Fugitive Telemetry (Martha Wells)

The latest instalment in my favourite book series of all time and hold on to your hats everyone: it’s a MURDER MYSTERY!!

Everyone’s favourite murderbot is living on Preservation Station, trying to get used to this new life of not much murdering and too much social interaction, when a dead human is found on the station. Grudgingly working with an out-of-their-depths Station Security, it has to try to unravel what caused this death, and uncover the greater threat to the station itself.

2020 Favourites

It has been A Year. But spending multiple months at home also means that I read so many books. Like, so many. And so many good ones, too! So without further ado, here are my favourite reads of 2020 (not necessarily published this year, in the order that I read them).

Gideon the Ninth

Lesbian necromancers in space!! Absolute insane masterpiece of a book–you have to pay close attention to understand what is happening, but it is so, so worth it!!! The main character is an absolute delight, and this is probably the book I’ve quoted most often in 2020.

The Queens of Innis Lear

I fell in complete love with Tessa Gratton’s writing this year! Her characters are so vivid, and the book just pulls at your heart in all the right ways. I read both Queens and Lady Hotspur this year, and loved them both to bits. Shakespeare retellings with magic–what’s not to love?

A Dowry of Blood (S.T. Gibson)

Ever since I heard the quietest whispers about this book I have been so incredibly excited to read it! A gothic, queer, poly retelling of Dracula’s Brides? The concept itself sounded absolutely fantastic, and my expectations quickly rose through the roof. Always a dangerous thing, because more often than not I am disappointed when actually reading the book, because it cannot reasonably live up to them.

But oh boy. Not only were my expectations met, they were thoroughly surpassed!!

After a gruesome attack on her village, Constanta is saved from certain death by a mysterious stranger who turns her into his undead bride and takes her to his castle, where she quickly and absolutely falls in love with him. Still eternally grateful and devoted, Constanta is quick to overlook and forgive her husband’s erratic behaviour and shifting mood, up until a sharp-minded aristocrat and a beautiful artist are pulled into her husband’s carefully woven web of passion and deceit. And finally, Constanta has to decide between the love for her husband and their freedom.

A Deadly Education (Naomi Novik)

The Scholomance is a school for the magically gifted. There are no teachers, no holidays. You graduate by surviving until your final year, battling monsters, your classmates, and the school itself. El is determined to make it through alive without allies, all without calling on the destructive dark power within her that could kill everyone around her. But then the school hero, Orion, saves her life, disrupting the carefully maintained balance of her life…

I was looking forward to Naomi Novik’s new book so much, and am happy to say that it has surpassed my highest expectations. This book is absolutely brilliant: funny, fast-paced, with a unique and interesting concept at its very heart.

El is a fabulous main character: snarky and sarcastic, she maintains an iron facade of wanting to be left alone (spoiler alert: it starts to crack), and following her story through this book is absolutely wonderful. She is multi-faceted and incredibly likeable, and I found myself rooting for her so much.

I am completely in love with the world this book is set in. Naomi Novik manages to describe the magic system and the school itself in such a perfect way that it feels real–everything is completely believable, most characters are given brilliant backstories that never interrupt the flow of the story itself. I cannot wait to find out how El’s story continues!!

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (V.E. Schwab)

France, 1714. In a moment of desperation, Addie LaRue makes a deal with the devil so she will live forever. The price: She will be forgotten by everyone she meets, unable to leave even the smallest mark on the world. Until, almost 300 years later, she meets a young man in a bookstore. And he remembers her.

This book touched my heart in ways that I truly did not expect. It is a gorgeously written story that flows along like a smooth river, the language effortlessly beautiful and the pace completely perfect. Jumping between 300 years of Addies life and the present, and told from both hers and Henry’s perspective, the narrative never falters. This book is almost impossible to put down!

All the Stars and Teeth (Adalyn Grace)

Amora Montara is the heir to Visidian throne, training to become the High Animancer — the master of souls. Only her family can wield the dangerous and powerful soul magic. When a demonstration of her power goes horribly wrong, Amora is forced to flee. With the help of her fiancée and a handsome but shady pirate she embarks on a journey to prove herself. But with time she discovers that dark forces are at work in her kingdom, and it will take all the power she has to defeat them.

Punching the Air (Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam)

Sixteen-year-old Amal Shahid is an artist. But even at his liberal school, he encounters resistance from a system that sees any deviation from the norms as bad. When Amal is wrongfully incarcerated, blamed for a crime he did not commit, he tries to hold on to his art, to survive in a place that seems hell-bent on making him the villain at every turn.

Flyaway (Kathleen Jennings)

Years ago, Bettina Scott’s father left and her two brothers disappeared, leaving her alone with her perfectly pleasant mother. But when a note from one of her brothers arrives one day, Tina starts questioning her own memories of the day they disappeared. The quest for answers leads her out of her town and into the wilderness around, and the more secrets she uncovers, the more she realises that her family history–and her own–is much darker than she remembers.

Mexican Gothic (Silvia Moreno-Garcia)

After receiving a frantic, disturbing letter from her cousin, socialite Noemí Taboada leaves Mexico City for High Place, the countryside family home of her newlywed cousin’s husband: Virgil Doyle. But soon after she arrives Noemí realizes that something in that house is very wrong–the wallpaper seems to move, absolute silence is required at most times of the day, and Noemí is plagued by terrible nightmares that feel a little too real. She finds an unlikely ally in Francis Doyle, Virgil’s shy and gentle cousin. But as Noemí desperately tries to help her cousin, she starts to realize that she is already much more entwined with the house and family than she thought, and leaving may prove almost impossible…

The Summer of Everything (Julian Winters)

Oh my GOD. Ever since I found out about this book I have been incredibly excited about it! SoCal, indie bookstores and intense pining sounded right up my alley, and if the same thing is true for you I can wholeheartedly say that you do not need to read on–simply buy the book, and I promise you will not regret it.

Wesley Hudson is 18 years old and just out of high school. Everyone expects him to use the summer to figure out where he wants to go in life, and have a solid plan for the next five years. But the only solid things in his life are his job in the local indie bookstore and his way-too-massive crush on his best friend Nico. When the bookshop is threatened by an awful generic coffee company who wants to buy the property, Wes and his friends start a campaign to save it. Between open mics and trying to get over his (apparently unrequited) crush, the decision of what he wants his life to be after the summer becomes more and more difficult.