December Wrap Up // goodbye to a weird year

Not the most efficient reading month, but it's been a weird one. I've been busy with work and have been a little out of it lately. But looking back at my reading this year as a whole, I have to say I'm impressed with myself. I read over 70 books (something I've never managed before) and found so many new favourites that are now very close to my heart.

My Ultimate Favourite Reads of 2016

Top 10 Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Here are my ulitimate favourite reads from this year.

Diverse Reads of 2016

Reading diversity is super important, so I've decided to list all the diverse books I read this year (with the encouragement of these challenges 1, 2)! I will also be writing the reason why these books are diverse, so you might be able to read about social identities you haven't read before, or maybe find some more books that represent YOU!

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff // the good, the bad and the ugly

Title: Nevernight
Author: Jay Kristoff
Genre: Fantasy
Warnings: graphic gore, violence and sex scenes
Rating: 2 stars
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As a starter I thought I'd give a heads up - this is 110% not YA despite some goodreads tags. The characters are teens, but the contents of the story are most definitely adult.

My enjoyment of Nevernight flickered around a lot, making it very tricky to review. So here's it summed up as best I can.

Books I Wouldn't Mind Santa Leaving Under the Tree

Top 10 Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Here are some books on my TBR that I didn't manage to get this year, but maybe some Christmas magic will change that.

Underrated Middle Grade Books You Need to Read

In England we don't really have such thing as a middle grade, but there are some books from my early teens that were way too good (and sometimes even a little dark) to be classified as kids books. A lot of these books were by British authors and I don't think half of them got the attention they deserved. Here are 10 of my personal favourite Middle Grades that you may have never heard of, but definitely need to read - no matter how old you are.

Releases I'm Looking Forward to in the First Half of 2017

Top 10 Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.
There weren't too many new releases I was looking forward to this year, but 2017 has me excited. Coming up next year are books by authors I love and continuations of series I'm hooked on, plus a few others that have caught my interest.

Paper and Fire // a crazily captivating sequel

Title: Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)
Author: Rachel Caine
Genre: Fantasy
Warnings: violence, death, torture
Rating: 5 stars
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You can find my review of Ink and Bone (book 1) here.

THIS. WAS. EVERYTHING. I described Ink and Bone as everything I could ever want in a book, and Paper and Fire is everything I could have asked for from a sequel.

New-To-Me Authors Read in 2016

Top 10 Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.
2016 has been a big year for reading, and with that comes a whole bunch of authors whose books I've never read before. Here's my list of authors I've read for the first time in 2016 that I'm looking forward to seeing more of.

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe // aka the scrappy diary of a racist farmer

Title: Robinson Crusoe
Author: Daniel Defoe
Genre: Classics, Historical, Adventure
Warnings: racism, mention of suicide
Rating: 1 star
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DNF at 25%

Robinson Crusoe reads like a scrappy diary of a racist farmer. For an interesting premise, nothing happens. And this would be okay with me if the writing was engaging - but it wasn't.