Best Reads of 2017
I thought about the new year coming, and that I had best give you a quick overview of what my highlights were! I also found it interesting to discover that some of my favourite authors, such as Juliet Marillier, were not on the list. Maybe I can hope for more novels from them in 2018…
January: Emily Barr – The One Memory of Flora Banks and Sara Barnard – A Quiet Kind of Thunder. Both of these novels are worthy YA novels that tackle interesting neurological disorders.
February: Vic James – Gilded Cage and Emily Reynolds – A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind. A nice fantasy/futuristic novel and another neurological offering (but this time a personal story).
March: Sally Hepworth – the mother’s promise and Laurie Frankel – This Is How It Always Is. These two novels took us out of YA territory and into more Adult fiction. The former novel looked at a hypothetical problem, while the latter looked at real life gender non-conformity.
April: Brigid Kemmerer – Letters to the Lost, John Scalzi – The Collapsing Empire and Amy Tintera – Avenged. Three hits here, another YA, the only Sci-Fi of the year and a Fantasy. Avenged was the second novel from Ruined in 2016.
May: I spent some time overseas in May, and thus, no 5-star reviews here either.
June: Emery Lord – The Names They Gave Us. Just one novel this month, a fabulous YA novel from an author I am coming to adore. Another of her novels starred in November. When We Collided is her novel from 2016.
July: Kathleen Duey – Sacred Scars. I had reviewed Skin Hunger, and read this one at the same time, but I took a long time to get around to reviewing it. Actually, this is not even a new novel to my shelf or new in any sense of the word. Many years later we are still waiting on the third and final novel in this series…
August: No novels reviewed here, due to my PhD completion. I’m Dr. Herbert now!
September: Megan Jacobson – the build-up season. This YA novel was a worthy successor to her first novel, yellow. Once again, Jacobson attempted to address some holes in YA fiction with interesting family relationships.
October: Allison Rushby – The Fifth Room. Here we have a bit of science, and another hypothetical. How far would you go to do the experiments you wanted to do?
November: AJ Conway – The Successor, Krystal Sutherland – A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares and Emery Lord – the start of me and you. Conway’s other novels My Nova (2012) and Skyquakers (2016) are more Sci-Fi, while this novel is a straight fiction. Krystal Sutherland follows in the great YA standard she set in Our Chemical Hearts. And finally we see a third brilliant novel from Emery Lord (which honestly I didn’t expect, as when there is more than one novel per year by an author, I start to worry about quality).
December: Katie Kennedy – Learning to Swear in America and Garth Nix – A Confusion of Princes. Finally we see one of my old favourite authors here, Garth Nix. Technically this novel probably isn’t a 5 stars for me any more, but it was still awesome for its age-bracket. Learning to Swear in America brought a little science back into YA to round out the year!
Keep in mind that I did not get around to reviewing some of these novels until well after their release dates. That means that for those where you can expect a sequel, well, those are almost released! This includes ‘Gilded Cage’, expect a review of the second novel, Tarnished City on the 9th of January 2018. There are also some novels left that I have read but not reviewed, and these will now roll over to 2018.
