It's mid-March which is really late for a Year in Review post but I don't care. It feels like posting here is like shouting into an abyss but I'm enjoying the challenge. I think I'm improving my writing (thank you New Jersey public school system) and I always love recommending a good book.
2013 was a big year for me personally, professionally, and reading….ally. "Readingally" is now a word. I started reviewing in 2012 but I really got into it in 2013. In 2013 I read 88 books which seems like a lot but that's considered a low amount for a reviewer. Some books were terrible, some were phenomenal, but most were just okay. Sometimes it seems like it's the just okay books that go on to bestseller lists.
The following books are sort of special to me. They're not well known, but they're the some of the best books I read in 2013. I read a lot of dystopia/speculative fiction and there have been too many iterations of The Hunger Games over the past few years. These books stand out from that cliche.
Clicking the title will take you to my review on Goodreads.
25 Perfect Days by Mark Tullius: 25 loosely interconnecting stories of a future United States that is turning into a religion-based totalitarian state. The great things about these stories is that Tullius doesn't lay everything out for you. You have to put the pieces together for yourself. I'm pretty sure I said "Holy shit" out loud more than once while reading this book.
Daynight by Megan Thomason: I'm a total fangirl for Megan Thomason. The first part in a series, daynight tells the story of a connected but opposite planet named Thera and the government that controls it. Thomason takes tropes that I usually groan at (multiple POVs, love triangles) and somehow makes them fresh and enjoyable. Megan also gets bonus points because she's self published.
The Moon Dwellers by David Estes: I have to admit, I didn't love this book at first. But for some reason I kept coming back to David's Goodreads page and I knew I had to continue the series. Or should I say series plural? The Moon Dwellers is one of the first parts of two interconnected and co-occurring series. You have the Dwellers Series and the Country Saga trilogies and The Earth Dwellers which capstones them all. The Saga and Series is so much more complex and enjoyable than I anticipated. Like Megan, David is self published, and he writes several books a year. He's also super interactive with his readers online. I don't think he sleeps.
Red Rising by Pierce Brown: Red Rising came out in January 2014 but I was able to read it several months ago through LibraryThing. Pierce has a contract to write a trilogy and movies are in the works. Pretty impressive for a debut writer. Red Rising is a mix of dystopia, fantasy, and mythology. It's also way more Game of Thrones than Hunger Games. It's violent, heartbreaking, and overwhelming. And I bloodydamn loved it.
Tandem by Anna Jarzab: This is way more fantasy-based than I usually read. Runaway princesses? Please. But add in someone going through a portal to a parallel universe to kidnap that princess's doppelgänger? I'm getting interested. I don't know how this book holds up to a devoted fantasy fan. But for someone who prefers scifi but also watches Once Upon a Time, this was a great read.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman: The cover compares the Unwind series to The Hunger Games but I think that's not fair to this series. The Hunger Games made terror entertaining but Unwind makes terror actually terrifying. Shusterman excels at world building. Most stories start with something like "bad stuff happened and now we're here". But in Unwind, the world building much more precise and consistent and it makes the books so much better. The world building and Shusterman's writing style takes Unwind way, way above other YA dystopian series.
What do you think? What books would you add? What books would you remove?