Welcome to the Love Bytes Reviewers’ Best of 2023

Another year has passed in which books have brought all of us a much needed escape and sense of comfort. Our Love Bytes team reviewed approximately 1,300 LGBTQ+ books in 2023, from  contemporary romance to fantasy, paranormal, historical, adventure, mystery, comedy and everything in between. Each day for the next few weeks, we will feature one of our reviewers’ top picks from books and audiobooks published in 2023. These lists highlight how diverse our tastes in reading are, and offer something for everyone. With thousands of fantastic new books each year, written by hundreds of creative and talented authors, it’s so difficult to narrow our lists down. We all have many favorite authors not featured here and wish we could acknowledge them all.

Jay’s 2023

For me, 2023 has been a tumultuous year, mainly recovering from an accident that happened in late 2022. So, I’ve not read that many books that were written in 2023. If I was reading, it was generally older books that are comforts reads – I’m sure you’ve all been there before – lost in a familiar story.

In light of this, I’d like to give a different perspective on 2023. Since I write the New Releases post every Monday, I’ve gathered a lot of data and it gives an interesting perspective on the year. I don’t like to admit it in public, but I kind of like stats.

• So Many Books: There were over 2,400 new books released in 2023 from over 1,000 different authors writing a combined 500,000 pages
• We Like to Know What’s Next: Over 75% of the books were part of a series
• Power in the Author’s Hands: 70% were self-published
• Prolific Writers: Two authors tie for releasing the most books in 2023 – 21 each
• Double-Prolific Writer: One of these authors is also in the top co-writing team at 10 additional books
• More Prolific Writers: There were 18 authors that released over 10 books each in 2023
• We Like to Read in Summer: The biggest day for new releases was June 6th (23) but August had the most overall releases (224)

There was a lot to read in 2023. With the numbers above, I’m hoping you feel better since you know your TBR list isn’t too much or maybe you feel challenged to read more books – could you possibly read this much? Just remember to give yourself a break & have a good new year!

– Jay