmallow sweets. It is a narrative about the neighborhood, compassion, and the different ways in which history influences the lives of people now.

This narrative weaves together the tragedies and desires of a group of brilliant and miserable people who share much more similarities than they realize. The underlying beauty of this plot is its inherent potential to establish relationships with individuals and locations in profound ways that alter their destinies.

The absolute distinctiveness of this book will blow you away for sure. It will increase your zeal to know: Does it involve a supernatural saga? Is it talking about a young girl and her fictitious bird? Is it a suspenseful thriller about a diverse group of loners? All of this makes it one of the best novels of the year.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

A Spanish Sunrise

Book 3: A Spanish Sunrise: A Novel Paperback – August 16, 2022

Author: Boo Walker Category: Friendship Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction, Contemporary Women Fiction

Baxter Shaw's and his eight-year-old daughter Mia's recovery following his wife's demise has not been simple. Baxter has abandoned music and aspires to concentrate on his duty as a single parent. But this is not satisfactory as Mia's behavioral troubles are escalating day-by-day. Both have been capable of addressing their past until it calls out to them again.

Baxter and Mia travel to southeastern Spain to reconnect with their mystery roots after receiving an unexpected discovery from a DNA test. They stay at a centuries-old home on a renowned olive oil estate, where they meet the family they never knew they had, including a lady whose courage and passion for the land remind Baxter of the love he lost and that it's not too late to reignite his hopes.

The enchantment of the country inspires a fresh perspective on both of their lives, as it's a recuperating time in Spain. However, since long-buried secrets and lies come to light, the property's destiny is jeopardized. But Baxter has to escape from the old days if he intends to pursue a new life.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

American Fever

Book 4: American Fever: A Novel Hardcover – August 16, 2022

Author: Dur e Aziz Amna Category: Cultural Heritage Fiction, Coming of Age Fiction, Literary Fiction

"American Fever" is a gripping and hilarious story about youth, kinship, cultural alienation, faith, and the movement of place. It represents the debut of the dazzling new voice of Dur e Aziz Amna into the world's artistic arena.

A sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl enrolled in a one-year international program in remote Oregon, must substitute Kashmiri tea for volleyball practice while attempting to comprehend why everyone her age appears to despise Obama. Hira, a skeptical and funny protagonist, is stranded between cultures.

The adventure is noteworthy for positive and negative aspects, including first love, friendship, discrimination, Islamophobia, and loneliness. Hira becomes progressively ill all along the journey. Eventually, she starts vomiting blood and is diagnosed with TB, forcing her into isolation and turning her newly established house farther and farther away from home up and down.

Overall, this book is a beautiful blend of migrant narrative and ethnic explanation. Amna strikes a dynamic equilibrium in depicting both the profound and ordinary parts of Hira's life as a novice in America. Hira's unique perspective on society and herself while satirizing the follies of others around her provides a multi-layered plot.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

The House of Fortune (The Miniaturist, 2)

Book 5: The House of Fortune (The Miniaturist, 2) Hardcover – August 30, 2022

Author: Jessie Burton Category: Coming of Age Fiction, Family Life Fiction, Literary Fiction

Burton's tale has the throbbing thrust of a mystery, but her distinctive manner reveals deeper, more challenging insights than a spy thriller. This superb modern novel depicts society as a whole, in which growth and loss are closely interwoven.

A gripping, in-depth look at the burden of dark secrets and precisely what it takes to escape the clutches from the past and emerge into someone else's brightness. This magnificent narrative seems inscribed in the constellations decades back, enchanting and thrilling. This book is a work of elegance and perspective: Burton's ability to combine a profound grasp of human dynamics with precise factual accuracy is astounding.

Thea Brandt, a fiery Dutch-African teenager yearning for passion and eager to begin her entire life despite her family's controversial background. Burton's grim and luxurious new book tackles Thea's contradictory emotions and how they could jeopardize her hungry yearning for freedom. Burton's storytelling abilities show brightly in The House of Fortune, providing readers with a heady, captivating absorption into Thea's realm that they will be hesitant to leave.

Burton is a brilliant storyteller with an extraordinary ability for establishing the setting and creating ambience. Every page seemed like I could see, smell, live, and breathe it. Anyone who is going to read “The House of Fortune” is in for a treat.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

Dreamland

Book 6: Dreamland: A Novel Hardcover – September 20, 2022

Author: Nicholas Sparks Category: Family Life Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction, Contemporary Women Fiction

Mills thinks he is destined for a singing career until fate intervenes. He accepts a job to take a break from his household responsibilities. But when he meets Morgan Lee, the daughter of rich Chicago doctors, his world flips upside down. He wonders if the liabilities he has accepted must govern his life permanently. No one of those has ever experienced a pairing like she and Mills do.

Beverly, on the other hand, has chosen to depart her brutal partner and start afresh with her six-year-old kid in an off-the-beaten-path community.As her money dwindles and perils in each direction, she makes a reckless move that will change all she thinks to be genuine.

Two young people will go through their first love's thrill, heartache, and pain in one splendid week. Beverly will put her young son's love for her to the test thousands of miles away. And destiny will bring all three characters into a network of life-changing ties, leaving everyone wondering if the goal of a brighter life can ever withstand the burden of history.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

The Wish

Book 7: The Wish Paperback – August 2, 2022

Author: Nicholas Sparks Category: Small Town & Rural Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction, Contemporary Women Fiction

Maggie's life is turned upside down in 1996 when she transfers to live with a relative she barely knows in a small town. Her meeting with Bryce, a lovely, truthful West Point cadet, reminds her of what she might cherish about the wind-swept seaside city. He imparts photography knowledge to her, which has long-lasting effects on her life.

She emerges as a leading adventure photographer as the days pass. She splits her time between running a booming New York gallery and photographing remote locations all over the globe. This year, however, she is unexpectedly trapped for the holidays, unable to cope with a dire clinical diagnosis. She notices that she is becoming more and more reliant on a young assistant and that she is developing feelings for him. As the holiday draws to a close, she tells him about another Christmas from centuries ago and the passion that led her down a path she never would have anticipated.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

The Marriage Portrait

Book 8: The Marriage Portrait: A novel Hardcover – September 6, 2022

Author: Maggie O'Farrell Category: Renaissance Literary Criticism, Literary Fiction, Women's Domestic Life Fiction

"The Marriage Portrait" creates a rich inner environment and brilliantly retells a century, in this instance, the Italian Renaissance, a time of drama and grandeur, rippled with rich textiles and paintings, passion and pleasure, and the thirst for power.

The author has an extraordinary ability to put us in Lucrezia's shoes. Interpersonal feelings include fatigue and panic when she becomes stranded in an unfamiliar place just before her wedding. She feels profound emancipation and jubilant exhilaration in the early years of her marriage. She is disgusted and horrified when she sees how her husband is bloodthirsty and contemptuous. The final reveal is unexpected and brilliantly executed, causing this reader to cry. With it, the author demonstrates literature's ability to reject accepted pasts, to give us creative riches, and to elicit a quavering sense of possibilities.

Few authors are as at ease with the mechanics of language and real-life characters pulled from history. Despite the fact that the duchess died of a pulmonary embolism rather than poison, the author skilfully lowers her to her personal edge of the frame. His artistic license deftly depicts the growing gaps between husband and wife, indicating a system that has sparked the imaginations of our classical writers, like the Victorian poet.

Buy this book at Amazon Book Store.

 

This article is authored by: Sheuly Ahmed

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