My Top 10 Adult Reads for 2012

December 31st, 2012 Kimberly Feature 48 Comments

31st Dec

Adult Top Ten

My Top 10 Adult reads for 2012
Over the past year, I have read some fantastic adult genre books. Making this list of only 10 favorites was very difficult and a lot of my favorite authors weren’t even mentioned. So here is just a small taste of some  fabulous reads from 2012:

#10.Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed
by Anna Campbell
Series: Sons of Sin #1
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, Forever
Publication date: September 25, 2012
Genre: Adult Historical Romance
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

Will a week of seduction…
Desperate to save her sister’s life, Sidonie Forsythe has agreed to submit herself to a terrible fate: Beyond the foreboding walls of Castle Craven, a notorious, hideously scarred scoundrel will take her virtue over the course of seven sinful nights. Yet instead of a monster, she encounters a man like no other. And during this week, she comes to care for Jonas Merrick in ways that defy all logic—even as a dark secret she carries threatens them both.
…Spark a lifetime of passionate surrender?
Ruthless loner Jonas knows exactly who he is. Should he forget, even for a moment, the curse he bears, a mere glance in the mirror serves as an agonizing reminder. So when the lovely Sidonie turns up on his doorstep, her seduction is an even more delicious prospect than he originally planned. But the hardened outcast is soon moved by her innocent beauty, sharp wit, and surprising courage. Now as dangerous enemies gather at the gate to destroy them, can their new, fragile love survive?

#9. Third Grave Dead Ahead
by Darynda Jones
Series: Charlie Davidson series #3
Publisher: St. Martin Press
Publication date: January 31, 2012
Genre: Adult Paranormal
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

Charley Davidson-grim reaper extraordinaire, private investigator . . . meh-is practicing her profession under the influence, caffeine and copious amounts of it, due to an extreme desire to induce insomnia. Every time she closes her eyes, Reyes Farrow, the part-human, part-supermodel son of Satan, is there. Only thing is, he’s a tad peeved. She did bind him for all eternity, so it’s hard blame him. But 13 days without a wink is bound to bring out the crazy in a girl. So, when a man hires her to find his wife, Charley accepts the job with one goal in mind: Put the man behind bars, and not the wet kind. She can sense the guilt waft off him and vows to find the woman’s body and prove he’s a murderer. In the meantime, Reyes is back in prison and none too happy about it . . . so Charley thinks, until she is carjacked by the dark-haired rake, who swears the very man he went to prison for killing is not only alive, but close by. And he wants Charley to find him. While a visit to her old friend Rocket sheds no light on Reyes’s situation, Charley finds out the man’s wife is still alive and time is running out. Finding her before she dies would be a miracle, but she has to try. Together with the help of a fashion-impaired receptionist named Cookie, Charley sets out to bring the bad guys to justice. She just hopes Reyes is not one of them. And that she’s not hallucinating from her self-induced bout with insomnia

#8.The Reckoning
by Alma Katsu
Series: The Taker Trilogy #2
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication date: June 19, 2012
Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

SECOND IN ALMA KATSU’S GRIPPING SUPERNATURAL TRILOGY THAT BEGAN WITH THE TAKER  Lanore McIlvrae is the kind of woman who will do anything for love. Including imprisoning the man who loves her behind a wall of brick and stone. She had no choice but to entomb Adair, her nemesis, to save Jonathan, the boy she grew up with in a remote Maine town in the early 1800s and the man she thought she would be with forever. But Adair had other plans for her. He used his mysterious, otherworldly powers to give her eternal life, but Lanore learned too late that there was a price for this gift: to spend eternity with him. And though he is handsome and charming, behind Adair’s seductive faÇade is the stuff of nightmares. He is a monster in the flesh, and he wants Lanore to love him for all of time. Now, two hundred years after imprisoning Adair, Lanore is trying to atone for her sins. She has given away the treasures she’s collected over her many lifetimes in order to purge her past and clear the way for a future with her new lover, Luke Findley. But, while viewing these items at an exhibit at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Lanore suddenly is aware that the thing she’s been dreading for two hundred years has caught up to her: Adair has escaped from his prison. He’s free— and he will come looking for her. And she has no idea how she will save herself.

#7. Royal Street
by Suzanne Johnson
Series: Sentinels of New Orleans #1
Publisher: Tor
Publication date: April 10, 2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

As the junior wizard sentinel for New Orleans, Drusilla Jaco’s job involves a lot more potion-mixing and pixie-retrieval than sniffing out supernatural bad guys like rogue vampires and lethal were-creatures. DJ’s boss and mentor, Gerald St. Simon, is the wizard tasked with protecting the city from anyone or anything that might slip over from the preternatural beyond. Then Hurricane Katrina hammers New Orleans’ fragile levees, unleashing more than just dangerous flood waters.While winds howled and Lake Pontchartrain surged, the borders between the modern city and the Otherworld crumbled. Now, the undead and the restless are roaming the Big Easy, and a serial killer with ties to voodoo is murdering the soldiers sent to help the city recover. To make it worse, Gerry has gone missing, the wizards’ Elders have assigned a grenade-toting assassin as DJ’s new partner, and undead pirate Jean Lafitte wants to make her walk his plank. The search for Gerry and for the serial killer turns personal when DJ learns the hard way that loyalty requires sacrifice, allies come from the unlikeliest places, and duty mixed with love creates one bitter gumbo

#6. Shadow of Night
by Deborah Harkness
Series: All Souls Trilogy #2
Publisher: Viking
Publication date: July 10, 2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches’ cliffhanger ending, Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew’s old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens. Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season.

#5.Taking on the Dead
by Annie Walls
Series: The Famished Trilogy #1
Publication date: September 20, 2012
Genre: New Adult Post Apocalyptic
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon
Read my review

 

Life for Kansas was perfect until the day the world changed.
She has been hiding out for four years in solitude. It’s the only way to survive. The only way not to draw the living dead. Helping a small group of people, she learns the new world might not be what she assumes. Venturing out of her refuge and comfort zone, she meets Rudy, who helps her find a greater purpose. She realizes that the world has moved on without her. Only it’s not what she expects. Her knowledge of the living dead grows and only makes her more curious as humanity continues to hang on by a thread. While on her search for answers she finds comfort in new friendships and love, but her past seems as if it will haunt her forever. Kansas takes it upon herself to help other survivors, which would be easy if the famished were the only obstacles.In a trilogy plot thick with twists and turns, this adult dark fantasy is emotional as much as it is horrifyingly gripping.

#4. A Rogue By Any Other Name
by Sarah MacLean
Series: The Rules of Scoundrels #1
Publisher: Avon
Publication date:  February 1, 2012
Genre: Historical Romance
Buy: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/ Book Depository
Read my review

 

What a scoundrel wants, a scoundrel gets . . A decade ago, the Marquess of Bourne was cast from society with nothing but his title. Now a partner in London’s most exclusive gaming hell, the cold, ruthless Bourne will do whatever it takes to regain his inheritance—including marrying perfect, proper Lady Penelope Marbury. A broken engagement and years of disappointing courtships have left Penelope with little interest in a quiet, comfortable marriage, and a longing for something more. How lucky that her new husband has access to such unexplored pleasures. Bourne may be a prince of London’s underworld, but he vows to keep Penelope untouched by its wickedness—a challenge indeed as the lady discovers her own desires, and her willingness to wager anything for them . . . even her heart.

#3. The Restorer
by Amanda Stevens
Series: The Graveyard Queen #1
Publisher: Mira
Publication date: 2/21/2012
Genre: Adult Urban Fantasy
Purchase*:Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

My name is Amelia Gray. I’m a cemetery restorer who sees ghosts. In order to protect myself from the parasitic nature of the dead, I’ve always held fast to the rules passed down from my father. But now a haunted police detective has entered my world and everything is changing, including the rules that have always kept me safe. It started with the discovery of a young woman’s brutalized body in an old Charleston graveyard I’ve been hired to restore. The clues to the killer—and to his other victims—lie in the headstone symbolism that only I can interpret. Devlin needs my help, but his ghosts shadow his every move, feeding off his warmth, sustaining their presence with his energy. To warn him would be to invite them into my life. I’ve vowed to keep my distance, but the pull of his magnetism grows ever stronger even as the symbols lead me closer to the killer and to the gossamer veil that separates this world from the next.

#2. Blackout
by Mira Grant
Series: Newsflesh Trilogy #3
Publisher: Orbit
Publication date: May 22, 2012
Genre: Adult Post-Apocalyptic /Zombie
Purchase: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

Rise up while you can. -Georgia MasonThe year was 2014. The year we cured cancer. The year we cured the common cold. And the year the dead started to walk. The year of the Rising. The year was 2039. The world didn’t end when the zombies came, it just got worse. Georgia and Shaun Mason set out on the biggest story of their generation. The uncovered the biggest conspiracy since the Rising and realized that to tell the truth, sacrifices have to be made. Now, the year is 2041, and the investigation that began with the election of President Ryman is much bigger than anyone had assumed. With too much left to do and not much time left to do it in, the surviving staff of After the End Times must face mad scientists, zombie bears, rogue government agencies-and if there’s one thing they know is true in post-zombie America, it’s this:Things can always get worse.

#1. The Twelve
by Justin Cronin
Trilogy: The Passage #2
Publisher: Ballentine Books
Publication date: October 16, 2012
Genre: Adult Dystopian
Purchase*: Barnes and Noble/Amazon/Book Depository
Read my review

 

THE EPIC STORY OF THE PASSAGE CONTINUES
At the end of The Passage, the great viral plague had left a small group of survivors clinging to life amidst a world transformed into a nightmare. In the second volume of this epic trilogy, this same group of survivors, led by the mysterious, charismatic Amy, go on the attack, leading an insurrection against the virals: the first offensives of the Second Viral War. To do this, they must infiltrate a dozen hives, each presided over by one of the original Twelve. Their secret weapon: Alicia, transformed at the end of book one into a half human, half viral—but whose side, in the end, is she really on?

Wow that was hard and you will notice not all of these are five stars..but they stood out in my mind.
What adult novels stood out for you in 2012? 

Honorable Mentions 
Redemption by Susannah Sandlin
Sweet Chaos by Misty Evans
Copyright (c) 2011-2013 Caffeinated Book Reviewer
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About Kimberly
Kimberly is a coffee loving book addict who reads and listens to fictional stories in all genres. Whovian, Ravenclaw, Howler and proud Nonna. She owns and manages Caffeinated PR. The coffee is always on and she is ready to chat. BlueSky | Facebook | Instagram

48 Responses to “My Top 10 Adult Reads for 2012”

  1. Cayce

    Third Grave Dead Ahead&Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet were both awesome. Loved how the 4th book ended 🙂
    And Blackout, of course 🙂

  3. Cayce

    Yes, more Reyes! I’m looking forward to many more Charley&Reyes books.
    After Feed I was devastated…, but Blackout made everything right again. And I loved how it ended:)

  7. Nick

    I’ve only read like 2 of the books from your list, but all of the others seem so good as well! I’m particularly interested in Black Out and Royal Street because I adore the covers!
    Thanks for sharing, Kim! 🙂

  9. Maja (The Nocturnal Library)

    Ohh, I totally forgot to include The Restorer on my list! I loved that book! Hopefully Stevens will finish book 4 soon, or I might just die. Anyway, I have to read Suzanne Johnson’s book, it wasn’t even on my radar, and I already own taking on the dead so it’s super good to know that you liked it.
    I love your picks!

  11. Carmel

    Aside from Darynda Jones’ series that I recently started (I’ve read the first two), I haven’t read ANY of these. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Suzanne Johnson’s books though. Thanks for sharing your list!

  16. Tanya Patrice

    Ooh I loved A Rogue by Any Other Name – and Blackout. 2 of my fave reads of the year too.

    Tanya Patrice
    Girlxoxo.com

  18. Cherry Mischievous

    I read First Grave On The Right and I’ve read A Discovery Of Witches and they were good! If the subsequent books in these serieses are even better then I need to read quicker! 😉

  19. kindlemom1

    Some of these are definitely in my top 10 as well and some of these are in my TBR pile and after reading this I realize I really need to push them up!!

  22. Christa Seeley

    I loved the Reckoning! Absolutely couldn’t put it down. And I just got the entire Feed series for Christmas so I’m glad to hear you enjoyed it!

  24. Cherry Mischievous

    Ah… this is where you might be scared, kimbacaffeinate, because somebody crazy like me is stalking you right back! 😉

  26. Book Savvy Babe

    awesome list! I love the charley Davidson series too! I have the Sarah MacLean one on my kindle, but haven’t had the chance to read it yet. And, Cheers for The Reckoning, that book and series took my by surprise this year, can’t wait for the third book 🙂 Here’s to many more awesome reads in 2013! Book Savvy Babe

  28. Giselle Cormier

    Ooh dude I still have to read the last Feed book! Such a great series I don’t want it to end! I also want to reda the Taker series and I’m stoked that Darynda made your list! 😀

  29. kimbacaffeinate

    Oh hands down one of my fav series EVER! Be sure and read the novella San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats (A Newsflesh Novella)

  31. Sharon - Obsession with Books

    An awesome list! I want to read so many of the books you mention, especially The Restorer & Taking on The Dead.

    Happy New Year Kimba!! <3

  35. Candacesbookblog

    I got The Taker this year but haven’t read it yet. I started the Charley books but have only read the first so far. It was awesome though! Love your list!

  37. April

    Wow, I’m copying several of these down – I haven’t heard of them or I keep forgetting to add them to my TBR list! And since I’m making it my mission to read more of “my” own books in ’13 I can hope to get to more of them! 😀 Great list!! So glad the first in the Graveyard Queen series made it ! Love that series so much! Just gets better and better with each book. I love that she’s coming out with her first young adult novel too, so that should be interesting! Happy New Year!! 😀

  39. GRgenius

    Hmm, let’s see…I’ve read NONE of these (can you believe it?) but numbers 9 and 6 are definitely on my wish list. Here’s to a fab year of reading in 2013!

  44. readingdiva

    Kim you are my hero, that’s a great list. I really need to hurry and read them. I am looking forward to reading The Twelve, All Souls Trilogy – I have both books but haven’t gotten to it yet & The Taker Trilogy as well. Thanks for sharing the list!

  45. Proserpine Craving

    Totally agreeing with you about Sweet Chaos by Misty Evans! I can’t wait to read the next book in this series!!! The Restorer sounds great to, I should have read it already (since I work in this field) but never had the time! I recently started Darynda Jones’ series and I’m pretty sure the entire series is as good as the first book!

  46. Cyn

    I’m really excited for book two of the Rules of Scoundrel series!

  47. Bookluvrs Haven

    This is awesome. I have been playing with html code until looking at html gave me an instant headache. This is so helpful! I noticed you included info on adding the goodreads button on that post as well. That was on my list to ‘find out how to do’ for the blog.

    Thank you for sharing the information!

    Lily

  48. Bookluvrs Haven

    I’ve been going nuts trying to figure out how to post the covers on synopsis boxes just like you did in your post. ARGHHH and I can’t figure it out. It looks so dashing!

    Thanks for this post. I love my zombie reads, and I found one on your list that I hadn’t come across yet, so that is awesome.

    I scrolled down the review for your rating of ‘The Twelve’ and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the 5 *s. I loved ‘The Passage’, but I saw a lot of mixed reviews from like minded readers and friends. I have ‘The Twelve’ waiting for me on my kindle, and I can’t WAIT to read it!!!!

    – Lily