FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2017

I am chronically nostalgic, and thus, I love writing wrap-ups. I love reflecting on all the books I have read in a year. It falls into the same category of my love for the new year; New Year’s Eve is my favourite holiday because I love to reflect, and then start fresh. To me, it feels like coming full circle. Traditionally, I have tried to compile a top ten list of books at the end of the year, but in reality, I’m very particular about calling a book a ‘favourite’ and don’t often love ten books out of the reading year enough for them to qualify as such. This year, I’m abandoning the number system and going with my gut: instead of forcing myself to pick ten book and filling most of the list with four star books, I’m just going to tell you what my favourite books of the year were. Goodbye top ten list, hello simple favourites list. Here are my favourite books of 2017, most of which, by coincidence, I read in one sitting.

6. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (2007)
I'm a sensible reader. I tire easily and go to bed early, so when a book keeps me up until 2am because I have an urgent need to finish it all in one go, you had best believe that book is good. I have an exclusive list of books that have changed my life. There are only about five books on it, and a story needs to make me feel a very specific way after reading to make the cut. (Blog post on that list coming sometime in 2018. Possibly.) A Thousand Splendid Suns, without a doubt, is at the very top of that list. This book stills you. It registers somewhere in your gut, like a hunger, an ache; I have never grieved over a book, and yet over this one, I grieved, deeply and personally. Hosseini is a master of his craft. I wanted to reach through the pages and rescue his gorgeously textured characters from their awful lives, but I couldn’t, so I tore through the pages at top speed instead. A Thousand Splendid Suns gave me a unique kind of history lesson. Seeing the conflict and terror through the eyes of two brave and battered women forced automatic empathy, and I have always been known for being endlessly empathetic, so you can only imagine the extent to which this book moved me. It haunted me. I was still thinking about it days afterward. This is the kind of book that leaves an impact, and I am always on the hunt for more books to give me scars. 

5. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014) [full review] I read this book in a single day for the BookTube-a-Thon, but probably would have read it in just as short a time frame if not trying to read seven books in one week. I stray away from thrillers for two reasons: I scare extremely easily and don’t like reading things that creep me out; and ‘thriller’ strikes me as a rather adult genre, and I don’t particularly enjoy reading adult books. Then I read the synopsis and the first five pages of Everything I Never Told You, and I discovered a whole new world.Young adult thrillers are a thing, and I am newly -- and deeply -- obsessed. This is another book that stayed with me for days after I finished reading. (I am only now realising that I could say the same thing about every book on this list.) I found this book beyond brilliant. I was stunned by the layers of complexity, the kinds of themes Ng probed and the intelligence with which she interrogated them -- this book was smart, sharp as a tack, and I devoured it like it was food and I was starving. I struggled to write my full review at the initial time of reading because this book was so intimidating to talk about; would anything I wanted to say be able to fully capture the depth of this book, the absolute genius of its themes and the incredibly compelling tragedy of the story? I think my review ended up doing it justice when I finally committed to it, because it felt like an injustice for me to not write about Everything I Never Told You. It was the kind of book that begged to be written about, and I adore that kind of novel -- the call to write is a call to which I will always respond.

4. Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero (2014)
I have a ludicrously short attention span, and yet I read this entire book, without stopping, in one sitting. No stopping to check my phone, no getting bored of reading and switching over to Netflix; for five uninterrupted hours, Gabi, a Girl in Pieces had my undivided attention. Quite simply, I loved it: it was cute and fun and well-written, Quintero’s rendition of the teenage voice was both heartfelt and refreshingly believable, and it went to some pretty dark places without becoming pessimistic and bleak. I loved that Gabi was a poet. I loved Gabi’s poetry, how straightforward it was while still being poetic and lovely to read. I loved that she met her love interest in poetry class, and that they bonded over their mutual love of expressing their personal grief through writing. I found Gabi’s voice and personality so authentic. She was so open and honest with the reader, but then again, the novel was written as excerpts from Gabi’s diary; we were prying into a safe space where she didn't have to save face or act a certain way. We were privilege to her most private thoughts and fears, and I really enjoyed that about the novel -- not because I enjoyed maliciously snooping through her diary, but because it created a more genuine reading experience. We were intimately close to the heart of Gabi’s story and her growth, which I found invaluable to my enjoyment of the book. 

3.With Malice by Eileen Cook (2016)
If Everything I Never Told You was the key that unlocked the door for my interest in thrillers, With Malice was the gust of wind that blew that door wide open. I didn't consume this story; this story consumed me. It was like Jumanji; I opened the book, and it swallowed me whole. I was so invested in this story. Stopping reading wasn't an option: I had to know what happened next. What I loved the most about this book was Cook’s genre choices. Cross-genre fiction is not unusual, but there is something about the ‘young adult/thriller’ combination that felt so perfect to me. They gelled together so nicely, the melodrama of young adult intensifying the suspense and creepiness by which thrillers are characterised. As a result, this book felt a touch hysterical to me, but not at all in a bad way: in fact, I felt that it added to the realism of the story. The main character, Jill Charron, is an eighteen-year-old amnesiac accused of first degree murder. She may face a life sentence for a crime that she can’t even remember whether or not she committed. Would such a conundrum not make one a little bit hysterical? I also really loved the confusion of memory and reality in this book. Some argue that giving Jill amnesia was too convenient, a cop-out way of creating mystery. I understand that, yet I disagree. Jill’s amnesia added mystery and suspense, sure, but it also made Jill a really unreliable narrator, especially at the conclusion of the novel. I wasn’t sure what to believe, about the plot or about Jill’s backstory or about her scattered memories; I wasn’t sure if I could trust Jill at all, and as opposed to finding that unsettling, I honestly found it really exciting. I was afraid that With Malice would be really scary and too creepy for me to enjoy, but I think the YA aspect helped mellow out the creepiness, so I was able to have a tense but stressful, but ultimately super fun, time reading this awesome book. 

2. Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (2015)

I have a confession: I haven’t actually finished this book yet. As of writing, I’m on page 467/599, and I won’t be able to complete the last 132 pages before the year is up. Yet I am enjoying it so much that I just can’t wait until December 2018 to talk about it. It’s possible that I’m jumping the gun. I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. I bought Illuminae at the start of 2016 because it was 70% off in the closing down sale at the Whitcoulls in Sylvia Park. I had barely thought about it since, and had come to regret the impulse buy. I even came close to Konmari-ing it off my TBR. I’m so glad that I didn’t. Illuminae is so fucking cool. Initially, it gave me strong Ready Player One vibes in its tone and pace, a sure sign that it was going to be excellent (Ready Player One is one of my favourite books of all time, to contextualise the praise). When I was animatedly explaining the plot of this book to my boyfriend Luke, he told me that what I was describing was stock-standard sci-fi content, but I have read relatively little sci-fi, so this was all so exciting to me. I can’t believe how action-packed this book is so far, and how tragic -- I’ve been reading it on my breaks at work, and keep getting odd looks from customers when I gasp out loud because another awful, explicitly violent death has occured to a character to whom I had only just gotten attached. The main characters, Kady and Ezra, are incredibly charismatic, and the dynamic between the two of them is hilarious, touching, and heartbreaking all at once. In particular, I adore Kady. I adore Kady because she is headstrong and kickass and awesome, but also vulnerable and scared and terrified of being alone. I adore Kady because the dichotomy between the mask she puts on and the face she actually wears is fascinating --she is a huge badass who loathes the idea of being emotionally vulnerable, because being open with people so often leads to getting hurt. (God, can I relate to her fear of vulnerability.) I adore Kady because she is so raw and realistic. Ezra is sweet and charming and loveable, a big ol’ goof with a heart of gold, but Kady is just something else. Her love for Ezra keeps her going, even when all hope is lost. She is such a hero. I haven’t even finished this book, and yet I couldn’t resist going out and buying the sequel, Gemina today -- and the third book in the trilogy, Obsidio, comes out in March 2018. I know where I’ll be spending my paycheck.

1. Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (2016) [full review]
Every Heart a Doorway is one of those books I normally wouldn’t go anywhere near, as I generally don’t enjoy high fantasy, but there was something about this novella that drew me in… (It was the cover. Look at it! How gorgeous is that?) I’m currently halfway through writing my full review and it is very loving and impassioned, so I’ll keep it short. This book was everything I expected, and so much more. Seanan McGuire is an author of extraordinary talent, not only with prose but also with storytelling and world-building, and her writing style reminds me of a very specific song from the credits of an episode in the first season of Gravity Falls (listen to that lovely, spooky song here -- it’s track 21). I expected to read a fantasy novella about a murder at a school for wayward children; I was not expecting a beautifully written tale about belonging and acceptance, a story so strongly atmospheric from the inside out that its pages swirl with wonder and magic, but that’s what Every Heart a Doorway is. I only wish that this book had been longer. Clocking in at 169 pages, Every Heart a Doorway squeezes an astounding amount of story movement and character development between its end pages, but the world and its lore are so interesting that I almost wished George R. R. Martin had written it; I could really have done with an extra 900 pages of unpacking the world-building and fleshing out the stories of the other characters. Goodness, am I glad that this marvellous book is not a standalone. 

BONUS: JANUARY 2018 TBR

• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
• The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
• Find Me by Romily Bernard
• Remember Me by Romily Bernard
• Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Happy New Year x