Skip to main content

Angie's Best Books of 2016

Let's just lay our cards on the table, shall we, and agree that, on the whole, 2016 was an abysmal year.
And I'd just like to personally invite it not to let the door hit it on the way out.
This is me being as charitable as I can possibly be at this point. 

That said, I want to send a glorious shout out to the wonderful books that have come out this past year, and to all the authors (and readers) who have not given in to the anxiety, depression, anger, and fear that I know so many of us have felt throughout the past twelve months (or more). It is the last day of the year, and I have poured all of my gratitude (and hope for a better one to come) into my annual list of my favorite reads of the year. Just 17 this year. Fewer than the past few years, which indicates a healthy dose of necessary rereading in this year that has been what it was, as well as the fact that I just didn't get to as many new releases.

Photo by @aamith

(in the order in which I read them)

The Hating Game by Sally Hunter

FYI, that's 6 contemporaries, 5 historicals, 5 fantasies, and 1 scifi.
Essentially, the primary genres seem to have evened out a bit this year. 

Best New Discovery of 2016

It was uncontrollable love at first sight with V.E. Schwab's Darker Shades series. I mean to say, I haven't read fantasy of this caliber in some time. Every beautiful layer of her writing is to my taste. It makes me smile, it makes me wince, it makes me head over heels, achingly in love with each of the characters. In short, I won't be fit for polite company until the third and final book in the trilogy comes out in February.

Biggest Character Crush of 2016
Kell Maresh
fall-for-the-game.tumblr.com
I fell in love with Kell on page one, with his magical red coat, his quiet intensity, his fierce love for his brother, and his desperate quest. He is a hero. And I continue to reassure myself that everything will be okay. 

Book I Reread the Most in 2016
The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

Because it was the one I had the hardest time letting go of. And so I elected simply not to by rereading it as needed. Because its lines were the ones that ran through my head the most this year. I haven't cried over a book like that in some time. I may have even attempted to work through my emotions by creating a Portable Quotable Raven Boys for Beth. We do what we have to do to survive, right?
"Is it safe?" Gansey asked. "Safe as life," Adam replied.

Best Books I read in 2016 that were Published in a Different Year


Artistic License by Elle Pierson

Happy New Year!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

You Might Also Like

Bibliocrack Review | You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

If I'm being perfectly honest with myself, I've done a shamefully poor job of addressing my love for Cat Sebastian 's books around these parts. I've certainly noted each time her beautiful stories have appeared on my end-of-the-year best of lists, see:  The Perfect Crimes of Marian Hayes ,  basically every book in  The Cabots series , and of course  We Could Be So Good .  And the pull is, quite simply, this: nobody is as kind and gentle with their characters and with their hearts than Cat Sebastian. Nobody. I haven't always been one for the gentler stories, but I cannot overstate the absolute gift it is sinking into one of Sebastian's exquisitely crafted historicals knowing that I get to spend the next however many pages watching two idiots pine and deny that feelings exist and just  take care of each other  as they fall in love. I wouldn't trade that experience for the world. Not this one or any other.  Only two things in the world people count b...
2 comments
Read more

Review | Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

It really is a pretty cover. And dragons. I love them so.  It's been far too long since I've read a book in which dragons played any kind of primary character role. They do here, and they are probably my favorite aspect of this book. But more on that later. It's probably worth noting that I, like the rest of the world, was aware of Fourth Wing and the collective losing of BookTok's mind over it. I mean, it was kind of thrilling to hear that you couldn't find a copy anywhere—in the sense that I love it when books are being consumed and loved. And when that happens in such a way that it takes publishing by surprise (for lack of a better way to phrase it) so much so that they have to scramble to print more. So I did the sensible thing and bought the ebook. And then I proceeded to do the not-so-sensible-but-extremely-Angie thing and not read it. There was a cross-country move tucked in there somewhere between the buying and the reading, but more on that at a later date...
8 comments
Read more

Interview with Diana Peterfreund + Rampant Giveaway!

Ever since I fell in love with Diana Peterfreund 's Secret Society Girl series last year, I've been hoping I'd get the chance to interview her here. Tomorrow marks the release of her new novel, Rampant , and let me tell you that you have not read a book like this before. You can read my review here , but all you really need to know is that it's a story about killer unicorns and the young women who hunt them. You want to read it now, don't you? Oh, yeah, and it's YA and the first in a series! To celebrate the release, Diana graciously answered a few of my most burning questions. As she is always a delight, I know you'll enjoy them as much as I did. First things first: When did the idea for Rampant first hit you and what (if anything) did you know right off the bat? In early 2005, just after selling Secret Society Girl , I had this dream of being chased by a very dangerous unicorn. I woke up and went to go look it up to see if I could figure out the meanin...
120 comments
Read more