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Heck yes it is, JT.
To celebrate the onset of spring, and the best reading season of all, I thought I would give you guys a glimpse at my favorite books in my favorite genres (fantasy, romance, literary fiction, YA and NA) so far of 2014.
My Favorite Fantasy
The Lies of Locke Lamora
I feel bad putting this book on a wrap-up list because to be honest, it’s the best book I’ve read in a good long while. It was a complete surprise to me. I’m not sure when or why I bought a mass market paperback version of this book, but it’s been staring out at me from my bookshelves for a long time. I had some time in February to devote to a fantasy novel, so I picked it up and never put it back down. It was incredible.
Locke Lamora is a master thief and con-artist in a complicated and thoroughly engrossing world. Imagine if Game of Thrones took place in just one location and followed the story of a guy part Tyrion, part Arya and part Jaqen H’ghar. Locke is clever, quick, and the perfect protagonist. You root for him and his small band of friends and thieves (The Gentlemen Bastards) in every way. The story gives you hints and flashbacks into how he became the Thorn of Camorr (think Danny Ocean to Las Vegas bigshots). It’s perfectly plotted and told in a gripping yarn-spinning way. I can’t wait to have time to read the rest of the series. In fact, I’ll say it: these novels are better than Game of Thrones. If you love fantasy, but want a tight-knit world, you can’t beat Scott Lynch’s Locke.
My Favorite Romance
Hard Time
Shut up. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Or its title. Or its synopsis. Just trust me on this one. If you are looking for a a hot, sweet, unexpected romance to hustle through, Cara McKenna’s Hard Time has been my favorite this year. Cara writes really hot, really dirty guys and smart, sexy women. But one thing she does better than anyone else: REGULAR DUDES.
The romance genre is full of billionaires, playboys, start-up geniuses, and generally just men none of us really ever meet. Cara has this great series of blue collar guys, maybe even guys you think you wouldn’t WANT to ever be with, but she makes them incredibly hot.
In Hard Time (omg I’m giggling every time I type this), Annie is a librarian who is starting a new weekly job as a prison instructor. A victim of a former abusive boyfriend, she wants this to be empowering, but also cathartic; she genuinely wants to help these inmates. Her first day there, however, she’s immediately drawn to the silent intensity of a certain inmate, Eric Collier.
What happens next? HOT LETTERS AND BARELY THERE TOUCHES. It’s like Jane Austen for the modern woman. Eric and Annie believe their mutual attraction can’t ever go beyond the letters they pass back and forth and the longingly charged glances they share, so they hold nothing back in print. You guys know how I feel about letters, right? Man.
My Favorite Literary Fiction
The Chaperone
This book is not new to anyone who, like me, regularly browses the new release shelves at their local bookstore. It was released two years ago and spent quite a bit of time on the New York Times Bestseller list. But I just read it a couple of months ago for my book club. And it didn’t disappoint and deserves its accolades. It follows a woman named Cora who, since her twin sons are grown and gone, offers to chaperone her neighbor’s daughter (the soon to be famous Louise Brooks) to New York City for the summer. Louise is a promising dancer, and is headed to a prestigious school of an infamous dance instructor. What Cora assumes will be a short adventure coupled with an opportunity to learn something about her own dubious origins turns into a summer that completely changes her life.
I loved this book because I felt a keen kinship with both Louise and Cora, even though throughout the book they are wholly different and never in the same season of life or the same existential place. My book club loved it and was one of the best books we’ve read recently. If you are looking for a great discussion book, this is the one.
My Favorite Young Adult
Dreams of Gods and Monsters
OH.MY.GODSTARS.
Every once in a while a Young Adult series comes along that completely blows everything out of the water. People can talk about their popular franchises all they want, but it’s those of us who read YA like it’s our job who know the truth about the Marchettas and the Cashores and the Blacks out there in the YAsphere. And while I’ve loved the little corner of our world who’ve known about Laini Taylor, with the completion of this series, she’s about the bust through the ceiling. This is a trilogy that cannot be held back. Plus, it has AKIVA.
“Once Upon a Time an Angel and a Devil Fell in Love. It Did Not End Well.” One of those things is true. This series (and this book in particular) takes you through the entire range of emotions in a setting that is epic and insular. We meet so many characters and journey with them all, willing and waiting for the best. I don’t know how she does it, but in prose completely haunting and beautiful, Laini Taylor doesn’t waste a single word. In a novel with over a dozen characters all fighting for something unique to them, she makes us feel for all of them. This series is perfect, and this final installment is the best of three. Read it immediately.
My Favorite New Adult
Beyond Repair
Charlotte Stein wrote what might be my other favorite New Adult novel (with a terrible cover), Sheltered. And I expected Beyond Repair to be a lot like it, but it wasn’t. It was better. Take two pretty broken characters and put them together in a beach house that they never leave for 100 pages and see what happens. Oh, also make one of them skittish and awkward and an intense agoraphobe, and have the other be a dirty, sweet, giant movie star. That’s right.
Movie star NA is a problematic thing, I understand that. We all know no one wants to read re-worked Rob Pattinson fanfiction and pretend it’s not a total author insert, but this is nothing like that. Charlotte’s novels are so chock-full of unique voice that we never feel like we’re reading the same thing over and over. Alice is lonely and scared and stilted, but her conversations and smart ass remarks to the famous god she finds blacked out on her living room rug make her believable and sympathetic. Holden Stark, a sexier Chris Evans type star, worms his way into her life with honest interest and sincere affection. They connect over a shared love of movies (and if Starman and Fright Night and Twilight Zone and A-HA references don’t clue you into this awesomeness, then go home). There’s sweetness:
OH and there’s the hotness:
That was the tamest hotness quote I could find. Just trust me. Holden is dirttttayyy. You will not be able to look away from the page once you start. I’ve already read it twice. And just in general, you need to be read Charlotte Stein. Okay? Okay. #hotness
So that’s it. My best books so far of 2014. Tweet at me if you pick or more of these up in the next couple of months and tell me what you think. HAPPY READING.
