5 Books On My Summer Reading List
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You remember those summer reading lists they always handed out in school and you were forced to read books you didn’t want to because none of them were awesome fantasy books but were instead just boring contemporary literary fiction books about some girl who grew up in small town Rhode Island? But then one year Lord of the Rings was on the list and it made your little sword and elf loving heart so happy until you opened it up and realized that your modern little brain just wasn’t built for Tolkien’s endless descriptions of travel…
So… Just me then?
Well, this year I’ve made myself a little reading list full of the genre I love to read while also stretching me by reading books that include things that often intimidate me in my own writing. Some of them are just for fun, but here’s the five at the top of my list:
1. Shadow and Bone
So unless you somehow live under a rock bigger than the one I live under, you’ve probably heard of Shadow and Bone since Netflix’s adaptation of it and some Six of Crows thrown it. I love anything fantasy, but I especially love fantasy TV shows because it’s so hard to find good ones, and I just loved the Netflix series. It looked so good I couldn’t do the “proper” thing and read the books first before watching the show. But since we’re waiting for the next season, I figured I might as well read them, especially since I was able to get all three in paperback at my local store for a great price! I’ve just started it and I am really enjoying it and seeing the differences between the book and the show!
2. The Wicked King
I reach the first book in this trilogy, The Cruel Prince, back in the spring, but because I wasn’t sure if I would like the series enough to continue, I held off on buying the sequel. I know it’s probably sacrilegious to say it, but I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Fae books… I don’t know what it is, I just have a hard time getting into them. Or maybe it’s just cause I’m kind of picky about everything and I just haven’t found any Fae books I really liked, until this one at least. It was the first Fae book that had me really wanting to read past the sample I downloaded, and it had nothing to do with the Fae. Well… it sort of did. I just really loved Jude. I thought she was fascinating and really compelling, but it meant I didn’t have the sequel ready to read right after. Now I do! So I will definitely be getting back into it and seeing where it goes!
3. Air Awakens
This one will technically be a reread, but those totally count. I read it a while ago and always meant to go back and finish the series, but I’m the kind of person that if I set something down because I get busy, no matter how much I liked it, I might forget to pick it back up. I’m a binge watcher and reader, so I’m much better off when I just blaze through a whole series, so I’m definitely going to back up and start again because I want the full series experience! But the first book was so much fun and definitely hit me right where I have so much childhood love and current love for Avatar the Last Airbender that I really have to pick it up again! Also, I just never get tired of looking at that cover, so any excuse to admire it more, am I right?
4. Daughter of Shades
This one I have finished, and it was great! More on the monster, creepy side of fantasy than I typically go for, but it worked. The world building was also just fantastic. I’m a huge sucker for complex, fascinating worlds, and this definitely had it! I love fantasy history—well, as long as it’s relevant and interesting of course, and this definitely hinted at some important history that was playing into the current events of the book. I also love when there’s something physical in the world that’s magical and evil, so this one and Shadow and Bone hit that for me!
Plus, who doesn’t love a heroine who had their memories taken from them?
5. Furyborn
Isn’t this cover just gorgeous in like a really clean, simplistic but still elegant way? I am also a huge fan of time travel/alternate timeline/parallel timeline stories, but it’s so rare to find in high fantasy. It’s usually a more sci-fi or historical, earth-based concept, which makes sense because we’re already familiar with earth history, but still, I would love to see more time-shenanigan high fantasy books! Give my time hi-jinks and witches and dragons and all that! I don’t really know much else about this one yet other than it involves two time periods and it sounds like it’s high fantasy, so I am here for it! Fingers crossed it will live up to the hype I have assigned to it!