The Best Novels of 2023?

My geekiness is showing. I always create book lists to educate myself about some aspect of book-dom. Today's list is a compilation of 36 sites with "Best Novels of 2023" that I found online. My sources were publications like newspapers and magazines; professional book review sources, like Kirkus Reviews and Publisher's Weekly; book award organizations, like Booker Award and National Book Award; and a few sources which took into consideration user/patron input, like Goodreads and Amazon. My sources were limited because many publications are behind paywalls and I didn't want to pay money to create my little list. I also shied away from library lists. I found them too overwhelming and broad to be useful. Overall, after much hunting, I found 36 sources that I was able to use. Most are from the USA, where I live, but a few are Canadian sources, and several are from the UK. The few Australian sources I attempted to view were behind paywalls. So I would say this is US-biased list. 

When I started the project I expected that the same 50-75 books would be listed over and over. That was not the case. There were likely 175-200 titles that were listed at least once. I got tired of typing out titles I hadn't seen on other lists, so I don't have an accurate number. I also started out thinking I'd only include books considered "literary fiction" but not one single list was organized that way. What was a girl to do? I included the novels the list included. Early on I decided to eliminate nonfiction titles, and apparently 2023 was a good year for nonfiction, thinking that would get way too complicated for me. 

Here is the list of the top twenty novels of 2023 according to my limited research, snipped straight from my Excel spreadsheet:

I've read: Yellowface, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, Tom Lake, Hello Beautiful, I Have Some Questions for You, This One Eden, and Victory City. (Hyperlinks provided to my reviews.) The Bee Sting, The Fraud, Birnam Wood, Crook Manifesto, The Covenant of Water, and Let Us Descend were already on my TBR but I hope to explore all of these books in the future, plus many others which didn't make the top twenty.

Which of these books have you read? What did you think of them? Let's discuss end-of-the-year book lists. Do you read the lists if you see them in publications or articles you run across? Do you add books to your TBR if you see them on "best of" lists? In the past have you found good books from these lists that you enjoy later?

-Anne