Top Ten Books of 2016, p1

Happy Fri-yay!

I am back with another bookish post, *finally* with a great idea that I saw over on Kate’s blog of her top 13 reads of 2016. You can all go and find her post here. I’ve sort of tweaked it a bit, and am doing two posts (part 1 and 2,) so that I can include my December reads in part two (if they make the ranking!).

I don’t now about you, but this year I feel like I have adored each book that I’ve read, or a least liked it, so picking is going to be tricky, I always feel like I’m saying “omg, I loved this book!” but I really have loved the books I’ve read this year!

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What if you aren’t the Chosen One?

The one who’s supposed to fight the zombies, or the soul-eating ghosts, or whatever the heck this new thing is, with the blue lights and the death?

What if you’re like Mikey? Who just wants to graduate and go to prom and maybe finally work up the courage to ask Henna out before someone goes and blows up the high school. Again.

Because sometimes there are problems bigger than this week’s end of the world, and sometimes you just have to find the extraordinary in your ordinary life.

Even if your best friend is worshipped by mountain lions.

This was my first read of 2016, and the first novel that I read by Patrick Ness. This book was really confusing at the start, but then at the end I was like ‘Wow, what a book!’ I read this book so quickly, I was so hooked by the writing style and how it was fantasy-ish and contemporary at the same time.

Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties.

Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character.

For Gatsby – young, handsome, fabulously rich – always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for.

Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing for the one thing that will always be out of his reach.

And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.

This is by far one of my favourite classics. I find the characters so incredibly annoying and I hate them at the end, but I love how it showed life in that era and the tragedy of it all.

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.

This book affected me so much. The feels were uncontrollable and I couldn’t put the thing down. I stayed up until 3 am or so, reading and crying at the twists and turns!

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…

A convict with a thirst for revenge
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager
A runaway with a privileged past
A spy known as the Wraith
A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums
A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Kaz’s crew are the only ones who might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

Like ‘The Rest Of Us Just Live Here’, at first I wasn’t really that into this book, but as I got towards the end I was so swept up in it and got so obsessed with it. I couldn’t put it down and I was rushing through it so that I could make the discussion with the group I was reading it with.

For as long as Alice can remember, she has dreamed of Max. Together they have traveled the world and fallen deliriously, hopelessly in love. Max is the boy of her dreams—and only her dreams. Because he doesn’t exist.

But when Alice walks into class on her first day at a new school, there he is. It turns out, though, that Real Max is nothing like Dream Max, and getting to know each other in reality isn’t as perfect as Alice always hoped.

When their dreams start to bleed dangerously into their waking hours, the pair realize that they might have to put an end to a lifetime of dreaming about each other. But when you fall in love in your dreams, can reality ever be enough?

Beautiful. This is the word that describes the book perfectly. It was such a wonderful reading experience, the whole book was so fluid and captivating, I don’t know what took me so long to get around to reading it. I had such a blast treading this, as I hadn’t read a fantasy-ish contemporary in ages and GOSSSSHHHHHH I just LOVED ITTTTT!

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I hope you enjoyed part one of my favourite reads of 2016, have you read any of them? What were your favourite reads of 2016? Let me know!

Lu x