Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks: A Librarian’s Love Letters and Breakup Notes to the Books in Her Life by Annie Spence
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’m so tempted to frame this review as a letter to the book in question. Should I? Shouldn’t I? I think I should.
*Clears throat*
Dear Dear Fahrenheit 451: Love and Heartbreak in the Stacks,
You are exactly what a book about books should be. …
Chemistry by C.L. Lynch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
If you put Warm Bodies and Twilight in a blender and add a heaping helping of sarcasm, you would end up with Chemistry. It’s billed as a “sassy, body-positive, snarky twist on Twilight,” and it is absolutely the truth. I love the Twilight Saga and probably always will; it’s incredibly addictive and one of my ultimate guilty pleasure reads, even though I know it’s problematic on multiple levels. But Lynch added an element to her parody that was missing in the original; humor in droves. While Twilight might make you giggle or roll your eyes in places, it never made me physically bust out laughing, which this book did countless times. …
Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson
My rating: 6 of 5 stars
A peerless and jaw-dropping epic installment; I consider myself damn lucky to have witnessed this powerfully evocative tale.
I’ve stated that it’s mandatory to read at least two books of the series in order to truly find out whether you’ll love this series or not. I retract that statement and change it to three books instead. Trust me, if you don’t love Memories of Ice, you might as well drop the series now. And that would be okay because no series can work for everyone. Honestly speaking, I had a bit of doubt about the series but this incredibly mesmerizing installment has convinced me to finally become a fan of the series. …
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There are very few books that combine both plot and prose in a way that burrows into my soul and becomes part of me. The Name of the Wind is one of those few.
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
Plenty of books touch me and move me. There are stories that enchant me and carry me away from reality. There are writers whose prose I meditate upon as I read, choosing a handful of sentences to store within myself like a private lyrical bouquet so that I can recall the beauty of said prose always. There are authors whose creativity and craftsmanship I trust so much that I will purchase anything they write and consume it with pleasure. …
City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
“Dying nobly is preferable to living savagely.”
I’m completely blown away by Bennett’s world building. City of Blades thrilled me and surprised me and cut me to the quick with its rich character development and lore. I cared so much about the characters, and felt every emotion they felt as I read. Bennett’s world is unlike any I’ve ever come across; he absolutely excels at creating both empathetic characters and compelling mythology and history to add a depth and uniqueness to his writing that I believe to be rare.
“O, the things we kill for our dreams, forgetting all the while we shall wake up to find them naught but dust and ash!
What fools we are to pretend that when we walk to war we do not bring our loved ones with us.”
We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A new gale of hope for self-published fantasy blows with all its might as Devin Madson summons a new triumphant tornado in We Ride the Storm.
Open up your thesaurus and look up the word “underrated.” Devin Madson’s name truly belongs there. I bloody loved this book, even more than all of Madson’s previous works which were great themselves. You can check my review history and you’ll see that for self-published/indie books that I’ve read and reviewed so far, I’ve given a full 5 stars rating (without rounding up on Goodreads) to literally only one book, The Mirror’s Truth by Michael R. Fletcher. We Ride the Storm is the second occurrence. …
The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I honestly need more than five stars to give.
“She was no longer writing about tragedies that blew apart peoples lives, but about something else entirely: how dreams could keep hope alive and fresh.”
Getting this book was kind of a big deal for me. Okay, it was a really big deal. This was the first physical ARC I ever received. I’ll be honest: being asked to review this book made me feel kind of special, which was a large part of the reason I accepted it. When the book was delivered, I was tentatively excited, but I wasn’t going to hold my breath that it was going to be any good. And I wasn’t going to lie and say that it was amazing if it wasn’t, though I would’ve tried to soften the blow the best I could, because I hate to hurt anyone’s feelings, even if the author never read my review. But it turns out that I needn’t have worried. The Resurrection of Joan Ashby was everything that literary fiction should be; it took the mundane and elevated it with stunning prose and tremendous character depth. …
The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is not a review. This is a story, a story about a man who opened the first pages of Mistborn: The Final Empire.
Back in August 2016, there was a man who lived in emptiness. He was probably clinically depressed, but he would never know; he didn’t get himself checked. His heart didn’t ache, his smile was freely given, but he was never happy; he felt empty every day. Damages were added when he realized his hobbies didn’t interest him that much anymore, which resulted in reluctant social interaction with his friends. His insomnia was so acute that he couldn’t sleep without alcohol so he drowned in it every night. These symptoms were most likely the aftermath of cumulative mental damage afflicted by those closest to him. His best friend spread lies about him, his closest cousin stole tons of money from him, and then he lost his job and his then girlfriend dumped him. He was alone. He told himself, this can’t be it. There’s always a way to come back stronger. He decided to do something new; he decided to fully immerse himself in reading novels. There were countless choices out there and he didn’t know what to choose first, but on the 1st of September 2016, he dived into the mist and hope was born. …
Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The beginning of the trilogy that sparked my love for reading fantasy novels.
It’s been exactly one year ten months since I first joined Goodreads or started reading The Final Empire, September 1st, 2016 to be exact. This is an extremely important book for me and the more I tried to explain why the harder it felt to come up with something other than saying the cliché phrase that “I absolutely love this book”. The reason on the significance of this trilogy for me will have to be postponed until I’m done with rereading “The Hero of Ages” because it will be much easier for me to explain why by talking about my life before and after finishing the trilogy. So yeah, that’s coming in a week or two but for now, as always, it’s all about my thoughts on the book and why The Final Empire—even upon reread—is an absolutely incredible start to a trilogy. …