Since I'm so dreadfully behind on actually doing monthly wrap-ups this year, I thought it might be fun to branch out into some other types of content. Like, for instance, ranking all 30 of the 2024 releases I've read this year (and last year).
This list spans fantasy, sci fi, and contemporary romance (with a random YA thriller thrown in for good measure) so it may feel a little all over the place. But that's fine. Only boring people separate their ranking lists by genre!
Let's get into it.
(Time is fake and there are no rules to review blogs, so here is my April review, which was written late and is now being post even later)
I've decided to do two separate wrap-ups for March and April, even though I'm working on them simultaneously due to how severely I've been neglecting this blog. It's fine! This way will be better for future organization...probably?
April and March were both slow reading months for me. April is a very busy month for me at work, and I just haven't been making time for reading lately. It is what it is.
Pretend I posted this on time (and not 8 months late). Don't ask when the rest of my monthly wrap-ups for this year are happening, because I don't know. I may just do some kind of big combined wrap up, IF I feel like it.
Without further ado, the 3 books I read in March.
A couple of weeks ago, Reactor released an article about the best sci fi and fantasy books of the 21st century, as decided by the Reactor staff and various SFF authors. Following this, they put out a google form where readers could nominate their own best SFF books of the 21st century - so I decided to submit mine.
And then they actually decided to feature three of my quotes in the follow-up article!
I'm very pleased and surprised. I saved what I wrote in the form, just for my own reference, so I thought it would be fun to share my personal list of nominations in full. Disclaimer, of course, that if I were just making a list of my personal favorites, this list would be a bit different. "Iconic" is an interesting adjective to choose for lists like these, I think, because it denotes not just personal attachment but also cultural impact. As a result, while I like all of these books, some of them might be more broadly iconic than others. All of them are iconic to me.
Let's get into it!
Publication Date: March 12th, 2024
Read: February 2th - March 2nd
Rating: 3/5 stars
Maybe this book and I just have different priorities.
A Feather So Black is the story of Fia, a changeling who was left in the human realm as a child, with no memories of her past. At first, her eerie resemblance to the princess she replaced made people fear and shun her, but over time...Well, they still actually shun her, but the high queen eventually warmed up to her.
Fia has been trained in various skills by her adoptive mother's druid advisor, and we meet her when she's trying to steal a captured faerie creature from a prince. This does not go incredibly well (which is foreshadowing for my experience with this book, I suppose) but she does end up running into ROGAN, childhood friend to lover to ESTRANGED AND ANGSTY CHILDHOOD FRIEND. They have a "let's kiss in a dark corner to throw off the people who are chasing us" moment in like, chapter 2. This, perhaps more than anything, sets the tone.
Publication Date: July 19th, 2001
Read: March 31st - April 4th
Rating: 2.5/5 stars
This book was...very weird. And I truly wish I could say that with more enthusiasm.
I got a Kindle in February, and I feel like that's a very important piece of context for this month's wrap-up. For one thing, my Kindle came with two months of Kindle Unlimited, and KU immediately started recommending me crazy YA dystopians that I had either never heard of or had completely forgotten about. For another, it inspired me to actually get through a couple of the e-ARCs I've had downloaded for absolutely ever. I don't think I read a single physical book this February besides The Unmaking of June Farrow.
Let's get started!
Publication Date: October 17th, 2023
Read: February 8th - 9th
Rating: 3/5 stars
There’s so much to say about this book, but I’ve already talked about it so much that it almost feels like I’ve already written a review…even though I very much have not.
Publication Date: July 1st, 2014
Read: February 3rd, 2024
Rating: 1/5 stars
It’s amazing how I managed to entirely wipe this book from my mind, and yet when I saw it on Kindle Unlimited, I felt a glimmer of recognition nonetheless. Because I read this book. I don’t know when I read it, or even if I finished it at the time, but I know that I read this book.
And now, I have read it again.
Great news! It’s bad.
The premise of this book is: What if there were some congressmen who had campaigned tirelessly to make it legal to keep genetically engineered petite teenage girls as pets? Specifically so they could abuse these girls with absolutely no consequences? Wouldn’t that be messed up?
And then the plot of this book is: Wearing pretty dresses, eating lentils, and sitting on the edge of the pool & yearning for literally the first human boy you’ve ever laid eyes on.
Publication Date: February 6th
Read: February 16th
Rating: 4/5 stars
I don’t really why I decided to acquire an ARC of this book, given that I found both XOXO and The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea pretty middling. Maybe the cover appealed to me? Regardless, I was genuinely charmed by this book. I think that’s largely because of Sori, our lead. In XOXO, I remember thinking that she seemed like two different characters before and after she becomes friends with Jenny, but here she felt fully-realized and interesting, and I really liked the contrast between her cool & seemingly aloof outer persona with her soft, stuffed animal-loving interior. Sori is someone who seems cool but is actually cute, and that’s a character archetype I just like a lot. She also has a lot going on; she worries that she’s drifting away from Jenny, she’s often caught in the middle between two parents who should really get divorced, and she’s worried about disappointing her mother when she finally comes clean about the fact that she doesn’t want to debut as an idol. She’s used to balancing the needs of those around her and putting them before her own desires, which is why opening herself up to the fact that she wants to be with Nathaniel is a challenge for her in this book.
As for Nathaniel…I’m totally neutral on him. No, seriously. I don’t really like him or dislike him? He had believable ENOUGH chemistry with Sori (he listens to her, shows that he knows her well in various situations, cares about her, etc), but outside of that, I just didn’t feel like I got to know him well or was really invested in what I learned about him. One of his big personality traits is supposed to be that he’s a really jokey and flirty person, but I feel like even that didn’t come off super strongly? I mean, he made jokes, but I wasn’t necessarily cracking up when the jokes happened. Nathaniel is fine, and he has an acceptable amount of chemistry with Sori, so because she wanted him, I rooted for them.
Oh wait, I should tell you the premise.
It's mid February, so naturally it's finally time to post my January wrap-up.
This is the slowest January I've had since January of 2021, when I read exactly one book. But that's okay! It's not always about the quantity of books that you read, but the quality of the mediocre YA dystopians you reread. Or maybe the quality of the EXTREMELY GOOD, MUST-READ FANTASY TRILOGIES that you are still trying to get your traitor friends to read, so that you can TALK ABOUT THEM with people.
In other news, my new book club did not choose to read Fireborne as one of our next picks. But don't worry. I'm not discouraged. I'm ENcouraged! I'm energized! I'm actually going to redouble my efforts to get friends outside the book club to read the Aurelian Cycle! I'm not afraid to break into their houses and leave copies of Fireborne under their pillows...they can read it by osmosis, dammit!
If you know me in real life, please leave your windows unlocked at night <3 I have a book for you to read <3
Here's another cross-posted review of a book I read this month. I think this review has the dubious honor of being the first one star review of this book posted to Goodreads. So...that's fun!
I read an e-arc of Lady Macbeth through Edelweiss pretty much as soon as it was available for me to download, because I was very curious as to how a retelling of Macbeth that makes Lady Macbeth a 17-year-old girl was going to work. And I'm now forced to conclude that it...doesn't work, actually!
Full review below. I feel like there are at least a few spoilers, so proceed with caution if you care about that sort of thing.
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| At least the cover's pretty |
Publication Date: August 7th, 2019
Read: January 14th - 15th
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
The story of why I read this book goes all the way back to like, one or two years ago, when I was tasked with writing a bullet point description of it for a blind book display. You know, those displays bookstores and sometimes libraries do where they wrap the book in brown paper and describe it with some bullet points, and then you buy the book without knowing exactly what it is? Yeah. So! For some reason, out of every book I wrote a description for, this is one of the ones that vaguely stuck in my mind, and when I saw it available on Libby, I was like "Why not?"
Why not! I had fun with this book, even if it wasn't the best book of all time. At this point, I don't feel like I'll continue on to the sequel, but I don't regret reading this one. It was pretty fun, if also flawed.
I thought it would be fun to evaluate the accuracy of the bullet point description I wrote now that I've read the book, so here's the original description, with my commentary in green parantheses:
Now that we've gone over the bullet points, I guess we should go over the actual plot. Nor and Zadie are twin sisters who live on a floating village. Everyone from their village is forbidden to set foot on land, for reasons having to do with the history/mythology of their world. They do a lot of fishing and pearl diving, but the rare pearls their region is known for are becoming less common as the oysters are over fished, plus they're not fetching as much money as they used to. The only way for someone to legally leave this village is to be chosen as the next bride of the prince of Ilara. Nor knows she won't be chosen, because only the most beautiful girl can be chosen, and she has a small scar on her face that renders her imperfect.
As everyone expects, Nor's twin sister Zadie (who is perfectly beautiful, unlike Nor) is the one chosen to be the prince's bride. But! She doesn't want to go. She's in love with a childhood friend - the same exact childhood friend their parents decided to betroth Nor to as soon as Zadie was chosen as the new princess. Desperate to avert her fate, Zadie takes drastic steps and injures herself with a dangerous jellyfish, so that she'll have scars that will disqualify her from the whole princess thing.
Only then, it turns out that sending a less-beautiful replacement princess-to-be will be seen as an insult and could result in the whole village's fresh water supply being cut off, so it's determined that Nor will assume Zadie's identity and role as the prince's bride (with the help of a special cosmetic "stain" that hides her scar) in order to keep up appearances.
But of course, once she gets to the Ilaran capital, things aren't how she expected. Nor thought being the prince's bride would give her more freedom than she had at home in Varenia, but she's actually even more restricted in the dark, mountainous palace. Also, the previous Varenian queen is dead (or is she?), and the prince she's betrothed to is sadistic, cruel, and so obsessed with finding a cure to the curse he thinks he's under that he's willing to let children die as collateral damage. Nor begins to realize that the power structures that are in place between Ilara and Varenia only exist to allow Ilara to exploit Varenia (we love a class consciousness slay), and looks for ways to prevent the prince from exploiting Varenia even more.
The prince she's engaged to also has a hot half-Varenian younger brother who's the real love interest of this book, but I don't feel like I need to talk about him much. Not much time is spent on developing his relationship with Nor, so I was not invested in them as a couple. It came off like Nor just thought he was hot and liked him better than his brother because he wasn't a sadist who lets children die for ~science. We need more to recommend love interests besides the fact that they aren't their evil brothers!
(Also, I've forgotten both of the princes' names already. Oops...)
I really enjoyed the first half of this book, where we're exploring Nor's life in Varenia. Nor's love for and protectiveness of Zadie felt real, and so did her frustration with her mother, who has spent their lives obsessing over their beauty, all so that one of them would eventually be chosen to be the next Ilaran princess. The childhood friend character whose name I don't remember was a nice change of pace from a lot of characters in his archetype, mainly because he has feelings for Zadie instead of having a doomed crush on Nor. Also, I liked the setting of the floating ocean village.
The castle-carved-into-a-mountain setting was cool too, but I just felt like the plot got a lot weaker once we got to Ilara. Most of the book after that point felt like it was Nor trying to figure out what to do about the evil prince and how to get in contact with her childhood friend. Just not super compelling, given the interesting set up.
Right after finishing this book, I felt like I might read the sequel, but that impulse has largely faded. I'm content to leave this book as it is, especially after looking through some of the sequel's reviews to get a sense of the vibe. The vibe is: either we're glad this was only a duology and didn't have a filler middle installment, or we think this should have been a trilogy because we didn't have enough time to develop all the ideas. Either way, it sounds like people were a bit whelmed by the sequel, and I don't have time for books I know will whelm me...except maybe Reached by Ally Condie.
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| Don't ask why this is the paperback cover and my other review was the hardback cover...I don't have answers |
Publication Date:
Read: January 7th - 8th
Rating: 3/5 stars
I think it's fascinating how all three books in this series have such similar average ratings on Goodreads. But Crossed has the lowest average, because we all agree it's the worst Matched book.
Honestly, Crossed started off surprisingly strongly. I was like, "Maybe I was wrong about this book being boring, and all about the characters wandering around a canyon?" But then we got to the canyon and started wandering around, and...well...
There are spoilers for Matched and Crossed ahead, if you're still trying to avoid spoilers for either of these books that have been out for over a decade!
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| Let's not pretend this cover isn't iconic |
Publication Date: November 30th, 2010
Read: January 4th - 5th
Rating: 3.5/5 stars (rounded up to 4 stars on goodreads, where this review is also posted)
I had fun rereading this!
My journey with Matched is as follows: I read it at some point as a teenager, probably in high school. I enjoyed it but definitely thought the second book dragged and the third one tried to cram in too much plot to compensate. From then on, I didn't think about it that much. I was surprised to hear people talk about Matched as one of the worst YA dystopias, because...c'mon guys. There are wayyyy worse ones out there. The one where the "dystopian" conflict is that people take nutrition pills instead of eating? The one about virtual reality that completely fails to make compelling commentary about virtual reality?
The problem is, no one but me read Hungry or Unplugged. But even among POPULAR YA dystopias, I feel like Matched is better than, like, Delirium, where love is illegal and everyone gets brain surgery to remove their capacity for love, because This Will Make Society Better. Delirium's second book was much worse than Matched's. If you're going to write a second book where nothing of import happens, I'd rather it be set in a canyon than in a random underground room, y'know?
Holiday seasons are always really busy for me, so I guess it's not that surprising that I entirely neglected this blog, but...um...sorry for completely neglecting this blog! Here's what I read in November and December.
