I knew very little about Jennifer Donnelly’s Stepsister, except it was a re-telling of Cinderella, and I typically enjoy re-tellings. This book is SO much more, though! It is insightful, a little heartbreaking, and very clever.
Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer unfolds carefully, thoughtfully, methodically. You have to be patient to take it all in. Taylor’s writing is beautiful, and each character is so clearly defined.
Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows feels like a delightfully wicked combination of what’s best about The Outsiders + Oceans 11 + The Last Airbender. But that still doesn’t really do justice to the amazing story, characters, and world Bardugo has created here.
I love how Holly Black doesn’t necessarily play by the rules. I see some calling her book The Cruel Prince a “dark” fantasy, and I would agree; people lie, people kill, people die. It gets messy. Wonderfully, deliciously messy.
It wasn’t until I finished Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road that I discovered this is actually a companion novel to two others written by Hartman (Seraphina, and Shadow Scale). This makes sense since my first reaction to this book was feeling like I had been dropped in the middle of a story, not the beginning of one.
BOOK:30 