My January Reads!

I got quite a bit of reading done this month, in between writing and university work, which is awesome.

This month consisted of reading books i'd gotten for Christmas, so most didn't actually come out this month. Also, for some reason they're mostly adult novels. But anyway, here they are:



First of all, I read All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This WWII novel is Pulitzer Prize winner, as well as many other awards so I was excited to see what made it so award-worthy.

What I found so amazing about reading this is that one of the main characters, Marie-Laure, is blind and Doerr managed to describe the way she interacts and sees the world so perfectly. It might sound silly, but as I was reading from her point of view I could really imagine how being blind would be. It was a strange sensation to jolt out from when the chapter changed.

I totally think this book should be classed as a Young Adult novel. The book follows the two main characters from childhood into their teen years!



Next, I read Wayfarer by Alexandra Bracken.

I think I need to reread Passenger and Wayfarer because I adore Bracken's other series (The Darkest Minds) but this one has never really grabbed me in the same way. Maybe I was in a funny mood when reading it. I did enjoy the books and I love her writing but for me it didn't stand out.

(That cover is still stunning though, right?)





Then I read The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry.

This was the Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, so I had to check it out!

The Essex Serpent is a really uniquely told story, Perry's writing is phenomenal.
The book is a book about friendship. Building them, breaking them, how hard you have to work to keep them, how easy some can seem...

It really deserves its award and I would recommend this to anyone who loves a good Victorian read.

The second to last book I I read was the longest and hardest to read. I don't mean hard in the sense that it was boring or dense. I mean emotionally hard to read. That book was A Little Life by Hanya Yanigihara.

This book.
This book will stay with me forever. For the first time ever reading a book, I thought 'I love this book so much but I will never read it again'. That was when I was in the middle of a tough part. Usually I want to reread books I love.

A Little Life is a hugely emotionally draining book. I have read many, many books. I have cried at many, many books. But none have made me feel so completely sad. You might ask why the hell I kept on reading and this review from the San Francisco Chronicle explains is perfectly:
'How often is a novel so deeply disturbing that you might find yourself weeping, and yet so revelatory about human kindness that you might also feel touched by grace?'

The last book I read I wasn't expecting to finish this month but I flew through it in about an hour.

Wires and Nerve by Marissa Meyer (Art by Doug Holgate) is a graphic novel set in the Lunar Chronicles universe. It felt so great to have more new things from the characters, I really hope Meyer keeps giving us little extras so we never have to say a final farewell to those awesome characters.

 Even though the way the characters are drawn isn't how I imagined them, I still loved the art style!
This is totally a must-read for any Lunar Chronicles fan!