The Best of the Best Books I Read This Year

If I'm absolutely honest, 2015 has been a slow reading year for me. I seem to be constantly tired, too tired to stay up until 2am finishing a book like I used to. BUT this means I'm just more selective about what I read, and I have read some insanely good books this year. This is a weekly meme run by The Broke and The Bookish, and since I missed last week, I've decided to combine them to make 'the best books I've read this year written by authors who are new to me'.

(I had to do this because my list before was getting way too long, and decision making is not my strong point so cutting it down was proving to be a difficult task).

As usual, these are in no particular order, since that causes far too much stress on my end because I think they're all perfect. Links to the Goodreads page in the title.

MORE THAN THIS by Patrick Ness

I can't even put into words how good this book is. It is mind-blowingly good and just talking about it now is making me want to read it all over again.. It kept me on my toes right until the very end and I LOVED every second of it.

HALF WILD by Sally Green 

This is the second book in the series (the first is Half Bad, I talked about them on my favourite series post here), and I read them both one after the other but the second book is soooo good. You get to see more of the magical world the story is set in, and the whole thing is much more action packed and suspenseful than the first (if that's even possible). And I love the new little romance developing, I think it's a really original one.

Simon Vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

This was such a freaking cute book, I legit could not stop smiling the entire way through. My jaw actually ached by the end of it, but it put me in such a good mood for the rest of the day.

I'm tired of coming out. All I ever do is come out. I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways ... And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again.

Simon Spier is sixteen and secretly gay. But when one of his classmates discovers his emails to Blue - the incredibly distracting, thought-consuming, mysterious Blue - it might not be a secret much longer. For Simon, who prefers a drama free life with as little change as possible, things suddenly become far too complicated. Especially as his emails to Blue get more flirtatious every day.

Maybe it's a holy freaking huge awesome deal. Maybe I want it to be.

Favourite Series Of All Time

Good book series are probably the best thing ever, because you usually get to read at least three different books with the same beloved characters from the first one. That is, once you get past the pain of waiting a year or so for the release of the next book. I've read so many different series for this exact reason, but I thought I'd talk about some of my absolute favourites which I still go back to regularly. This is in no way in an order from best to worst, mostly because it was so difficult picking just five that I couldn't bear to have to rank them as well.

1. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

I'm not going to bother summarising this one, because I'm pretty sure it's impossible to not have heard of Harry Potter; if you haven't read this yet, I seriously wonder what you've been doing with your life up until now. I must have read this entire series a good seven or eight times over and it still never gets boring to read. This series is like my childhood summed up.

2. The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

'Is this the part where you start tearing off strips of your shirt to bind my wounds?'
'If you wanted me to rip my clothes off, you should have just asked'

The Shadowhunter world is absolutely beautiful. I mean, there are the shadowhunters, who are these incredibly fierce, tough demon hunters, and then you've got angels and runes, warlocks and magic, vampires and faeries and werewolves, it's brilliant. Cassandra Clare does such a good job making it all seem so real, and really creating an entire world through her books, and I found all six books in this series pretty much impossible to put down. One of my favourite things is actually the witty and sarcastic sort of humour that is scattered throughout the books - I have always loved books which manage to successfully combine fast-paced, dramatic action and hilarious comments from the characters, and this series is one of the few that repeatedly made me laugh out loud. Unfortunately I was in public at this time, so it was a little embarrassing. But yes, I seriously cannot say enough how much I LOVE this series. And Magnus Bane, ohmygod. I can't even describe how great he is.

Most Eagerly Anticipated YA Debut Novels of 2016

I decided to try a weekly book meme (or tag type thing) held by a blog called The Broke and the Bookish, which is called Top Ten Tuesdays. This Tuesday is the debut novels of 2016 that I'm most looking forward to reading when they come out. Mine will be YA literature, because that's mostly what I read - the full list can be read on my Goodreads shelf here because there were way more than ten books that I thought sounded interesting and I didn't want this post to go on forever. So, in no specific order, here are my ten favourites (UK release dates):

LEARNING TO SWEAR IN AMERICA - Katie Kennedy (July 2016)

When an asteroid is on track to collide directly with the Earth, Yuri, a 17 year old Russian physics prodigy, is called to NASA to help prevent what is essentially the end of the world. But he has trouble making the older physicists listen to him - until he meets Dovie, a normal teenager who is completely unaware of the impending doom, and realises what it means to save the world and a life worth living. 

This is kind of exciting for me, because it apparently has bits of physics and antimatter stuff in it, and that's what I'm currently spending my days learning about. Yuri sounds like a great character - I can't imagine how hard it would be to try to work in a different country with older people who don't respect your input - and I think it'll be really interesting to see what the author does with it all. 

Trial By Fire by Josephine Angelini (Worldwalker series)

I'm a witch. And witches burn.

Josephine Angelini. Why. Why must you do this to me? First it was Starcrossed, which I basically devoured, and now you've gone and written this. Arghhhh.

Lily Proctor is allergic to everything. She can barely survive a day without developing a fever or a rash due to an allergic reaction, and then there is the difficulty breathing, nausea and life-threatening seizures, meaning she may not even be able to attend college next year.

But then Lily is dragged into a new world. A world where she goes from being completely helpless to the most powerful woman in the land. Where witches rule and science is all but obsolete. Where she is literally fighting a war with herself.

She was still in Salem. She just wasn't in her Salem anymore.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Frankie, you are a kick-ass girl, okay? You top my list of absolute favourite fictional girls ever (which is impressive, because I spend way to much time reading for it to be healthy) just for your sheer intelligence and determination. Congratulations! 

I actually wish I was friends with someone like Frankie, no joke. Why, you ask? Because she seriously has (metaphorical) balls - even though she has the same insecurities every single other girl on the planet has. 

After a miraculous transformation over the summer which leaves her with a 'knockout figure' (sigh ... as if these actually happen), Frankie finds herself with a gorgeous senior boyfriend, Matthew Livingston. But trying to fit in with his group of friends is more difficult than she expected, and she soon realises that Matthew just isn't telling her everything. Most importantly, that he's part of an all-male secret society at their boarding school. Obviously, Frankie can't join, because a) she shouldn't even know about it and b) she's not a guy. But being the kind of kick-ass girl she is, Frankie refuses to take 'no' for an answer.

Which leads to all sorts of equally ingenious and hilarious escapades. 

This book began like a typical beach-read, chick-flick romance where the super lucky girl has a super great boyfriend who actually turns out to be not that great at all. But don't be deceived. This book is SO much more than that and I love it all the more for that. 

Frankie is the literal embodiment of what it means to be a strong female to me - she is clever, stays true to herself without being insanely stubborn and isn't afraid to take control of things. Some of the things she says made me laugh out loud when I read them because they simultaneously made complete sense and no sense at all. E. Lockhart has done a fantastic job at making her both incredibly relatable and admirable for girls my age. 

And E. Lockhart has such a flawlessly clever writing style. Discussions on society, grammar, everything was woven in seamlessly to the story, so subtly that you almost didn't realise that she was trying to address these other topics. The idea of the panopticon particularly messed with my head for a few days (in the best way, of course).

This book is about way more than it appears to be, and was all in all, a pretty amazing read.

(I apologise for this terrible summary, I really struggle to condense my thoughts that much)

Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas

One moment. One picture. One glimpse - that's all it takes to make someone think they know the truth.

I practically inhaled this book, it was so good – I'm not going to lie, I may have almost fallen asleep in class today because I was up half of last night trying to finish it. This book is my definition of unputdownable, and I suffered this morning because of it. It was 100% worth it.

Anna and her best friend Elise go on holiday with a group of friends to Aruba. It’s pretty much a typical high school student holiday: lots of parties, drinking and general fun, until Elise is found stabbed in their apartment. The primary suspect? Anna.

I originally picked this up because it reminded me a little bit of Pretty Little Liars, which I seriously LOVE, but it ended up being darker and a lot more serious (obviously, because it's about a murder investigation). I recently read The Girl On The Train and the layout of the book actually reminds me a lot of that, with the different trial scenes interspersed with flashbacks from the holiday, before and after Elise’s murder, and Anna looking back on the events from where she is now. Honestly, I usually find this sort of thing really confusing and difficult to follow, but this book was brilliant in that it was always clear which point of the story I was reading, nothing felt disjointed, and it was ordered really well so that I felt like it all flowed and tied in together. On top of that, you get this really amazing juxtaposition (ooh, fancy word there) of the events from Anna’s point of view as they happened, and what’s being said about them at the trial, and it’s just so freaking clever.