51 Must-Read Books For Adults In 2022 (January-June) (2024)

Looking for a good book about a dysfunctional family whose lives you’ll be invested in?

Check out this character-driven (yet propulsive as it goes on) book centering around two siblings who seemingly have it all but who both are struggling under the weight of their own secrets and personal histories. Not to mention the ever looming shadow of their parents – the passing of their father from AIDs and the mother who left them 27 years ago to join the revolutionaries inPuerto Rico’s liberation.

Her only form of contact is sporadic letters to them until Puerto Rico experiences their most devastating hurricane in history and their mother reappears in their lives.

Thriller fans in need of an absolutely chilling read that pulls you in and doesn’t let go, do not bypass this one!

It’s about a psychologist named Chloe who has really worked hard to put her past behind her and finally feels like she’s achieved a precarious sense of happiness. 20 years ago, when Chloe was 12 years old, her father was locked up after being revealed as a serial killer when six teenage girls went missing that summer.

And then a teenage girl goes missing and she’s thrown back to that summer especially as there are similarities between this crime and her father’s, and she tries to work out whether she’s just being paranoid or there really are parallels to that summer.

I really have enjoyed Rachel Lynn Solomon’s YA and adult contemporary books and this is definitely one of my most anticipated books for 2022 because of that. This one looks so fun if you are into romcoms!

It’s about an ambitious weather reporter who, with the help of a reserved sportscaster, try to meddle in the stormy relationship between her boss and her ex-husband (the station’s news director) to push them back together so her boss will finally focus on mentoring her instead of constantly being distracted by him.

As they spend time scheming together, the temperature between the two of them rises.

I read this at the end of last year and it was one of the best books I read all year! I genuinely cannot recommend this book enough – definitely one of must-read books for 2022.

A character-driven, atmospheric thriller set in a strip club in the 1990’s centering around the murder and disappearance of two of the girls one night after leaving the club.

I have rarely read a book that uses multi-POVs so well – from the girls themselves, to a detective on the case to different patrons. Utterly compelling and perfect for fans of Long Bright River and Mare of Easttown.

I’ve been a fan of Marie for years through her YA novels, so I know her talent, and I am absolutely blown away by her adult fiction debut! You can read my full review of this book here.

Looking for a fresh, smart, and fun read about love but also really loving and accepting yourself?

30-something Yinka is single, has great friends and a great job but, what she doesn’t have, is a husband – something her mother is constantly reminding her of . It seems that everyone – from her aunties to her co-workers – have an opinion about her love life.

Yinka, however, has always believed that true love will find her when it finds her. But when her cousin gets engaged Operation Get Yinka A Date commences and Yinka is determined to succeed in finding love.

Don’t go into thinking this is a straight-up romcom by any means – while it is about love and romance it’s also a book about self-discovery.

I realized that whenever there is a sliding doors-esque novel in front of me, I will always put it on my must-read new books to read list! It doesn’t matter how buzzed about or how obscure I think the book will be – *I* always anticipate it and on the list it goes! This one is more a women’s fiction type read.

It’s about a woman at a crossroads in her life and has to choose between finally going for her dream of becoming a writer and see what happens with an artistic guy she just met or moving to London to revive her career and see if she can rekindle things with The One Who Got Away. In alternating chapters, we see how her life plays out if she stays or goes as both choices will change her life in big ways.

Fans of a more literary suspense type of novel? You know, a bit more slow burn and character driven?

This one deconstructs the story of a serial killer, who is scheduled to die in 12 hours, through the lens of women in his orbit – his mother, sister, the detective who caught him, etc.

While it appears to be about a serial killer, it’s largely an examination about our “obsession with true crime, serial killers, and stories about missing/dead girls, deconstructing the familiar trope that murderers are dark, misunderstood geniuses” among many other things worthy of examining.

I read that line in quotes in some of the marketing material for this book and this book shot to the top of my list of new books coming out in 2022 that I have to read.

I was interested in this one and then @bookofcinz on Instagram was RAVING about it so it shot up to become one of my must-read adult fiction books for 2022! I am a big fan of sibling books, as well as multi-generational stories – and this one has the makings of a book that I will LOVE.

It’s about two estranged siblings who must come together after their moms death and are given a recording their mom made for them – a recording that details her life story and reveals so many secrets that make the two siblings have to reconcile with everything they thought they knew about their parents and their life as well as a chance to reconcile with one another.

I feel like I’m picky about adult fiction with young narrators but the ones I love I REALLY love. This one has been getting some rave reviews that caught my attention enough to put it on my list of most anticipated books for 2022.

It’s a coming of age story from the eyes of an 11 year old girl who is sent, with her teenage sister, to their estranged grandfather’s for the summer after their father dies from a drug overdose and their mother is disappears. The summer becomes a transformative one for her as she makes sense of her new life, heals from the past traumas and transitions from childhood to adolescence.

An adult fantasy from Rebecca Ross that sounds absolutely like something I’d love! It’s about two childhood enemies who have to team up together when girls from their clan start to go missing from the magical isle they grew up on.

As they attempt to get the spirits of island, who they think took the girls, to give them back they find darker and more sinister forces at work as they unearth long buried secrets.

I’ve heard the setting is Scottish-inspired which intrigues me but also we love a good enemies to lovers romance over here! Also love a good enchanted land!

I’m so excited for a new Lucy Foley! Her books always keep me in suspense with tons of atmospheric goodness.

Jess, broke and alone, decides she needs a fresh start so she contacts her brother in Paris to see if she can crash with him. When she shows up to his surprisingly nice apartment, she finds her brother nowhere to be found and he never does show up.

As she tries to piece together her brother’s situation, she meets some of his neighbors and finds that they just might know more than she realizes about her brother’s disappearance.

I’m excited for this author’s adult romance debut!

It’s about a girl who reluctantly heads back to the town she swore she’d never go back to in order to photograph her estranged step-sister’s wedding for the big paycheck promised.

Once there, she is surprised to find herself falling for the mostly unlikely blast from her past – her sister’s mean girl bff from childhood– when the two spend time during wedding celebrations.

Looks to be a fantastic sapphic, opposites attract romance in a small town!

One of my most favorite sub-genres of thriller/suspense books are Really Rich People thrillers. Like the 1% dark side. Give them all to me! This one sounds right up my alley!

This one, set in the high-stakes world of art forgery across the globe, is about a young woman who is a forger of famous art for high paying clients. When she gets the chance at a new career move she’s always wanted, she’s elated until she realizes none of it comes for free.

Contemporary Gothic Great Gatsby that blends horror and suspense with a dash of romance!!

It’s about a young woman who takes a job with a secretive and elite billionaire family. Between lavish Gatsby-esque parties that threaten to reveal the family’s self-destructive tendencies and the mysterious illness of the heir’s difficult son, the job is strange.

But it gets personal as she finds out that the billionaire patriarch is responsible for her own family’s downfall and she gets sucked into their world to plot her poison-wielded revenge (and tries not to fall for their disgraced daughter).

I always have enjoyed Rebecca’s YA books but I have been LOVING her adult fiction – The Dinner List and In Five Years gave me so much to talk about and discuss! This one looks great though on a personal level I know I’m going to cry with all the mother-daughter stuff!

It’s about a woman who decides to keep the trip to Italy she was supposed to go on with her mom who recently passed away – a long-planned trip to a town that was so special to her mother’s history. Feeling the spirit of her mother with her, she is shocked when in fact she SEES her mother. Only it’s her mother at 30 years old.

Confused at how it is possible, she nonetheless takes that summer to get to know her mother as the young woman she was before she was her mother. This is giving me total Faye, Faraway vibes which I really loved last year as it hit me on such a personal level. Check out other books set in Italy!

A Y2K New Years Eve set thriller?? Definitely one of my most anticipated new books to read in the thriller genre!

While everyone is waiting with bated breath for whatever fallout Y2K is going to bring (I clearly remember being scared as a teen), four teenage working at Blockbuster get attacked and only one survives. The suspect, a boyfriend of one of the girls, flees the police never to be caught.

Fast forward 15 years and the same thing happens at an ice cream store in town – 3 girls dead and only 1 survives.

In the aftermath of the latest crime, three people’s lives intersect – the lone survivor 15 years before, the brother of the fugitive who believes he’s wrong accused and the FBI agent digging to unearth secrets and solve both crimes.

I can’t even tell you how excited I am for Jennifer E. Smith’s adult fiction debut!! She’s a great writer of YA books and this book looks especially up my alley.

It’s about a young indie artist who unexpectedly loses her mother and ends up having a public meltdown that puts her career and everything she worked hard for at risk.

She reluctantly agrees to go on a week long Alaskan cruise with her father for the trip her parents were supposed to go on for their 40th anniversary with their friends — a tall order considering their prickly relationship.

On the trip she ends up finding much needed connection with him as well on a voyage of self discovery in ways she could never imagine – especially when she connects with another passenger on board who is struggling with his own life upheaval.

This feels like a great mashup between two things I love a whole lot – The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (deletion of the bad memories) and Black Mirror (the dark tech side of it).

It’s about a tech company that deletes unwanted memories and the doctor who works to protect her patients from further harm from the procedure when she senses something more nefarious going on – four of those patients who we follow and see the very real consequences they face when met with what they tried to forget.

Looks like a good discussion-worthy, interesting book – perfect pick for a book club!

I really enjoyed Ghosted by this author and this one really piqued my interest as it seems to have that same blend of mystery with romance that makes for an incredibly compelling and page-turning kind of book!

This one is about a woman who isn’t who her husband thinks she is – a fact he discovers while digging into her history while preemptively writing her obituary (a way to cope with her cancer and also it being his job as an obituary writer). Who is she? Is everything a lie?

The story is told in the present but we also get her perspective from 20 years before that contains all the things she tried to keep hidden from her husband.

I already told you I love Rich People Behaving Badly mystery/thrillers and this one is definitely one I am anticipating after not being able to put down People Like Her by Ellery Lloyd.

This one is a “murder mystery set in the secretive world of exclusive celebrity clubs, where the A-list members and the staff who serve them all have something to hide.”

It’s set during the 3-day grand opening launch of an exclusive new island getaway that only the most A-list of A-listers are invited to – an invitation coveted by all until the body count starts adding up and a glamorous weekend turns sinister.

Told through the perspective of four very different people who witnessed the events plus interspersed with news articles about the event, we watch the whole weekend unfold.

A new Simone St James! An aspiring true crime blogger meets a woman acquitted of two cold cases murders in the 70’s by chance and the woman agrees to let her interview for her website.

She visits the woman at the sprawling mansion that she isolated herself in after she was acquitted to conduct the interviews but she can never feel at ease when strange things happen every time she’s there.

The closer she gets to the woman and her story the more she thinks something feels very off. Was she really The Lady Killer or is there something strange going on at the mansion?

It definitely has those atmospheric, eerie vibes of The Sun Down Motel.I have a feeling it will be on the top of my Fall Vibes Reading List for this year!

Where are my historical fiction lovers at? Especially readers who are looking to get outside of the super popular time periods that reign supreme in the genre?

This one is a “sweeping historical saga following a Mexican army nurse and an Irish soldier who must fight, at first for their survival and then for their love, amidst the atrocity of the Mexican-American War.”

A rom-com set in New York will always catch my eye but add a genuine, personal recommendation from a friend who worked on the book and knows my reading taste in and out? PRICELESS.

Ready for this? New York City setting, a humiliating meet-cute gone viral, opposites attract! It’s about a girl who is having a REALLY awful day and the icing on the cake happens when she gets her dress stuck in the subway doors. A handsome (and well-dressed) man comes to her aid with his expensive suit jacket but her embarrassing moment goes viral and the Internet is now shipping these #SubwayQTs.

Thinking they will never see one another again, the city (or fate) has different plans for these two absolute opposites!

Multi-generational family sagas are my favorite type of family drama type book so I am really looking forward to this one! This one spans 70 years following the women of a Southern Black family in Memphis – -inspired in part by some of the author’s own family history. On some marketing material I read the author’s story of how this book came to be and really propelled this book to the top of my list honestly.

“In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father’s violence, seeking refuge at her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan’s grandfather built this majestic house in the historic Black neighborhood of Douglass–only to be lynched days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis. This wasn’t the first time violence altered the course of Joan’s family’s trajectory, and she knows it won’t be the last.”

We get Joan and her mother’s perspective along with her grandmother’s and aunt’s as the women help Joan understand the line of women she came from, heal and change her family’s legacy.

Station Eleven is one of my all-time favorite books and I’m so excited for this one as it sounds strange but like in THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE. I saw a letter from the author where she joked her working title for it was “It’s Deranged Because I Wrote it In 2020” and I’m just telling you I’m very much into that vibe.

There’s time travel! Moon Colonies! A story that spans from 1912 to 2401! Lemme just give you the actual summary because it’s a lot:

“Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled from polite society following an ill-conceived diatribe at a dinner party. He enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and suddenly hears the notes of a violin echoing in an airship terminal—an experience that shocks him to his core. Two centuries later a famous writer named Olive Llewellyn is on a book tour. She’s traveling all over Earth, but her home is the second moon colony, a place of white stone, spired towers, and artificial beauty. Within the text of Olive’s best-selling pandemic novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.”

This one looks like a delight for fans of memorable characters a la The Marvelous Ms Maisel, Maria Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette & Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine.

Set in the 1960’s it’s about a female chemist who gets fired from her job because she’s pregnant and unwed and also has a mind of her own. Quite the detour for her life and career, she reluctantly ends up taking a job as the new star of a cooking show where she mixes cooking with science – a revolutionary hour of television that housewives fall in love with and the men do not for the message she’s bringing each week.

At this point, if you’ve follow me for a while, you know if there’s time travel I will show up. But this one, oh THIS ONE, is an ambitious book about mothers and daughters AND time travel.

Three generations of women must work together, with the aid of time travel, to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their own family story. It spans generations and continents and looks truly fantastic – perhaps a great book club book for 2022!

Somewhere I saw this pitched as a Little Fires Everywhere set in France and that intrigued me. Plus I used to be a nanny so I’m always keen on the babysitter/nanny/au pair centered thrillers and suspenseful dramas.

Set in a wealthy Parisian suburb, centering around a group of au pairs, it tells the story of what happens after one of the au pair’s is arrested after a sudden tragedy in her host family. Told from the view of six different women, we slowly start to put together what really happened and if the au pair is really to blame or something else.

I love Beth O’Leary’s The Flatshare and The Switch so I’m eagerly anticipating another clever and delightful read from her!

It’s about 3 women who seemingly have nothing in common – except that all three of them are stood up by the same man on Valentine’s Day.

Is he just a jerky player? Is there something else going on there? Will they find out about each other? Will they forgive him? WHERE WAS HE IF HE WASN’T WITH ONE OF THEM?

I have a lot of questions already without reading and the summary is VAGUE. Probably for some delightful twisty reason.

An Abby Jimenz romance is always going to be full of heart and tears and the best characters to root for.

This one is an age-gap romance AND a social class gap romance between a city-dwelling ER doctor from a renowned medical family and the small town mayor/carpenter/jack of all trades.

Their chance meeting has all the chemistry immediately and, what should have been just a fling, begs to be something more. Things feel so right when she’s in his world but could they ever truly fit in each other’s worlds when their lives are so totally different and many things stand in between it working?

Family drama fans, don’t scroll past!

This one is about a woman who returns to London for the sudden death of her father only to find her family has completely fallen apart since she’s been gone – a brother in jail, a sister who has lost her ambition and a mother on the verge of a breakdown. Instead of returning back to LA, she decides to stay around and bring her family back together (and figure out what she wants for her life, too).

While still in a town, she has a chance meeting with a man she knew in high school that ends up making her question everything she knew about her family when she unearths a huge family secret – a secret that could risk losing her entire family if she pursues the truth.

“Two identical twin sisters and former child actors have grown apart–until one disappears, and the other is forced to confront the secrets they’ve kept from each other in this twisty thriller”

And that’s really all I needed to add this book to my must-read books for 2022 list!

Think Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen but more B-list and now as adults they are estranged. As they moved on from their childhood acting careers one went on to become the perfect suburban housewife while the other was quite destructive after her failed attempt at a solo Hollywood career.

Elli goes missing after supposedly checking in to a spa retreat, when things crumble in suburbia for her, leading Sam on a mission to find her sister.

If you loved Circe by Madeline Miller or are a lover of mythology in general, check this one out This one is the feminist re-imagining of the most vilified and hated Queen from the Indian epic Ramayana.

You won’t need to be familiar with the source material to be captivated by this tale that tells the life of Kaikeyi from overlooked princess into the powerful Queen she forged herself to be to carve out a better world for herself and the women around her in a world dictated by men and the gods. In her ascent she learns that the path she is forging is one that clashes with the gods destiny for her family and we’ll see the woman behind the choices that made her the vilified queen.

Emily Henry has blessed us with some really great perfect-for-summer romcoms in the past couple years and I hope we go 3 for 3 here.

A cutthroat literary agent and her sister head off to a small town in North Carolina for a month-long sisterly summer getaway to both escape the city for a little and hopefully break free of the ruts they are in.

Her break from the city are halted when she runs into her rival – a brooding editor back in the city. Constantly being thrown together, she realizes they have more in common than the books they both love so much and just maybe it’s time to be the heroine of her own story.

“Big Little Lies meets The Witches of Eastwick—a gloriously entertaining and knife-sharp feminist revenge fantasy about three women whose midlife crisis brings unexpected new powers—putting them on a collision course with the evil that lurks in their wealthy beach town.”

I’m familiar with this author through her YA stuff but WOAH this sounds like a must-read! A supernatural-ish murder mystery about friendship, sexism and female empowerment. Yes, please.

This speculative novel sounds incredible! It’s set in our world but in an alternate 1950’s there was an event called The Mass Dragoning of 1955 wherein some women spontaneously turned into dragons, caused destruction and off they went to the sky.

After this world-changing event, so many questions abound – why did it happen? Did the women choose it? What does it all mean? All those questions and more swirl in the mind of a young girl named Alex whose aunt became a dragon but whose mother did not and she’s. forbidden to talk about it or acknowledge her aunt exists. The story follows Alex leading up to the big event and then in the aftermath of it.

I really enjoyed Emma’s book All Adults Here and this one sounds so up my alley because I love the way she writes family stuff and everyday issues but also because I SO want to see her twist on time travel.. This still seems very much at its heart a family story (particularly a father-daughter story) but with a little light time travel a la 13 Going on 30.

Alice is turning 40 and her life is pretty great – minus the fact that the single father who raised her is on his deathbed. On the night of her birthday, Alice wakes up and finds out that she traveled back in time to her 16th birthday. The question begs: what would she do differently in this do-over? Can she get herself more time with her dad?

“A man who can not remember his own name wakes up in an apocalyptic landscape, injured and alone. He has vague memories of life before, but he can’t see it clearly and can’t grasp how his current situation came to be. He must learn to survive by finding sources of water and foraging for food. Then he encounters a boy—and he realizes nothing is what he thought it was, neither the past nor the present.”

A character driven story with a speculative setting – and a super vague summary going into it? You should know by now that is Jamie-bait.

I love a good high concept novel! This one is pitched as The Midnight Library meets The Immortalists.

The premise is this: it’s a regular ol’ day until suddenly, waiting for you as you leave your house, is a small wooden box that will tell you the exact number of years you will live. But it’s not just you that has received this – everyone over the age of 22 has too!

Society is in a frenzy and we follow some characters who try to decide whether or not they want to know and the implications of that decision.

It’s been 5 years since the love of Feyi’s life was killed in an accident. She’s rebuilt her life but her best friend insists it is time to start dating again.

Not looking for anything serious, she ends up in a steamy encounter that will open the door to so much more that summer – the possible launch of her art career and a tropical getaway to the home of a celebrity chef who happens to be the father of her new blossoming relationship.

Once on the island things get very complicated for Feyi and she must contend with what she’s willing to do for her second chance at love and how to hold space for the grief she carries while pursuing her future joy.

Ahh Nina LaCour has long been a favorite writer of YA literature and I know this is going to be spectacular because her writing and ability to cut to the heart is like no other – especially when it comes to grief, heartbreak and pain.

This one is both a coming of age story and a love story between two women who are both employed at a restaurant called Yerba Buena, both having experienced a tough adolescence, who come in and out of each other’s orbit but ultimately being pulled toward one another.

Seems like a good one for fans of Sally Rooney!

This one is about three best friends who have navigated everything together since childhood and continue, on the precipice of adulthood, navigating love, sex, and their Muslim faith as the stakes become higher in their lives – until one night that fractures everything and sends them hurtling towards different paths. Without the support of one another they find themselves adrift and must find their way back to each other but how will they when things were said they’ll never be able to take back?

I really, really love books about friendship so I’m very excited about this one!

A new book from the author of the delightful Evvie Drake Starts Over – one of my favorite light and easy reads to recommend to people! I have a feeling this one is going to be added to that list!

This one is about a woman, still reeling from her canceled wedding, who comes home to her small hometown in Maine to take care of her grandmother’s estate. Her 90 year old grandmother was a spirited adventurer who never married but, among her possessions, she finds a wooden duck along with a love letter at the bottom of a wooden chest.

Seemingly not worth anything, things get curious when someone steals the wooden duck and she decides to get the duck back which leads her on a journey of self-discovery but also uncovering her grandmother’s secrets.

This one is about a woman who lead a double life with two husbands that ends up with one husband murdering the other and the true-crime writer who, 32 years later, becomes obsessed with digging into the story to tell the woman’s truth of why she would risk it all for a double life.

Domestic suspense meets true crime with a portrait of motherhood, marriage and family.

Katie Cotugno writes some of the most piercing and raw contemporary YA I’ve ever read (How To Love and 99 Days are my faves!) with a specialty in wonderfully flawed characters and relationships and I am eagerly anticipating her adult fiction debut! Definitely one of my must read adult books for 2022.

A rom-com, set amidst the background of the #metoo movement in Hollywood, that is about a former child actress who had a terrible public breakdown at the height of her career and has since lived a private life away from the spotlight – that is until her former co-star on their hit show gets back in touch with her to get her on board with the show’s revival that could save his career and the two reconnect but also have to contend with the full story of what led to her breakdown so many years ago.

“The story of two Asian American women who band together to grow a counterfeit handbag scheme into a global enterprise–an incisive and glittering blend of fashion, crime, and friendship.”

I’ve been so in the mood for escape-y, fun grift books and this one is Hustlers meets Crazy Rich Asians. It’s about a woman whose life is imploding when she reconnects with an old college friend who, in need of a partner with a US passport whom nobody would suspect of wrongdoing, gets drawn into a global counterfeit handbag scheme. A success – until their operation is threatened and her friend disappears.

This one is a cat-and-mouse domestic thriller about the friendship between a con artist and the journalist who has been waiting to expose her for 10 years for her own reasons. As the two get closer in their friendship that is rooted in lies, not everything as it seems.

Sounds like a real page-turner!!