The Best Books of 2023, According to Glamour Staff

If you’ve ever mentioned Nora Ephron as an inspiration or rewatched “When Harry Meet Sally,” this is the book of the year for you. It's a good old-fashioned 90s romcom in 2023 paperback form. It’s a pure delight.

-Samantha Barry, editor-in-chief

This thriller is incredibly layered and complex, but not to the point where it's ever dull or unreadable; rather, it's engaging, fast-paced, and plot-driven.

Catton tackles many, many subjects—from environmental politics to late stage capitalism to virtue signaling in the social media age—with both wit and authority. Plus, she's thrown in a few love triangles for good measure. I can't recommend it enough.

-Sam Reed, senior trending news and entertainment editor

Oh, man. I know it sounds trite, but I truly could not put this book down. I got to the point where I would bring it up in every conversation I had (I even told Mindy Kaling about it in our Glamour interview). I just loved it so much and wanted everyone else to experience it.

The novel tells the story of the seemingly unbreakable bond between four sisters and the love, pain and secrets they share, which slowly come to the surface. I fell in love with these characters, and they were so fully formed that it felt like I knew them. The novel takes inspiration from "Little Women," and was picked for Oprah's Book Club, so truly, what else is there to say?

-Caitlin Brody, global entertainment director

There's nothing more fun than a main character who is a bad person, knows this fact and doesn't care, and who lets the reader into her internal dialogue. Such is the case with Jane the protagonist of Jessie Gaynor's deliciously satirical The Glow.

Jane is a Millennial New Yorker whose love life and career in public relations are both going nowhere fast, until she stumbles upon a woman named Cass on Instagram. Cass is a wellness guru with some let's just say unorthodox practices who offers retreats to wayward souls seeking enlightenment on a New Jersey farm. Jane convinces herself, and soon sets out to convince Cass and her meek husband, Tom, that she can turn Cass' fledging operation into a self-care powerhouse brand, the next Goop, if you will.

Jessie Gaynor's plot is breezy and hilarious, but where she really shines is the character of Jane herself, a self-centered and image-obsessed nightmare whose observations about NYC Millennial culture made me LOL more than once. You'll never look at wellness PR pitches the same way again once you've heard Jane's commentary on the entire endeavor.

-SM

This book came out this fall and it's such a pretty addition to my coffee table. It's about a phenomenon called the moon garden—gardens that are planted to explicitly bloom in the coolness of night to reflect moonlight and create spaces to meditate and escape. It's such an exotic concept that I'd never heard of.

The best part about the book is its gorgeous photography and illustrations that capture and detail these peaceful places, and though I lack the space to plant my own moon garden, it's still enjoyable to read and to imagine. I'll add that I'm giving a copy to my gardener mom for Christmas and I know she's going to love it too.

-Malia Griggs, commerce editor

While watching Succession, did you ever think to yourself, sure these people are nuts, but what if they were even more absolutely psychotic? If that's you, you should read about the Redstone family.

James B Stewart and Rachel Abrams weave a page-turning tale of Sumner Redstone, who built his family movie theater business into what we now know as Paramount Global, encompassing the movie studio, CBS and CBS News, and more. Toward the end of his life, Redstone began to grapple with the issue of, you guessed it, succession, and the jockeying between his daughter Shari and other executives is definitely HBO-worthy. But what takes this true story to its unbelievable next level is the fact that Redstone had multiple “girlfriends” in his life toward the end whose nefarious intentions to get their hands on his fortune are positively cinematic. I'd say this should be turned into a movie, but the twists are so nuts I'm not sure anyone would actually buy it. Truth, after all, is much stranger than fiction.

-SM

Of all the bakers on Great British Bake Off, season 9's Kim-Joy is by far my favorite. Her inventive and always-adorable bakes charmed me on the show, and Bake Me A Cat has no shortage of those.

While I've loved her last few cookbooks, and have baked many of her recipes, as a dedicated cat mom this book felt extra special for me. From "Pavlov's Kittens" (cat-shaped mini pavlovas) to a purr-ito Swiss roll, this book is full of sweet and savory recipes for all levels of bakers.

-Anastasia Sanger, senior manager, social creative development

I'm a sucker for a good dystopian thriller, but what makes Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut so powerful is how disquietingly plausible it is.

He imagines a world in the not-so-distant future where prisoners who are condemned to life in prison are given the opportunity to participate in what is known as the “Criminal Action Penal Entertainment” program, an “extreme sports” league where participants fight one another to the death on live television. If participants, known as Links, are able to survive long enough to become the most successful Link in the game, they can win their freedom, something no Link has ever been able to successfully accomplish. But Loretta Thurwar, a murderer who has become a star in the league, is almost there, if the powers that be will actually allow any Link to win their freedom.

Adjei-Brenyah's story forces the reader to stare at some uncomfortable truths about how we view crime and punishment in this country, and the fact that the world he creates, which is unbelievable but crucially not too unbelievable, makes this a book you'll be unable to forget.

-SM

I've been alive and cognizant for the rise of social media and influencer culture, but I could never capture the wide-spread, intense impact of it all—which this book does. It's cool (and a little chilling) the way Lorenz's book explores and distills the chaos of the past 20 years, starting with a Gossip Girl-esque social ranking website and moving into blogs and across Tumber, Twitter (sorry, X), Facebook, and beyond.

Lorenz is truly an expert on all the niches and nerdy subtleties of the internet, and it shows, though she's able to write about it in an approachable, engaging way. To see this living history articulated for the first time is truly wild, worthwhile, and will give you many topics to talk about at parties. It also makes me feel quite old, but that's for my Livejournal and me to explore.

-MG

I’ve now read this stunning novel twice in 2023, and I’m considering giving a third run. Cline’s razor-sharp observational satire—set in the exclusive enclave of present-day Hamptons—follows our pretty, rootless 22-year-old protagonist and obvious call girl Alex as she tries to navigate spaces in which she’s never truly welcome. After getting booted from Simon’s home, her most recently wealthy benefactor, she’s convinced that all she needs is a few days away and he’ll welcome her back with open arms.

What follows is is a slow burn of guttural dread as Alex bums around the Hamptons making bad choice after bad choice in order to get herself back in Simon’s sybaritic good graces. There’s also a vague storyline about what appears to be a pimp who is hell-bent on finding Alex, whose phone stressfully, never works. The parts about the people—children, really— she meets and manipulates are hard to read, but I couldn’t look away.

The cool detached writing is exceptional and the open-ended conclusion — which has been debated everywhere from Vanity Fair to Reddit —will stay with you long after you’ve finished the book and (if you’re anything like me), will cause you to constantly change your mind about what really happened on those last vital pages.

-Perrie Samotin, digital director

You've never read a murder mystery like My Murder, a story which takes all the tropes of the genre and makes you think about them in a whole new way. Like, what if a murder victim could come back to life, but only if the public cared enough about her?

Williams imagines this world, where in the not-so-distant future humans have developed technology to clone people who have died. When a serial killer murders five women in rapid succession in a Michigan town, the victims are deemed worthy of returning to life. The killer’s last victim, Louise, is perhaps the most sympathetic to the public, as she was a young wife and mother to an infant when she was killed. The new Louise remembers everything about her old life, except for the days leading up to her death. As she begins to work through her complicated feelings about her murder and new life, she begins to realize that the story she's been told about her past may not be what it appears. It's a delightful and thought-provoking exploration of the true crime industrial complex that's not to be missed.

-SM

I was obsessed with this book this year and not just because I grew up in Cork, the city where it is set. Caroline’s prose is witty, messy and instantly addictive.

-SB

If you've had bad hookups in your life, Maria Yagoda is here to tell you you're not alone. This insightful and deeply hilarious book blends research and firsthand accounts (both her own and that of others) to try to explain why sex—that is, heterosexual sex—doesn't live up to the hype.

But could it...can it? The book offers some hope, if only we could get enough men to read it too.

-Lindy Segal, interim deputy editor

I'm a huge fan of romance novels, and I've read all of Emily Henry's books. So when I saw that a new one came out this year, I ran to read it.

As usual, I cried, I laughed, and I read it in one sitting. I loved that this second chance romance also centers around the importance of adult friendships.

-JC

How many of us have often thought, “How do I become an influencer?” Well, thanks to Stephanie McNeal’s in-depth and revealing reporting, we get a front-row seat to some of the most popular influencers “influencing” right now. I

If you think you know what’s involved and what it takes to build an online empire one perfectly curated post at a time, think again. This is the perfect book for anyone who’s ever spent time on social media, and isn’t that all of us?

—Jessica Radloff, senior West Coast editor

Writers love books about writers—I know. But The Mythmakers isn’t just another novel about novelists—or journalists, for that matter, though our anti-hero of sorts, Sal, is a painfully relatable New York City transplant trying to make it in magazines…which we very quickly realize isn’t going as well as she hoped. Who hasn’t been there?

The “real” story, however, isn’t necessarily about Sal. It’s about the stories and story-tellers she seeks out after the fact. You’ll fall in love with each and every one of them along the way, and even start to root for Sal, a woman protagonist who dares to be unlikeable, as her steadfast and even stubborn persistence leads her to a tangled (yet touching!) web of tales that she—and the reader—could have never expected.

-Danielle Sinay, associate beauty editor

I know, I am surprised as you are that I am recommending a book in which every main character is a man. But Max Marshall's epic book about fraternity bros turned drug kingpins is just that good.

A novel-esque nonfiction book that is in turns Shakespearean and depressingly relatable to anyone with experience with the moral depravity of fraternity culture, Marshall tells the tale of Mikey Schmidt, a troubled teenager who found his place in the world by pledging Kappa Alpha at College of Charleston. The only problem? Schmidt soon realized he could reach his goals (money, influence, the attention of women) a lot faster if he just forgot this whole college thing and started selling drugs instead, and at C of C, there were plenty of people who were willing to become his customers.

Marshall masterfully spins the sordid tale of how a small-time frat drug operation led to a multi-state network of dealing, replete with murder, betrayal, and eventually, Schmidt's downfall and imprisonment. You won't believe Marshall is telling a true story, but the fact that he is makes his book an even more essential read.

-SM