3 Book Recommendations from Books I Read in 2022

Hello friends! If you read the excerpt prior to opening up this post then you’ll know that ‘Everything Ami’ is officially two years old! Yay! I remember wanting to wait until February 22nd, 2022 to start this blog (due to ‘222’ being my lucky angel number), but I’m also impatient and couldn’t wait to start blogging again! No regrets. My welcome post went up on 2/22/21 but my actual first post went live the next day and it was about none other than my three book recommendations for fans of historical fiction. I love that.

With that said, we’re here to talk about my three book recommendations from 2022. My goal for the year was to read 20 books; I read 10. That’s alright- I had a very busy 2022 between work and applying to grad school, getting accepted and then moving abroad. All this said, let’s jump right in.

Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell. Oh man, this book. As you might know, thrillers are my favorite book genre and this book is one that I couldn’t put down. Ten years ago, fifteen-year old Ellie goes missing. In the present day, Laurel, Ellie’s mom has begun to date Floyd, whose daughter Poppy reminds Laurel so much of Ellie, bringing back old wounds and feelings she’d long wish to have forgotten. While I cry all the time with movies, books don’t always have this effect on me. This book, however, did make me shed a tear or two. Read it and find out why.

Verity by Colleen Hoover. Having read “It Ends with Us” by the same author and feeling lukewarm about it, I wasn’t sure ‘Verity’ was the book for me. Wrong! It’s a thriller and a pretty good one so it was absolutely the book for me. Lowen gets hired to finish a famous book series by author of suspense, Verity Crawford after the latter suffers a car accident. Moving into the Crawford home to sort through Verity’s book notes, Lowen stumbles upon an unfinished autobiography that leaves her spoked. Adding drama to the mix, Lowen begins to fall for Verity’s husband Jeremy and the mess that ensues I absolutely did not see coming. You absolutely have to read this twisted tale.

Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman. To be fair, this is one of my favorite books. I hadn’t read it in a while though and I’m happy to report that I love it just as much as I do every time I read it. Part of a series on the Owens witches, sisters Gillian and Sally are as different as night and day. Whereas Gillian is always getting into trouble, Sally is more practical (see what I did there? *wink*) and always has to bail Gillian out of whatever mess she happens to get into. While part of the story is about one of the biggest messes Gillain has gotten herself into, the story is mostly about the sisters’ childhood and bond, and even though it is not a thriller like the two books above, I do hope that its magic will captivate you and touch you the way this book touches me every time.