Welcome to my annual post discussing my best of shelf picks for 2022! My regular readers will know that I rarely rate a book above 4 stars and even fewer of those make this list. Of the nearly 150 books I’ve read so far this year, I’ve chosen 5 for this list – a much lower number than recent years.

As a reminder of the criteria I use for this list, the book has to be published in the same year, I should have given it a rating of 4 stars or higher, with something that I felt made it stand out over the other books. The titles are actually ranked for a change this year. I usually have a really hard time doing so, but this time, there were some reads that were simply head and shoulders above the rest, so I figured it would be a shame to not rank them. Without further ado, let’s check out my favorite books of 2022!