Favourite Reads of 2017

Today I will be sharing my top ten favourite books that I read in 2017. So far I read 86 books and I enjoyed the majority of them. In fact I struggled making this list so I do have honorable mentions at the end. I tried to make this list in some kind of order from my least favourite of the favourites to my absolute favourite. I also cheated a little and if I read more than one book in a particular series I grouped them together. We are also not including rereads on this list which is why Harry Potter is not on it.



#10 The Thousandth Floor and The Dazzling Heights by Katharine McGee


I read both of these books this year and loved them! The Thousandth Floor is actually my first read of the year. This book takes place in New York in the future. In New York there is a building that has 1,000 floors and we follow 5 characters who live in that building. I don't want to say much about it but yes you need to read this book. I will say this trilogy won't be for everyone. There is a lot of drama in it and some of the characters can be annoying at times but the books are addictive and very entertaining and I loved it!


#9 Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

 I was the biggest fan of historical fiction till recently and part of the reason was because of the Author Ruta Sepetys. I love her writing and her other book Between Shades of Grey and yes I loved this one even more. Salt to Sea follows 4 different character during World War II. This book taught me about events that I never knew happened during the war. It is also obvious that Sepetys did research before writing this book and I really appreciated that fact. This is by far my favourite historical fiction read ever and I cannot wait for her next book. If you love historical fiction you need to read this book or any Ruta Sepetys book.


#8 The Darkest Magic by Morgan Rhodes

 I read the A Book of Spirits and Thieves last year and I really loved it. I finally decided to pick this book up and I think I love it even more than the first book! The Darkest Magic is the second book in the A Book of Spirits and Thieves trilogy. I think it is a trilogy correct me if I am wrong. Due to the fact that it is a second book in a series I can't really give a synopsis of the book. If you were wondering whether or not you can read this series before or after the Falling Kingdoms series it doesn't matter. You can read this series without even reading the Falling Kingdoms series but both are amazing and you should read both of them. The Darkest Magic easily got a spot on this list. I love the characters and the world basically everything about it. 


#7 A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

I read both ACOTAR and ACOMAF this year however ACOTAR did not make it onto this list. Sarah J. Maas is one of my favourite authors so I am not surprised that ACOMAF made it on the list. This is the second book in the ACOTAR trilogy following Rhysand and Feyre. Fun fact Rhysand is not on my top ten favourite male characters of all time he is though on my 11th favourite. I know an unpopular opinion. I enjoyed this book so much more than the first one though. The Night Court and the Inner circle are absolutely amazing. I am excited to continue on with the series. The second half of the book though was just wow.


#6 Second Chance Summer by Morgan Matson

 I absolutely love Morgan Matson's books and when I saw that this book was available on Overdrive I had to pick it up and it became and instant favourite. Second Chance Summer follows a girl name Taylor Edwards and her dad receives terrible news and her parents decide that they would spend the summer at their lake house one last time as a whole family. It is a cute summer contemporary book that has some romance in it as well as family. Yes family plays a big part of this book and I think that is one of the reasons why I love this book so much. The characters were also amazing and I really loved this book and I remembered after I finished it I literally recommended it to all my book loving friends. I also read The Unexpected Everything by Morgan Matson and I did enjoying it just didn't make the list.


#5 Crystal Storm by Morgan Rhodes 

Yes another Morgan Rhodes book made it on my list. I can't give much of a synopsis for this book because it is a sequel (5th in the series). The Falling Kingdoms series is known to be the YA version of Game of Thrones so for you Game of Throne lovers you may want to check this series out. The first four books are on my all time favourite books list for there is no surprise that this one also made it on the list. The world of Mytica is amazing and the characters are phenomenal. I also need more Magnus and Cleo in my life. I cannot recommend this series enough and cannot wait for Immortal Reign to come out. Also have you seen that cover! I am fangirling so hard right now.


#4 Warcross by Marie Lu 

Yes I still haven't read the Young Elites trilogy yet but I just had to pick up Warcross. I heard so many good things about it and had high expectations going into it and I was absolutely blown away. When you have high expectations going into a book and those expectations were exceeded, you know you read a good book. Also note that the author said this book takes place ten years from now. I am still not over it. Basically Warcross is a virtual reality world. Emika Chen is struggling to pay rent and is a bounty hunter trying tracking those who use the game illegally. When Emika is is need to make money fast and accidentally glitches herself into the Warcross opening game. Instead of getting arrested, she is contacted by the creator game to spy in the tournament to fix a security problem. If that does not sound interesting I don't know what is. I loved this book so much and cannot wait for the next book 


#3 Stalking Jack the Ripper and Hunting Prince Dracula by Kerri Maniscalco

Stalking Jack the Ripper was a surprise favourite. I read this book around the beginning of the year and I read Hunting Prince Dracula around October. I loved both of them instantly. I cannot decide which one I loved more. Stalking Jack the Ripper follows a girl name Audrey Rose Wadsworth and she lived in London during the time of Jack the Ripper and gets very interested in the cases. One thing I love about her is that she is a strong character and she works in her uncle's laboratory to practice forensic medicine even though it wasn't considered lady like. She didn't care what others thought and I really liked that. Also Thomas Cresswell is definitely one of the most swoon worthy guys I read about in a very long time. I highly recommend this book especially during the Halloween time.


#2 A Darker Shade of Magic and A Gathering Shadows by V.E. Schwab

 I heard so many amazing things about this series and I knew A Darker Shade of Magic would become and instant favourite but I didn't expect to love it as much as I did. In this world there are parallel Londons which are named after colors. Black, Red, White, and Grey. Kell is from Red London where magic and society is flourishing. He is one of the last remaining Antaris who can travel between Londons. There is also another character named Lila Bard and I love Lila so freaking much. I also love Kell and Rhy and basically I love all the characters. I haven't read the last book yet because I don't want the trilogy to end. Of course I know that V.E. Schwab is writing some sort of spin off series and I am super excited for that and I cannot wait to read the last book even though I am so nervous to read.


#1 Lord of Shadows by Cassandra Clare 

If you have been following me on Instagram (@andreasbookishthoughts) you probably know I love Lord of Shadows. This book had all the feels. Yes you do need to read The Infernal Devices, The Mortal Instruments, and Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy first. Lord of Shadows may also be my second favourite Cassandra Clare book! I love the characters especially Kit. I wasn't a fan of him in the first book but now I freaking love him and he may be my favourite character in this series. It keeps changing. The ending though. I won't say too much but as soon as I finished this book I knew this book was going to by my favourite of the year.

Honorable Mentions

This section is in no particular order

1) Every Last Word by Tamara Ireland Stone

2) Simon vs. The Homo sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

3) Geekerella by Ashley Poston

4) The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

5) Wires and Nerves by Marissa Meyer

So those are my favourite reads of the year 2017. I already posted my most disappointing reads of the year which you can find here. I still have a few other end of the year posts coming. What are some of your favourite reads this year? Hope to see you in my next post! 

Invictus Review

Title: Invictus
Author: Ryan Graudin
My rating: 4/5 stars
Date Read: 12/18/17

Invictus is the first Ryan Graudin book I read and I loved it. I am not a big fan of of time travel books as I didn't enjoy most of the ones that I have read. I actually haven't heard a lot about this book and I don't think a lot of people read it. Definitely an under hyped book.

Invictus is kind of hard to explain without spoiling it but it is best to go into this book without knowing too much but here is a small synopsis. We follow four different characters who are aboard a ship called the Invictus. The main character is Farway and he is born outside of time and is the son of a time traveler. He fails his entrance exam into the governments program and ends up taking a job in the black market stealing valuables from the past.

This book is very unique or at least I found it very different from the other books I have read in the past. Maybe it is because I am not a fan of time travel books and don't read them often.

I absolutely love the characters. I love how all the characters are close and work so well together. All of them are unique and have there own special talent. Imogen (I think) has a pet red panda. I repeat pet red panda. That made the book twenty times better. I also really liked Imogen. Gram is one of my favourites in this book for some reason. I think it is because he can solve Rubik's cubes. For those of you who never tried to solve a Rubik's cube, they are extremely hard to solve. About three years ago I finally learned to solve it and now it is very easy and I can solve it under 3 minutes. I never read a book with a character that also liked to solve Rubik's cubes so I found that very unique.

The missions were very interesting. I would say that I enjoyed both halves of the book, though I did like the second half a lot more. I found the very beginning of the books slow and a bit confusing. It took me a couple chapters to fully understand the world and how everything works but once I understood it I fell in love with the story. The time travel element is so cool and the other thing that I can not say due to spoilers is amazing.

Overall I do recommend this book and more people need to read it!

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The Upside of Unrequited Review

Title: The Upside of Unrequited
Author:Becky Albertalli
My rating: 4 /5 stars
Date Read:12/13/17
I read Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda in very early this year and loved it. When I heard Becky Albertalli was coming out with a new book I had to read it and I finally picked it up and I really enjoyed it. I didn't like it as much as Simon but I still liked it. Also I do recommend reading Simon before this book because there is a character from Simon that appears in The Upside of Unrequited unless it is just a coincidence that a character has the same first and last name.

The Upside of Unrequited has a lot of diversity in it. I won't be listing everything but I will talk about some of the diversity elements that the book contains. First off the main character has two moms. I have never read a book that any character has two moms. The main characters family is Jewish as well. Some more of the representation will be mentioned later in this review.

The main character in this book is Molly. Molly is very close to her twin sister Cassie. They share everything together. Yes we have siblings who are literally best friends in this book and it plays a very important role in this book. I am actually an only child so I don't exactly have a relationship with siblings because I obviously don't have any but I still love this element of the story. Molly had 26 crushes in her lifetime but she never told a single one of her crushes that she likes him.

Molly is also insecure about her body as she is fat. She also has/had anxiety and takes medication for it. I like how this book doesn't shy away from it. One thing I also appreciated is that the characters are realistic and very believable.

A better review of this books is Cece from ProblemsOfaBookNerd so here is the link to her review if you would like to read this. She also has the list of the representation. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Overall I did really enjoy this book and highly recommend it.



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Most Disappointing Reads of 2017

Today I will be talking about my least favourite/most disappointing reads of 2017. I read 84 books this year so far and I am so happy with that number. There is still a few more days till the new year so that number may go up. Please note it is okay to love the books on this list. Everyone has their own opinions and please respect mine. I will also be doing a favourite reads of the year of the year soon.

First lets talk about the DNFs. I DNFed three books this year. These do not include the books that I plan on going back to.


The first book I DNFed is Ever the Hunted by Erin Summerill. I wanted to love this book so badly but I could not stand it. I didn't like the characters and I wasn't invested in the story. I stopped reading around page 90. I just couldn't finish it. The premise of the book sounded interesting and I heard good things about it. I am very sad that I didn't enjoy it. This book just wasn't for me and I hope those who read it enjoyed it more.



The next book that I really really wanted to enjoy was Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake. I heard so many good things about this book and the synopsis sounded so good. I love fantasy books and I thought I would love this book but I could not finish it. I was really bored while reading it and also I could not get past the writing style. I tried so hard to ignore it and enjoy the the story but it annoyed me so much. This book is just not for me but so many people love it and I really wish I could of been one of them. Also the cover is gorgeous. I do plan on reading Blake's other books in the future and I would hopefully like it more.

The final book I DNFed this year I was so sad to DNF. I heard so many good things about it and I wanted to love it so much and the book is Uprooted by Naomi Novik. I wanted to read this book ever since I first heard about it but I was so bored while reading it. Nothing happened and I didn't care about the characters. I tried so hard to keep pushing myself to finish it but honestly I gave up. Overall this book is just not for me.



So those are the three books I DNFed this year. I hope that one day I will have the motivation to pick these books up again but at the moment I plan on just leaving them unfinished. Onto my most disappointing reads that I finished.



The first book on my list is a Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I gave this book 1/5 stars. I am so surprised I finished it. So many people love this series and I wanted to be one of them. When I heard this book was becoming a TV show I just had to read the books and this book wasn't what I expected. A Discovery of Witches is very romance heavy and doesn't have a lot of action. I also thought it could of been  lot shorter. I wish I loved it just like most people but it wasn't for me.



The next book is Passenger by Alexandra Bracken which I gave 2/5 stars. I enjoyed her book The Darkest Minds and I still need to finish that series but I was very disappointed when I read this one. My friend read and loved this book and overall I was disappointed. I didn't hate it I only thought it was okay. It could of been a lot better. I have not decided whether or not I will be reading the second book yet. I may since it is only a duology.




The last book on my list is Because You Love to Hate Me by many authors and booktubers. I found this anthology extremely disappointing. I enjoyed about half of them and hated the rest. I had high expectations going into this book. It features some of my favourite authors and some of my favourite booktubers but ultimately it let me down. I used a calculator and this book gets a 3.1/5 stars which isn't bad it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.





And those were my most disappointing reads of 2017. I hope you enjoyed this post and if you read any of these books I hope you liked them more than I did. Keep an eye out for my favourite reads of 2017 because I read so many good book this year and it will be a lot longer than this one. My average rating was a 3.8 this year. Hope to see you in my next post!

Shatter Me Spoiler Free Review

Title: Shatter Me
Author: Tahereh Mafi
Series: Shatter Me #1
My rating: 2.5/ 5 stars
Date Read: 12/9/17

I want to give this book 2 or 3 stars but can't decide which so I will give it 2.5 stars for now.

I really enjoyed Shatter Me but I absolutely hated it at the same time. It is so hard to explain but I will do my best.

First off the writing style is not for everyone. I heard the author's writing style was very poetic but I did not expect it be be that poetic. She used a lot of metaphors and had crossed out text and some parts felt like I was reading a poem. At first I didn't really like the writing, but as the story continued I actually came to tolerate it and by the end of the story, I actually found myself enjoying it which was surprising since I usually don't like books that are written with that particular writing style.

My biggest problem was that I hated almost all the characters. I hated Adam, Juliette, AND Warner. Yes I heard Warner is amazing and I honestly didn't like him at all. First Adam felt to overprotective of Juliette and Juliette I thought was too needy at times. I mean Juliette has her strong moments but sometimes I thought she was a weak character. Warner is a creep. I do like him slightly more than Adam for some reason but honestly I don't like both of of the love interests. Yep, our good friend that we hate in most books is back, LOVE TRIANGLE. I honestly don't mind love triangles if they are done right but this love triangle I don't like and I will explain later. The only characters I really liked was Kenji. He is hardly in this book till like the last forth which is really disappointing because is is definitely my favorite character. James is also an okay character. I liked him but I didn't love him. He is defiantly better than the main 3 characters though.

Despite hating all three main character, I found myself interested in the story. I mean yes it is predictable and I did manage to predict certain things however I still wanted to know what would happen and I also wanted to know if my predictions were correct. I mean many things that happened in the story I wasn't a fan of but for some reason it was very entertaining. I don't know why I want to continue with the series but I do. Is that a good thing I don't know.

Shatter Me is a dystopia and back in 2014 is what I really loved reading. Now I am not a huge fan of dystopias but I do still enjoy them. I feel like if I read it a few years ago I would of probably enjoyed it more than I did now, but I still am very glad I read it and will be giving the second book a chance.

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

The thing I absolutely hated is that Juliette can touch both Adam and Warner the two love interests. Very convenient in my opinion, in fact too convenient. The story could of been so much better and interesting if Juliette could not touch both of them like she cannot touch anyone else I mean what makes those two special [The thing I absolutely hated is that Juliette can touch both Adam and Warner the two love interests. Very convenient in my opinion, in fact too convenient. The story could of been so much better and interesting if Juliette could not touch both of them like she cannot touch anyone else I mean what makes those two special (hide spoiler)]



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Dorothy Must Die (Spoiler Free) Review

Title: Dorothy Must Die
Author: Danielle Paige
Series: Dorothy Must Die #1
My rating: 4/5 stars
Date Read: 12/6/17

*My schools book club pick for December

Story time. More like a confession. I never watched The Wizard of Oz before. I watched part of it a long time ago but I never seen the whole movie. I do know what the Wizard of Oz is about. Time to watch the movie and read the books now!

To the actual review.

I heard very mixed things about this book and I didn't really want to read it. The only reason why I did read it is because it is my school's book club book of the month. Since I am a good member I read it and I surprisingly really enjoyed it.

I had no idea what this book is about when I first picked it up and the first thing I want to say is that Dorothy is not the main character. We follow a girl named Amy Gumm and she lives in Kansas with her mom. Amy one day swept to Oz. She had heard of Oz before. Oz is not what she expected. Dorothy apparently returned to Oz and is now in charge of the ones who live there. Of course we know she is an awful ruler because the title says Dorothy Must Die. This book takes place after the events of the Wizard of Oz.

If I were to be honest I didn't love any of the characters in this book. I was never really attached to them at any point, but I didn't hate most of them as well. They were just Neutral. Sometimes I didn't agree with Amy's decisions as well but she wasn't annoying. At some parts yes she could of been annoying but I didn't hate her. I guess you could say my favorite character is Gert or Glamora. I really liked both of them. Especially Gert.

I really like the world of Oz but I didn't like the state it was in. I if you read this book you probably know what I am talking about. It was so interesting to see what happened to the characters in the Wizard of Oz even though I haven't read the book or watched the movie and I think the author took an interesting take on the world and I actually enjoyed it

I wasn't a huge fan of how things ended in this story. I wished it ended slightly differently. This series has 4 books and to be honest I think this can be a duology based on what happens in this book. But I do plan on reading the second book. I did hear the series gets worse at it goes on but I want to know what happens next.

Overall I really did enjoy it and would recommend it however this book is not for everyone.



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Cinder (Spoiler Free) Review

Title: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Series: The Lunar Chronicles #1
My rating: 5/5 stars
Date Reread: 11/21


Reread review because I read this book before I actually wrote full reviews.

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer is one of my all time favorite series. If you didn't all the books in the series are fairytale retellings. Cinder is obviously a Cinderella retelling and I absolutely love it. If you have read Cinder and didn't really enjoy it, I would recommend picking up the second book Scarlet because I know a lot of people really enjoyed that one even when they didn't enjoy this one.

Cinder follows a girl name Cinder and she is a mechanic who lives in New Beijing. She is a cyborg and lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters. There are also a disease spreading around the world and there are Lunars (moon people) who live on the moon. This is also a science fiction book that takes place in the future and that is all you need to know when reading this book because you can figure out what is going on quickly when you read it.

I love all the main characters but Levana. Iko is definitely my favorite in this book. I love her personality and she is such a good friend.

I think the main reason I love the Lunar Chronicles so much is the uniqueness of the books. Yes it is a Cinderella retelling but it has so many unique elements in it.

Rereading this book I noticed some things I haven't noticed the first time I read and I absolutely love that. The new things that I noticed added a lot to the story and I loved it.

Overall highly recommend you read this book if you haven't yet because it is amazing and everyone should read it.

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