I cannot believe it is the last day of the year! What?! This year has flown by. I’m noticing the years are going faster since I joined book battle and since having Mylzs!
Here I am going to tell you my top reads of 2019. There were some great ones!
Ninth House was my top read of the year! Yes, Leigh is my most favorite, but man this book was good. It was dark, it was creepy, there was romance. Let me tell ya, I’m ready to go to Hell! In book 2, that is.
So Verity was my first CoHo book and honestly, I’m not sure I want to read her others! I know this wasn’t her normal genre, but it was SO.GOOD. I was thinking about the ending for weeks after.
Girl power seemed to be a theme with me this year. I think because I have found some amazing friends in Words & Whimsy! This was another powerful tale of what happens when girls stick together.
Last but certainly not least, is Over the Top. I love JVN. He’s a self care QUEEN. I loved learning from him and learning about him. Still hoping he’ll be my bff one day.
Well guys, there’s my top 5! What were your top 5 reads this year? Did you like any of these? Let me know in the comments below! I would love to discuss!
Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?
Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.
– Goodreads
Queen Leigh has done it again. She’s completely engrossed me in a world in which I wish I lived.
What I liked:
Only everything. I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. Leigh Bardugo is an exceptional storyteller. She pulls you into her stories so quickly and easily. You just become immersed in this world that you want to be a part of. Her characters are all so diverse, interesting, and morally gray – which makes them oh so real.
What if there was an underground world of secret societies at Yale that really does control, well, everything? They use magic to do it. And what happens when the balance gets out of wack? People die. And that’s where Lethe, the Ninth House, comes in. They investigate crimes the most powerful eight houses commit and try to right their wrongs.
Alex knew the girl was murdered. When she was written off, that only made her want to find the truth more. I loved the investigative parts of this story. I’m a huge crime junkie so this was mixing two of my favorite things into one.
I loved the magic. There were different ways to use the different types of magic, and no one mastered them all. It was distinctly different from Shadow and Bone, which I appreciated. And like all good magic stories, you can’t just use the magic. Something has to be taken to use it. I loved the ghost element of it as well. That only certain people could see ghosts, and even fewer could talk to them.
What I didn’t like:
I guess I’ll just put this here. There were a lot of trigger warnings for this book. In my opinion, they were blown way out of proportion. I know different people will see this differently, but it wasn’t too bad for me. Also – this is an ADULT book! Please do not confuse with her YA series. It’s adult and oh so good!
Would I recommend?
Is the world round? Is the sky blue? Yes, of COURSE I would recommend! I already have! Seriously, this is a perfect Halloween book and everyone needs to read it. Leigh did an amazing job with her adult debut. I can’t wait to go to Hell in book #2!
Mithah Reads 