Confessions of a Literary Addict

Holy crap, has it been a year. I can’t decide if it took forever to get through it or if it sped past me before I really had a chance to blink. I got so much stuff done and, at the same time, didn’t get everything I wanted to get done, done.

I am, however, on the precipice of reading 100 books this year! (Like, I need two more, and I have two books I’m over 80% finished, so I think it’s safe to say I’ll be good to go!)

(And, as you’ll see in my upcoming 2018 goal review, that’s past what I intended to read! Yay!)

And from those 100 books, I read some absolute gems.

Like. A couple of these books? Are in my top 5 all-time books now. They were that good.

The others aren’t, but that’s just because I can only have 5 top books in my top 5 and they only rank high enough to be in my top, like. 25.

(That’s still really high for me. I promise. I loved all of these.)

I will not be categorizing these by genre like I did last year, simply because I don’t have as many as I did last year when I first started this. Instead, they’ll just be in the order that I read them.

Here we go!

• The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire
  • Yeah. The whole series. They’re freaking brilliant stories that you literally fly through because they’re short bits of a world you leave wanting more of. I can’t tell if it’s deliberate or a marketing ploy but holy hell does it work. I want more so badly that the next book in the series is one of my most anticipated reads of 2019. They’re whimsical, inclusive, and just plain fun to read. I even want to reread them in January, even though I just read them all this year.
• I was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon
  • Now, if you read my review of this one from earlier in the year, you’ll know this book literally flipped me on my head once I got to the end, and I had not been expecting it to. That last bit got me so good I had to give it a full five-star rating. It’s a good book for anyone who likes Historical Fiction or Anastasia’s story either way, but it really was the end that got me reeling here.
• The Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
  • I read all three books in the trilogy this year, and I absolutely loved every single step of the journey they put me though. The format is awesome, the characters (while a little cut and paste if I’m being honest) took measures I cheered for and wanted to fight against, and the plot blew me away. These are such good sci-fi stories, even if you’re not really reading for the characters themselves, and I even want to reread them as soon as I have the time. AIDAN demands it.
• Night Film by Marisha Pessl
  • Admittedly, I went into this one a little wary of if I would like it at all, but the format is what convinced me to try it in the end. And, really? It was pretty damn awesome. It wasn’t so much about the suicide/murder of Ashley Cordova (which is the premise of the book–finding out who killed her) as it ended up being how strange everything surrounding her suicide/murder was. If you do read it, you have to do the extra things on the website along the way, because it really does help the atmosphere of the book hit in harder.
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
  • I read this one twice in a handful of months, if that says anything about why it’s on this list. We all know I’m the biggest sucker for retellings and Historical Fiction, so this one was a hook, line, and sinker for me no matter what way you looked at it, but the story absolutely slaughtered me. It’s just so good.
• If We Were Villains M. L. Rio
  • Another one that liked to tear at the heartstrings, this one I liked less because of the plot and more for the characters and their relationship with each other. It’s a murder mystery, but I almost wish it hadn’t been so I could get more of the kids living their lives before tragedy struck. (Then again, it’s a book about theatre kids, so maybe tragedy was a necessity.)

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And that’s what I’ve got for this year’s recommendations! There aren’t as many this year, sure, but all of these books really hit me hard throughout the year and earned their spot on this list without question. Next year, I hope I have a good amount more to add!

Thanks for reading!