Best Books of 2019 So Far!

AKA a mash up of the Mid Year Book freak out tag and a rundown of the best 5* reads of 2019 because what are rules?

I’ve had an amazing year of reading this year so far. The most books I have ever read in a year was 68 but I have already managed to read 58. In just half a year?!?! So I have easily beaten my reading challenge of 52 (I usually set it at a number I know I can reach because I don’t like pressure!). A lot of these books were amazing. So amazing in fact that I only managed to narrow it down to 12 best books for my super quick rundown (Someone save me when it comes to doing my end of year one!)

I’m going to jump straight into it. Partially because I don’t want to bore you when you could be reading about amazing books and partially because I am on holiday and it is sunny outside…. But stick around for the quickfire freakout tag questions at the end and do let me know what you think of these books in the comments!

Contemporary:

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Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman – Summery YA dealing with grief but with amazing aromantic and asexual questioning rep.

Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate – Multi pov YA similar to One of Us is Lying. Valentine was my favourite character, I loved his autism rep.

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas– YA with amazing characters fighting against racism and police brutality.

Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn – Twisty YA with horrible secrets, unfolding memories and an unreliable narrator.

Sci-fi:

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The Disasters by MK England – Super fun YA scifi adventure with a diverse crew of dropouts trying to save the universe

Failure to Communicate & Testing Pandora by Kaia Sonderby – Political scifi with an amazing autistic main character managing contact with alien species

Warchild by Karin Lowachee – The best kind of action packed space spanning scifi but concentrating on one conflicted boy caught between sides

This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar – Lyrical scifi about two female agents taunting each other over letters and falling in love. So different to anything I’ve read.

Fantasy:

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The Balloonmakers by Katherine Locke – Action packed YA Historical Fantasy books with amazing diverse characters and balloon magic

Crown of Feathers by Nicki Pau Preto – Beautifully imagined second world fantasy with phoenix riders, animal magic bonding, and complicated diverse characters.

The Binding by Bridget Collins – An m/m historical fantasy about a farmer, book magic, love and grief.

Predatory (Port Lewis Witches) by Brooklyn Ray – Most recent in the Port Lewis Witches series. Magical. Atmospheric. Queer. Amazing characters.

Quickfire Round:

Saddest Book: History is All you Left Me by Adam Silvera, This book BROKE me.

Happiest Book: The Disasters by MK England, such a fun, action packed adventure

Shortest Book; The Queen of Cups by Ren Basel. 25 pages.

Longest Book: A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab. 513 pages

Favourite Characters: Xandri (Failure to Communicate), Valentine (Seven Ways we Lie), Val (Crown of Feathers), Víctor (Vicious). Half of these are autistic the other half are amoral. I am amused.

Favourite Relationships: this has been a year for amazing sibling relationships. Some of my favourites are Rhys and Kell (Shades of Magic), Sam and Avery (The Boy who Steals Houses), Val and Veronyka (Crown of Feathers) and Wolf and Ilse (The Spy with the Red Balloon)

Biggest Surprise: Both Failure to Communicate and Warchild surprised me in just how much I loved them after not getting around to them in ages but the winner here has to go to This is How you Lose the Time War. It completely threw me. It’s not like anything I’ve read before and I was NOT expecting it

Books I want to read by the end of the year: There are a lot of new releases that I want to read but haven’t yet because they aren’t available on Kindle so I can’t say I will read those but two books I am planning on reading before the end of the year are Jade City by Fonda Lee and Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant. Both are books I finally bought this week,

So that’s my year in books so far, what about yours? How has your reading this year gone, what are your favourites etc? And have you or are you planning on reading any of the ones I’ve mentioned?