Rae Carson is without a doubt my favorite author discovery of 2016. I went gaga over Walk the Earth a Stranger (still not over that terrible title) and The Girl of Fire and Thorns did not disappoint. (Many thanks to Malin for the rec!) This is a coming of age story about a smart and timid girl becoming a wise and powerful woman. She’s the second born daughter of a king and was chosen for greatness at her birth. The problem is that she doesn’t […]
As good as gold
I think this book was on several best of YA lists last year and it ended up on my TBR list without me knowing much about it. When I got it from the library and realized it was a pioneer story, I honestly didn’t expect much. My parents were mormons and therefore obsessed with tales of pioneers, so my childhood was inundated with it. I was definitely not into it. Anyway, all this to say that I wasn’t really excited for this book, but decided […]
Pretty great YA fantasy
I was so pleasantly surprised by this YA trilogy, an example of a series that, in my opinion, actually gets better as it progresses rather than buckling under its own weight. This is partly achieved by Rae Carson’s sound vision, giving each book its own arc (which is no less important for being contained within the scope of one installment) within the larger narrative, but also by having that larger narrative be the product of genuine character and plot development rather than a series of […]