Hello, lovelies! Man, it’s been awhile since I typed that. How are y’all doing? I’m still alive. I just realized saying that isn’t as hyperbolic as it used to be after a long hiatus. Anyway, I am back.(I hope).
Last year was a lot. I will honestly say that it was worse than 2020, which is saying something. There is too much to say in that regard, so I’ll save that for another time if I end up writing about it at all. Today, we are talking about the finer things in life: books!
It’s funny. When I started this blog, my friends suggested I make it a book blog, but I said no because I did not read nearly as much as I do now back in high school, but now I actually read enough books to have enough to talk about. Anyway, today, I will be talking about my top 10 books of 2021. These aren’t necessarily the greatest “quality” books I read last year, but they are the ones I enjoyed the most.
Previous Installments:
10.//A Sky Beyond the Storm by Sabaa Tahir
GoodReads Synopsis
Synopsis of first book – An Ember In The Ashes
Laia is a slave. Elias is a soldier. Neither is free.
Under the Martial Empire, defiance is met with death. Those who do not vow their blood and bodies to the Emperor risk the execution of their loved ones and the destruction of all they hold dear.
It is in this brutal world, inspired by ancient Rome, that Laia lives with her grandparents and older brother. The family ekes out an existence in the Empire’s impoverished backstreets. They do not challenge the Empire. They’ve seen what happens to those who do.
But when Laia’s brother is arrested for treason, Laia is forced to make a decision. In exchange for help from rebels who promise to rescue her brother, she will risk her life to spy for them from within the Empire’s greatest military academy.
There, Laia meets Elias, the school’s finest soldier—and secretly, its most unwilling. Elias wants only to be free of the tyranny he’s being trained to enforce. He and Laia will soon realize that their destinies are intertwined—and that their choices will change the fate of the Empire itself.
My Review
I’m definitely including this book here because of the experience of reading it rather than it’s quality. In fact, the third book to this series was what made me realize I don’t like YA fantasy back in 2018. I had read so many books that I thought were only okay for a decade because they were some of my friends’ favorites, and that book gave me the epiphany that I don’t like fantasy. So why did I reread this series?
I read the first book in my freshman year of college, and it was really meaningful to me because it was the first dystopian series I had ever read with a Brown main character. This was in early days when publishers were just starting to publish diverse books, so having a dystopian book by a Pakistani author was quite exciting. The first book is amazing. I highly recommend it, but the main fantasy elements weren’t expanded until the second book, and they weren’t executed well. It felt like the author made up things as she went along to make the plot work. Despite this, I still wanted to finish the series because I wanted to know what happened to the characters. I was still invested in their endings and relationships despite not reading the series in years, but I didn’t remember enough about the first three books to go into the fourth book.
The first book was just as amazing as I remembered it and the second and third book were better than I remembered them. The worldbuilding and character changes weren’t as bad as I thought they were after reading them one after another. It was honestly just nice to get sucked into one world again since I read all four of the books in a row. That’s why this series made it on the list. I had a good reading experience rereading the series before getting to the last book.
The last book was honestly pretty good. My complaints about the magic system remain the same, but that’s not why I was there. I loved all of the character interactions in this book and enjoyed all the angst because this author writes great angst. The surprising thing is that this book killed both too many people and not enough people. Considering the war, I think more people should’ve died, specifically in regard to one person. And one character lost too many people. It made the ending less satisfying. Also, lots of deus ex machina last minute fixes. I wasn’t into that, but overall, I enjoyed this book significantly more than the third one. (I highly recommend the first one. Honestly, you can read the first two and leave it as an open ending if you wanted to. That’s also what I say now about the show The 100. “Watch the first two seasons then imagine a happy ending.”)
9.//Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren
GoodReads Synopsis
Hazel Camille Bradford knows she’s a lot to take—and frankly, most men aren’t up to the challenge. If her army of pets and thrill for the absurd don’t send them running, her lack of filter means she’ll say exactly the wrong thing in a delicate moment. Their loss. She’s a good soul in search of honest fun.
Josh Im has known Hazel since college, where her zany playfulness proved completely incompatible with his mellow restraint. From the first night they met—when she gracelessly threw up on his shoes—to when she sent him an unintelligible email while in a post-surgical haze, Josh has always thought of Hazel more as a spectacle than a peer. But now, ten years later, after a cheating girlfriend has turned his life upside down, going out with Hazel is a breath of fresh air.
Not that Josh and Hazel date. At least, not each other. Because setting each other up on progressively terrible double blind dates means there’s nothing between them…right?
My Review
I initially gave this book three stars (four stars now), but the reason I put this book on this list is because it has inspired me to read more adult romance books. I’m slowly getting into them, but I don’t know how I feel yet. Josh & Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating was a pretty hyped book a few years ago on BookTube and in blogs. I saw it recommended quite a few times, and I’m glad to say that it lived up to the hype.
Hazel knew that she and Josh were meant to be best friends the night she threw up on his shoes at a college party. And that is what they became. The book takes place ten years later when they are both single and decide to set each other up on blind dates. My favorite part about this book is that they are actually friends. Usually, friends to lovers has this inevitability to it or it’s clear that one of the friends is in love with the other and acts strangely towards them. These two had a platonic relationship in the first half of the book. Neither of them were trying to get with each other. There was platonic affection and conversation between them, which is not always written well in other books. It’s a romance novel, so as you can guess, they get together at the end, but they genuinely had the type of relationship where I feel they could’ve stayed friends their whole lives if they didn’t get together.
Hazel was very unapologetically herself throughout the novel. She knew she was a lot and showcased it. Her parents divorced because her dad thought her mom was “too much,” and Hazel never wanted to water herself down at the beginning of a relationship only for a guy to be embarrassed by who she was. And so, she decided to always be her very loud, quirky, and colorful self. I think the author reminded us of this fact a tad bit too much, but it didn’t distract much from the story. Hazel was just a dance in the middle of the street, polka-dot wearing, elementary school teacher. I liked her.
Josh was kind of the stereotypical male lead who was “perfect”, so I’m glad the book was in both of their points of view to see both of their perceptions of themselves and each other. Josh was a genuinely a nice guy and a good friend. He’s an Asian-American doctor who did everything he was supposed to do. He has a good job, a nice home, takes care of his family, and is a serial monogamist. Dating and casually meeting new people is not his thing. Shortly after reconnecting with Hazel (she gets a job at his sister’s school), he finds out that his girlfriend of two years has cheated on him. Josh and Hazel continue hanging out as friends for awhile before deciding to go on a long string of blind dates together.
The book goes from there. Honestly, a lot happens, but nothing happens. I kept waiting for the dramatic fallout that happens in every rom-com, but that never really came. I liked that because I hate the massive fight after everything is seemingly perfect, then they come back together at the end. It was just very…normal. It wasn’t overdramatic. Even the ending, which escalated things, didn’t feel overdone because stuff like that does happen in real life. The slow-burn was great because they weren’t flirting with each other or giving longing looks the entire time. They were having conversations and talking like friends.
Also, I think this is the first book I’ve ever read with straight sex in it. I don’t read a lot of smutty books and the few books with smut I’ve read have been LGBTQ+ romances, which usually aren’t as descriptive as this and other straight adult romance novels I read after this one are. I’m gonna be honest, it made me kind of uncomfortable, which surprised me since I read fanfiction with smut in it. I think it’s because there’s usually warning when it’s coming in the author’s note, so I’m prepared. I was listening to this as an audiobook, so when it happened, I grabbed my phone and paused it because I was in the kitchen.
Anyway, I originally gave this book three-stars because I was comparing it to the books I usually read, but brought the star-rating up because it’s a pretty great romance book after reading a few more and having a basis of comparison. I finished it in two days.
8.//Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
GoodReads Synopsis
The graphic novel debut from rising star Noelle Stevenson, based on her beloved and critically acclaimed web comic, which Slate awarded its Cartoonist Studio Prize, calling it “a deadpan epic.”
Nemeses! Dragons! Science! Symbolism! All these and more await in this brilliantly subversive, sharply irreverent epic from Noelle Stevenson. Featuring an exclusive epilogue not seen in the web comic, along with bonus conceptual sketches and revised pages throughout, this gorgeous full-color graphic novel is perfect for the legions of fans of the web comic and is sure to win Noelle many new ones.
Nimona is an impulsive young shapeshifter with a knack for villainy. Lord Ballister Blackheart is a villain with a vendetta. As sidekick and supervillain, Nimona and Lord Blackheart are about to wreak some serious havoc. Their mission: prove to the kingdom that Sir Ambrosius Goldenloin and his buddies at the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics aren’t the heroes everyone thinks they are.
But as small acts of mischief escalate into a vicious battle, Lord Blackheart realizes that Nimona’s powers are as murky and mysterious as her past. And her unpredictable wild side might be more dangerous than he is willing to admit.
My Review
This graphic novel was made by the cartoonist who made the She-Ra series on Netflix. I actually didn’t realize that they wrote the book when I picked it up. I just saw it in the credits while watching the show. The timing of me reading and watching just happened to overlap. Anyway, this was a very funny graphic novel with a fun cast of characters. I’m surprised they were able to fit so much character development and action into one volume. Graphic novels typically have multiple volumes telling a continuing story, but this is just one novel. It starts with Nimona entering Ballister Blackheart’s, her favorite supervillain, lair wanting to become his sidekick. She ends up being significantly more chaotic and powerful than Blackheart expects, and he has to hold her back from being too evil sometimes. He quite literally has to stop her from murdering multiple people in many of their evil schemes.
The book packed a lot of downtime considering how short it is and how much plot it includes. I liked that there was time to sit and get to know all the characters. It wasn’t just plot being thrown at you over and over again. This was also the first book I can fully categorize as sci-fi/fantasy. Normally, when those two categories are used together, it doesn’t make sense because they’re two genres with completely different types of world building and tropes. A book is either clearly one or the other. This one actually had equal amounts of fantasy and science fiction. It was quite interesting to read.
Also, it’s queer if you need anymore convincing 🙂
God, I’ve forgotten how to write book reviews. I write each section out of order and this one is the first one I’m writing, so I feel out of practice.
7.//Check Please!, Book 2: Sticks & Scones by Ngozi Ukazu
GoodReads Synopsis
I’m a junior on the Samwell men’s hockey team now, and not only do I have new teammates and new responsibilities and new pies to bake… I’ve got a new beau. ( Remember me ) Believe me: Dating a professional hockey player wasn’t anything I expected to do in college. My parents don’t know; my teammates have no clue…
And Jack and I aren’t sure that we want to keep it a secret.
My Review
I read this book pretty early on in the year, but it’s still one of my favorites. I enjoyed it more than the first volume because it felt less episodic. Check Please is about the life of a gay college hockey player from Georgia who loves to bake. Volume 2 takes place in his junior and senior year of college, so I missed some of my favorite upper classmen characters from the first book, but they do show up from time to time.
Spoilers for the first graphic novel start now: this book takes place after Jack and Bitty get together, but their relationship isn’t exactly out yet. Jack just made it onto a professional hockey team, so he is in the spotlight and they’re not sure how to go about publicizing their relationship on that scale let alone how to tell their friends and families.
6.//A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
GoodReads Synopsis
A Thousand Splendid Suns is a breathtaking story set against the volatile events of Afghanistan’s last thirty years – from the Soviet invasion to the reign of the Taliban to post-Taliban rebuilding – that puts the violence, fear, hope, and faith of this country in intimate, human terms. It is a tale of two generations of characters brought jarringly together by the tragic sweep of war, where personal lives – the struggle to survive, raise a family, find happiness – are inextricable from the history playing out around them.
Propelled by the same storytelling instinct that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once a remarkable chronicle of three decades of Afghan history and a deeply moving account of family and friendship. It is a striking, heart-wrenching novel of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love – a stunning accomplishment.
My Review
This book was devastating yet hopeful, which kind of makes it worse knowing what happened last year. It’s about two women, Mariam and Laila, a generation apart living through the many wars and occupations of Afghanistan over the course of 30 years. We see how their lives and their country changes during Soviet occupation, the Taliban’s rule, etc. It starts with Mariam, the haram daughter of a very wealthy man. We see her life unfold and take a dark turn, but then there’s a time jump and we meet a young girl, Laila. I thought that it was going to be a new story and that the book would show the lives of many different women, but through a tragic turn of events, Laila and Mariam are brought together and we see them live their lives under awful circumstances. We see a very personal account of these two women’s lives as their country comes apart around them. It’s not a big story about war. It’s just about these two women surviving in small ways. It’s very good, and I highly recommend it. I loved how the author wrote Afghanistan so that we could see the beauty of a country that became the battle field of more powerful countries destroying it.
5.//The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter–And How to Make the Most of Them Now by Meg Jay
GoodReads Synopsis
My Review
I very rarely recommend self-help books, but I think everyone in their twenties should read this. I hyped this book up to all my friends and told them they needed to read it. It’s not preachy or like a to-do list for personal development like a lot of other self-help books. It’s just stories of real people in their twenties. The author is a therapist and each chapter is a different one of her clients talking about different aspects of their twenties (career, relationships, fertility, etc.) Each chapter tackled pretty specific problems that were incredibly relatable. It also made therapy feel more accessible. Like, you don’t need to have huge amounts of trauma or feel depressed to benefit from it. This book also helped me confirm that I want kids. I’ve always just assumed I’d probably have kids but would be okay if I never had them, but this book helped me solidify that being a mother is something I actually want. My main takeaways from this book was the career stuff because I just felt so over grad school (more on that another time) and wanted to start pursuing a career.
Another thing I was introduced to by this book was the concept of identity capital. “Identity capital is our individual collection of experiences and resources that we assemble over time. It is the investment we make in ourselves and how they become a part of who we are.” This includes things like pursuing fun hobbies, learning new skills, traveling, doing different internships and jobs, going to therapy, reading different books, etc. It’s essentially doing and learning things to create who you are. While reading the book, I kept thinking that I should’ve been blogging a reflection after reading each chapter for a blog post, but I was halfway through the book by then. I’ll likely do that when I eventually reread it.
4.//Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
GoodReads Synopsis
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
My Review
I actually started this book in 2020 right before quarantine started but had to return it to the library before finishing. I really enjoyed it and meant to get back to it, but I didn’t go back to the library until mid-2021. The book takes place over the course of a few decades. It follows the lives of Ifemelu and Obinze. They both meet and fall in love in Nigeria. We follow their lives as they go into different directions: Ifemelu in America and Obinze in the U.K. We see their experiences as immigrants, finding a community, being exploited by and taken advantage of in jobs because of their papers or lack there-of, their loneliness, etc. The book bounces around a bit between the past and the present. It starts off decades later, after Ifemelu has established herself in America and decides that she wants to move back to Nigeria. We then jump back to her childhood.
This book is phenomenal and there are many different elements to it that I didn’t talk about. I highly recommend it.
3.//Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid
GoodReads Synopsis
Four famous siblings throw an epic party to celebrate the end of the summer. But over the course of twenty-four hours, their lives will change forever.
Malibu: August, 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over—especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud—because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own—including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them… and what they will leave behind.
My Review
Taylor Jenkins Reid has my heart. I will read every historical fiction book she ever writes because she has such a way with characters. One of her books has been on my favorite’s list the past two years, and this year wasn’t an exception. Malibu Rising takes place in the same fame world Reid constructed for The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Daisy Jones & The Six, and there are quite few cameos since the timelines overlap.
The novel switches back and forth between the 1950s and one particular day in 1983. It’s about four siblings who are famous for surfing and being the children of a very popular rock star (a character in another one of TJR’s books, but I’ll let you figure it out yourself.) Every year, they throw a massive party at the eldest sister’s beachside mansion where hundreds of famous people are invited. The book starts by telling us that by morning, the house will be up in flames.
The novel switches back and forth between that day and the 1950s. The past point of view shows their mom and dad falling in love, having children, their childhoods and falling in love with surfing, becoming famous for it, etc. I was so immersed in it that I forgot the house was going to catch on fire at the end despite it being alluded to regularly.
Nina is the eldest sister and is the epitome of the song Surface Pressure from Encanto. She’s spent her whole life taking care of her siblings and mother, holding everything together, and neglecting herself. She’s a surfer and a surfing model. Jay is the second eldest brother and is a famous surfer. The third eldest brother, Hud, is a professional surfing photographer, and the youngest sister Kit is trying to become a professional surfer like Jay. All four of them have something going on or something to confess the day of the party. Some heavier like Nina, who’s husband shows up at the party begging her to take him back after he left her for another woman. And some lighter, like Jay, who has become infatuated with a waitress who he invites to the party. Nina and Hud were my favorite of the main characters.
In between the flashback and flashforwards of the siblings and their parents, we got to hear the stories of a lot of the guests. We’d get snippets of these different characters’ experience in Hollywood and the music industry. I would’ve found this annoying because it wasn’t a part of the main storyline, but all the characters were so interesting that I didn’t mind. It all tied together in the end.
This book was different from Seven Husbands and Daisy Jones in that the story wasn’t in hindsight. In those two books, Evelyn Hugo and the band members were telling their story in decades after it happened, so we know where their lives ended up because that’s the present point of view. In the middle of reading Malibu Rising, I kept thinking, I won’t know what happens to these characters after this one day.
The passion in this book was surfing, and TJR wrote it beautifully as she always has. After reading Evelyn Hugo, I wanted to look up her movies even though they didn’t exist and I wanted listen to the Aurora album in Daisy Jones because the lyrics and the way she described the music was mesmerizing. She couldn’t really do the same thing with surfing. This novel was more about how fame affected this family of six, not about creating art and the rise to fame like the other two are. I’m curious about who these characters are inspired by because I think Evelyn Hugo is inspired by Elizabeth Taylor (a famous Hollywood actress in the 1940s and ’50s who also had 7 husbands) and know that Daisy Jones & The Six were inspired by Fleetwood Mac and their album Rumours. It may not be inspired by anyone, but I don’t know much about the surfing world.
I’m probably going to re-read all three again closer together this year because there were so many cameos in Malibu Rising that I’m sure I missed a few. You can read them in any order. The author specifically wrote it in a way where you don’t need to read the other books to understand this one. They’re just cool Easter eggs.
2.//A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
GoodReads Synopsis
A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Set against the looming horrors of the battlefield – the weary, demoralized men marching in the rain during the German attack on Caporetto; the profound struggle between loyalty and desertion—this gripping, semiautobiographical work captures the harsh realities of war and the pain of lovers caught in its inexorable sweep. Ernest Hemingway famously said that he rewrote his ending to A Farewell to Arms thirty-nine times to get the words right.
My Review
Ernest Hemingway is one of the great American authors, but I had never read any of his work in school or on my own. My dad loved his books as a kid and he recommended this one to me a few years ago. It is now one of my new favorite classics.
It’s about an American ambulance driver in the Italian army during World War I, who falls in love with a British nurse. It’s loosely based on Hemingway’s own experience in the army and it shows. I loved reading about the comradery between Henry and his fellow soldiers, how desensitized he eventually became to the war, and how suddenly things erupted to violence and death.
I loved how simply Hemingway wrote love in this book. Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley started off as friends with benefits, which was a strange dynamic to read in a classic book because you never really see that. I could understand why we never read this book in literature class when we were younger, especially in Georgia. Eventually, he just loved her. That was it. While reading, I kept comparing how men and women write love in classic literature (and in general) because female authors write it as a kaleidoscope of emotion, but male authors write it almost artlessly. When Henry figured out he loved Catherine, it was spelled out so simply. Like it was the only clear thing in the chaos. And I loved that.
These two’s love language is definitely words of affirmation because they worded their affections frequently (“Do you love me darling?” “I love you sweetheart.”) It was almost annoying. I learned that nurses in the army weren’t allowed to be married back then. Catherine regularly said, “no” or “later” when Henry asked her to marry him because she’d be sent back to England and would no longer be an army nurse. She was like, what the hell am I gonna do while you’re off in the front lines. I’d rather be working.
The ending is…emotional. I won’t spoil if it was happy or sad. It’s what solidified this book as a favorite for me. It’s certainly a new favorite classic of mine and I highly recommend it.
1.//Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
GoodReads Synopsis
Synopsis of Book 1 – The Knife of Never Letting Go
Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd’s gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.
My Review
I was obsessed with this series when I read it in March and it’s definitely on my list of favorite series now. I read the first book, The Knife of Never Letting Go, in 2019. It was a solid four-star book. I enjoyed it enough to want to read the rest of the series but not enough to start it immediately. Then 2020 happened and I wasn’t going to the library, so I couldn’t get my hands on the second and third book. I just read other things meanwhile, and didn’t end up picking it up until March of last year in order to get out of a reading slump. And MAN did it get me out of my reading slump.
The second and third book are exponentially better than the first book, and I quite liked the first one. Because the first book did so much world building and set up for the characters, the last two books were almost all plot. I can’t believe it wasn’t more popular when I was in middle school when it came out because it subverts so many of the dystopian tropes that existed at the time. The Hunger Games created this boom of dystopian books trying to mimic its success, but they didn’t do what they should’ve done. The point of a dystopian story is to critique and reflect on the current social/political environment by presenting a future society. The Hunger Games explored capitalisms, exploitation of children in media, propaganda, etc. The problem is that when books like The Selection or Divergent were written, they only recreated things like dividing people into separate groups, the love triangle, high stakes competitions, etc. and didn’t spend enough time establishing their world and what the characters were rebelling against. This made the endings of those series fall flat.
Chaos Walking made me realize this about those other books because it did it so well. The first book was “a chase” book. Todd is the youngest boy on New World. He was the last boy to be born in Prentisstown before the Spackle (the native species of the planet) sent a biological weapon that infected his settlement and killed all the women and gave the men “noise.” Now, all their thoughts could be heard and seen by everyone.
Todd has lived his whole life in Prentisstown, but everything changes when he runs into a girl in the swamp. The rest of the first book is them running for their lives, going to other settlements, and Todd learning that everything he has learned about the colonization of his planet was a lie.
The second book did something I don’t usually like in series, but I liked in this one. They added the girl, Viola’s, point of view. And then he added the point of view of an alien enslaved by humans in the third book. It flowed so perfectly that I didn’t have a problem with it. I usually have trouble connecting with new POV characters when they’re not in the first book, but it worked here. This was honestly one of the few times where a male author actually wrote a well-written female character point of view.
There is so much else that this book did well, but I’ll only talk about the world-building . The first fleet of ships that came to colonize the planet (the one Todd’s parents were on) was a church colony, so all the human settlements on New World were originally built on religion, and we see how for some, religion was lost over time and for others, they use it to justify certain actions. Plus, the concept of were the Spackle *native intelligent species* made by God like humans were, or are they just animals. Stuff like that. This is mainly in the first book. This first fleet of colonizers came to create a simpler life, so they didn’t pursue things like expanding technology.
I won’t talk too much about Viola because a big part of the first book is that Todd is learning about her background. She’s from the second fleet of humans coming to New World, but they left Earth (“Old World”) before the first fleet arrived on the planet, so they had expected it to be more developed when it was. I just reread the first book after three years recently, and there was a line where she said, “we’ll teach you how to use this land properly.” and I just thought, “we haven’t heard that before.”
So yeah, this dystopian book is mainly critiquing colonization and how humans repeat history one way or another, plus sexism, power, religion, pride, etc. By the last book, there are three different groups, the men, women, and the “aliens”, and honestly, the only correct side is the Spackle. It is not sugarcoated at all. There is a lot of nuance in the fact that the human sides are wrong and both of them are trying figure out what is the lesser of two evils. Viola and Todd end up becoming stuck in the middle trying to keep the peace and prevent more death. I’m super not doing this series justice. Too much happens and I don’t want to spoil it. I love angst and nuanced villains, so these books were my cup of tea. I literally read the third book twice last year and had to stop myself from rereading the second one. I never reread the same book twice in the same year.
I’m trying to get all of my thoughts out here because I don’t think I’ll have another chance to rave about this series in a blog post. The series just subverted every dystopian trope. Like, it literally had a realistic love triangle, in that they don’t actually happen in real life. It’s a third party liking someone when two people are clearly more into each other. Also, Todd and Viola aren’t together in most of the series. There is technically not a lick of romance, but it was still a great romance because they were so devoted to each other. Because the reality is, they were too busy to actually get together! They became friends in the first book. Then they spent the next year trying to not die and prevent other people from dying. They didn’t have time to be in a relationship, but their points of view clearly showed they loved each other.
This series is also not afraid to kill people. A realistic amount of characters died throughout the series and it was sad, but it wasn’t too much to the point of it being ridiculous like in An Ember In The Ashes. I definitely hated certain characters, which is a sign of a good book when it’s written well.
I cannot stress this enough, read the series! The first one is pretty slow-paced, but it’s worth it for the rest of the series! I listened to the audiobook versions of the last two book through Scribd (I asked my friends to get me a membership last year for my birthday. Yes, we tell each other what we want for our birthdays.) and they were genuinely some of the best narrated audiobooks I had ever listened to. Those voice actors did a phenomenal job. I bought a physical copy of the trilogy from Barnes & Noble at the end of the year, then bought both audiobooks for $4.50 each in the Audible sale this year because I knew I would listen to them again and wanted to own them.
But yeah. This is a new favorite series and I am still utterly obsessed a year after finishing it, which is why it’s number one on the list.
God, that post was long. It is currently sitting at around 6700 words. I had meant to publish this post last month, but stuff happened and I also didn’t want to post something and disappear for another year. I do have the next post lined up and would like to post at least every other week, but we’ll see. The ones I’ve already written are also very long because I guess I’m getting a year’s worth of writing energy out. I also write the way I think, which is in run-on sentences.
For now, most of the content I’m going to write is going to be about books and general lifestyle content because that’s what I feel like writing write now. I don’t think this will remain a just book blog, but that may be all it is for awhile. I say this as the next two blog posts aren’t about books, but trust me. There’s gonna be a lot of bookish content.
I missed you all. Life is pretty up in the air now, and I like it that way, but I don’t know how much I want to blog about yet. I hope you enjoyed this post and I’ll see you next time!
What were some of your favorite books last year?