Get your bookmarks ready, as this year’s stories will bring new and exciting plots because 2022 has a lot to offer bookworms in the year ahead. With genres of contemporary fiction, coming-of-age, romance, mystery, and a lot more to await. Here are 10 most anticipated novels of 2022, so prepare to add more books to your TBR pile.
Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho (January 4)
Diving into the depths of friendship and complexities of being young and alive, Fiona and Jane is a literary fiction that tells the story between the two titular Taiwanese American women and the journey of their friendship challenged by distance, romantic relationships, and betrayals.
Jean Chen Ho’s debut novel is one of the anticipated novels of 2022 with the story providing passion, resentment, and boundless love of two women coming to terms with themselves and each other through insecurities and shame that hinders them.
When You Get the Chance by Emma Lord (January 4)
The novel follows Millie Price as she goes on an adventurous escapade of finding her birth mother. New York Times Bestselling author Emma Lord launches her novel When You Get The Chance this 2022 that would take the readers to a mother-daughter quest. Millie Price is an aspiring Broadway star who lives with her lovable but extremely-introverted dad. Her father, after raising Millie alone, wants everything for her except leaving home to pursue her dream.
Millie lives her life through a protective dad and a troubling, ongoing drama club rival named Oliver, who seems to be a budding love interest. Dealing with her “Millie Moods” and issues, she stumbles across her dad’s mortifying moody LiveJournal from 2003 and gets the idea of looking for an ally by finding her mom– only if she figures out which woman. When You Get The Chance is a young adult fiction of connecting puzzle pieces of life. But how could Millie fit a new part of her life into her old one, without hurting anyone?
Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon (January 11)
Best selling author of love stories for teens and adults, Rachel Lynn Solomon is releasing her awaited adult romantic-comedy novel Weather Girl this year. On a quest to solve their bosses’ relationship issues, TV meteorologist Ari Abrams and sports reporter Russell Baringer team up to reconcile the divorced bosses with sneaky gifts and double dates. However, they eventually find themselves falling for their own love mission.
Black Cake: A Novel by Charmaine Wilkerson (February 1)
Black Cake is about unveiling secrets of a late mother named Eleanor Bennett who left a confounding inheritance of a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history and a voice recording that challenges her two children, Byron and Benny.
Charmaine Wilkerson marks her debut novel this 2022 with a story that leaves two estranged siblings from an inheritance of betrayals, secrets, memories, as well as names that could shape relationships and history. The journey comes along with the relationship of Byron and Benny and their mother’s revelations. “We can’t choose what we inherit, But can we choose who we become?”
Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay (February 3)
With its thrilling plot and puzzling incident, 2022 anticipates author Linwood Barclay’s psychological fiction that would Take Your Breath Away. The story goes with a missing woman, a husband suspected, and a veiled truth. One weekend, while Andrew Mason was on a fishing trip, his wife Brie suddenly vanished without a trace. He was assumed of the murder, but police could not build a strong case against him.
Andy eventually hit rock bottom, drinking too much and having been neglected. After six years, he was able to get his life back. One day, a woman suddenly appears at his old address with a resemblance to Brie — and as suddenly she appeared, she vanished. Take Your Breath Away is a suspense story unfolding what really happened and discovering the mystery.
The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. James (March 15)
The Book of Cold Cases traces a plot of a true crime blogger that unveils a case more than she bargained for. Author Simone St. James launches an anticipated mystery thriller novel this year. The story follows Shea Collins, a receptionist who runs a true crime website by night. The attempted abduction she escaped as a child kindles her passion.
The story goes along with the alluring, rich and eccentric twenty-three year old Beth Greer who was a perfect suspect of the Lady Killer murders: two men, apparently murdered at random with the same gun and strange notes left behind. Shea Collins was able to interview Beth Greer and discovers more than a manipulative murderer who might have dangers lurking in the Greer house.
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (April 5)
Award-winning and best-selling author, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a story that looks into time, love, a plague, and the idea of parallel universes. The novel takes place with detective Gaspery-Jacques Roberts who investigates an anomaly in time that uncovers an event that meets timelines of an aristocrat driven to madness, a trapped writer far from home as a pandemic devastates earth, and a childhood friend.
A chance to do something exceptional that will disrupt the universe’s timeline. Sea of Tranquility is a science fiction and fantasy novel that plays with time travel and metaphysics.
Memphis by Tara M. Stringfellow (April 5)
Inspired by the author’s own family history, Tara M. Stringfellow launches her debut novel Memphis that follows a ten-year old Joan, her mother, and younger sister who flees from her father’s violence and seeks refuge from her mother’s ancestral home in Memphis.
Joan is an aspiring artist who is met with obstacles showing the past interlacing the future and comes to see herself carrying on a long matrilineal tradition– and the women in her family guide her to healing. Understanding that her paintbrush is her sole weapon over vengeance. The story unfolds three generations of a Southern Black family and a daughter unearthing her ability to change her family’s legacy.
Book Lovers by Emily Henry (May 3)
A contemporary romance that takes place in the summer of two rivals and a plot twist they did not expect. Emily Henry’s Book Lovers is one of 2022’s most anticipated novels filled with adventure and romance. Nora Stephens is not an ideal heroine, not a laid-back dream girl and especially not a sweetheart.
When she agrees to go with her sister Libby on a trip to Sunshine Falls for the month of August, she didn’t expect bumping into Charlie Lastra, a bookish brooding editor. The fate of the two are tossed in a series of coincidences. But what they come across might reveal the carefully crafted stories they have written about themselves.
We Do What We Do in the Dark by Michelle Hart (May 3)
This year, author Michelle Hart releases a coming-of-age story, an LGBTQ+ literature that discovers a love story between a young woman’s life-changing affair with an older, married woman. We Do What We Do in the Dark tells the story of Mallory, a freshman in college who grieves her mother’s death but then meets a woman at the university’s gym that eventually changes her.
Mallory finds herself entranced by the woman as she desires not only her but what she is when they are together. The story pieces Mallory’s life of love, loss, and admiration. Revealing the consequences of desire that can change the course of someone’s life.
Other POP! stories you might like:
Nostalgic books to remind you why you fell in love with reading
BookTalk: TikTok creators’ most recommended books that are worthy of the hype
Five romance novels that talk about starting over and finding one’s self