Books of 2021

 2021 was a good year of reading for me. I found myself in reading slump for most of 2019 and 2020 but have succeeded in pulling myself out of it this year. Overall, I read 54 books. 

I decided to rank all of the physical  books I read this year (not including rereads, making this list 34 books) from least favourite to favourite (I also included a video of this on my tiktok account). So, here are my 2021 reads from least favourite to favourite; 

• 
  The Bargainer Series - Laura Thalassa (my most underwhelming read of the year) 
• The Killings at Kingfisher Hill- Sophie Hannah (my first read of the year) 
• A Slow Fire Burning- Paula Hawkins 
• Princess at Heart- Connie Glynn 
• Rule of Wolves- Leigh Bardugo 
• Gilded- Marissa Meyer
• A Vow so Bold and Deadly - Brigid Kemmerer (Biggest disappointment of the year) 
• Shadow and Flame- Mindee Arnett 
• Bone Criers Dawn- Katheryn Purdie 
• Hunted- Meagan Spooner  
• Onyx and Ivory- Mindee Arnett 
• Bone Criers Moon- Katheryn Purdie 
• The Shadows Between Us- Tricia Levenseller 
• The Mask Falling- Samantha Shannon 
• Vespertine- Margaret Rogerson 
• The Devil and the Dark Water- Stuart Turton
• Rosebound- J.J. Marshall & J.R Walden 
• A Shadow in the Ember- Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Defy The Night- Brigid Kemmerer 
• The Unhoneymooners- Christina Lauren 
• Midnight In Everwood- M.A. Kuzniar 
• The Crown of Guilded Bones- Jennifer L. Armentrout 
• Kingdom of the Cursed- Kerri Maniscalco 
• Kingdom of the Wicked- Kerri Maniscalco
• These Hollow Vows- Lexi Ryan
• A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire- Jennifer L. Armentrout 
• The Unbound Empire- Melissa Caruso 
• Aurora's End- Amie Kaufman, Jay Kristoff 
• Empire of the Vampire- Jay Kristoff 
• From Blood and Ash- Jennifer L. Armentrout 
• Once upon a broken heart-Stephanie Garber 
• Realm Breaker- Victoria Aveyard 
• A Court of Silver Flames- Sarah J Maas 
• The Silver Tracks- Cornelia Funke

I read a lot of fantastic books this year, The Bargainer series are the only books that I didn't enjoy all that much. I thought the first book was good, but I feel that it doesn't live up to the hype, and the sequels are a bit of a let down. 

It wasn't hard for me to choose my top three books of 2021. Realm Breaker completely blew me away and has been stuck in my mind since I read. I have a feeling that the sequel will be one of my favourite books of 2022. 

A Court of Silver Flames was one of my most anticipated 2021 releases. I counted down the days for this book and tried my best to read it as slowly as possible. Going into this book I was not the biggest fan of Nesta but I am so glad that I read it. I really enjoyed her story and her path for bettering herself. I know it is going to be a long wait but I am so excited for the next book. 

It was no surprise that The Silver Tracks, was my favourite read of 2021. I have waited so long for this book and it was so worth the wait. This is the fourth book in my favourite series and it added so much to an already beautiful story. I am sad that this is likely to be the penultimate book in the series, but so much happened in this book and I know that the finale is going to be epic. I am anticipating another 5 year wait for the next book, so I will get in plenty of rereads of The Silver Tracks before then. 

Organising the rest of the list was a great challenge though. I read so many great books this year, with some unexpected new favourites including From Blood and Ash, and Kingdom of the Cursed, and I am excited to read some great books in 2022. Although my tbr definitely gained a lot of books, and some new releases took priority over the books that have been sat on y tbr for far too long, I feel I made some good progress with it. Onyx and Ivory has been on my tbr for years and I am really happy that 2021 was the year that I finally got around to it. I am disappointed that I did not get around the reading The Raven Boys, We Hunt the Flame, and The Starless Sea, all of which have been on my tbr for a while, so I am aiming to make them priority reads for 2022. 

For the last few days of 2021 I am rereading A Court of Silver Flames. I am yet to decide what my first read of 2022 will be, I am going to reorganise my tbr trolley over the next few days and I am sure that will help me to decide what to get started with. 

Of Gold and Greed, Chanda Hahn review

Of Gold and Greed is a glorious retelling of Rumpelstiltskin set in the magical world of the Daughters of Eville. Following Rhea, readers are taken on a journey literally Of Gold and Greed, with fantastic characters, a fast paced plot, and a cute romance perfect for YA readers. This is the sixth book in the series, and it undoubtedly lives up to the standard of the previous books. 

My review: 

I have been a big fan of Chanda Hahn's books since I first picked up UnEnchanted back in 2013. The Daughters of Eville series has quickly become a favourite of mine, with retelling's of tales well known in YA, but also some that have not been used widely before. Of Gold and Greed is the second Rumpelstiltskin retelling I have read this year and it did not disappoint. Much like many of Hahn's books, I was quickly hooked by the story. The world building in this series is great, but each book is not too drawn out that it is a struggle to fall into the plot, and quickly devour it. I really enjoyed with twist in this retelling. The different backstory created for Rumpelstiltskin in this book, along with the gold and the curses used, fit really well together and created and new and unique story. I rated Of Gold and Greed 5 stars, and it is now one of my favourites of the current 6 books in the Daughters of Eville series. 

**MAJOR SPOILERS BELOW**

 Tabs:

I had a different experience of using tabs with this book as I read the kindle edition and used the highlight function instead. This left me with only 4 coloured tabs this time but I think that was the perfect amount. This is how I used them;

Blue: quotes

Yellow: important plot points/memorable parts

Pink: cute parts/ parts I love

Orange: parts that made me laugh 

How many tabs did I use? 

I used 86 tabs throughout this book. Far more than I thought I had and I was really shocked when I counted these! I used 32 yellow tabs, 15 blue tabs, 19 pink tabs, and 20 orange tabs. 

Rhea's journey in this book was amazing, she worked hard and became a hero that everyone needed. Of Gold and Greed has a very complex plot, and I used 32 tabs because I felt there was such much that happened that was important to the plot and there were a lot of memorable parts I wanted to return to later. 

Of Gold and Greed had so many great quotes, I felt myself highlighting a lot and tried to have some restraint, leading me to have 15 blue tabs. Some of my favourite quotes from Of Gold and Greed include; 

"For all great hero's never truly die." 

"Sometimes our greatest enemies are those within."

"Women and books can be hazardous for your health." 

"Books are a weapon in the right hands." 

I used less pink tabs than I thought I would but I did try hard not to highlight every single interaction between Rhea and Kash. Similarly, the orange tabs I used were mostly down to Kash and Rumple. 

Who was my favourite character? 

Kash! I really liked Kash and his story, I knew as soon as he walked into the manor at the start of the book that I would enjoy his story and every interaction Rhea would have with him. His brothers were great characters too and I greatly hope they make an appearance in the next book. 

What was my favourite part of the plot? 

So much happened in Of Gold and Greed, the plot for this book is amazing but I really enjoyed reading about the curse on the three brothers, it was so unique and interesting to read. I found it amazing how the personalities of the brothers fit into their cursed form and it was a great element to the story and Rhea's journey. 

How long did it take me to read? 

Of Gold and Greed, took me a few hours to read over two days. I always try to pace myself with Hahn's books, but with such interesting stories and great characters the books are just impossible to put down. But this is something that I greatly love about Hahn's works, they are often light reads, with happily ever afters, that readers can happily enjoy in one sitting. 

I am ridiculously excited for the next (and sadly last) book in the Daughters of Eville series. I loved what we got to see of Honor in Of Gold and Greed, so I'm really looking forward to reading her own story. Of Secrets and Slippers is due to be released in June 2022 and is described on Goodreads as "A 12 Dancing Princesses twisted villain tale." From that description alone I am counting down the days until its release. 

Gilded, Marissa Meyer review

 
Gilded is a unique Rumpelstiltskin retelling perfect for YA fantasy fans. This complex retelling provides readers with a heroine with an interesting backstory, a villain you'll love to hate, and a story full of magic, secrets, love, and lies. (And how stunning is the cover!) 

**THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS**

My review: 

Gilded was an interesting read for me. I found this book challenging, disappointing, and eventually enjoyable. I was incredibly eager to start this book, I am a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles, but found myself disappointed by the third instalment of the Renegades trilogy, and hoped that Gilded would make up for this. As I began reading this novel I found myself falling into a reading slump but did my best to push through it. However, I did need to take a break from reading for a few weeks and only managed the first 50 pages. I was excited to return to the book as I felt there was going to be a lot to this story and I was very excited for a Rumpelstiltskin retelling. Once I picked up the novel again I found many positives and negatives to it. 

Starting with the positives, I really enjoyed the world building in this novel, just as I love the world building in Meyer's previous novels. I find it easy to get sucked into the worlds that Meyer creates, and difficult to leave them. I am so excited to explore more of the world in the next book and learn more about its history. 

My next positive of the book is the characters. I quickly became invested in all of the characters in Gilded, including the villain, and I am eager to learn what happens to them, and any new characters, in the sequel. Just like her previous books, I find that Meyer has created very likeable and interesting characters. I also really enjoyed the stories that were written for Serilda to tell, I found this really unique and well written, and this added a lot to the plot. 

Now onto the negatives. My biggest issue with Gilded is that I found it to be far too long. The first 200 pages of the book just felt far too drawn out, and each time something interesting happened with the plot it was very short lived. I found some parts too repetitive, especially parts including the hunt, and wanted more information about the castle and the Erlking. Of course, not too much can be given away and I'm sure more will be revealed in the sequel, however, this is why I found the book to be too long. At times, it felt like there was an information overload of certain things and not enough of parts that I really wanted to explore. When looking at the size of this book I was a little unsure as to why it was so long considering Rumpelstiltskin isn't a long tale itself, and I think I would have found this to be a much more enjoyable read if it was shorter. 

My second negative is something that I very much hate in YA books and I found myself very disappointed when I saw the unplanned pregnancy coming. When written in the right way this isn't something that annoys me and I do like it in adult books, but no YA books. It is a peeve of mine when the main character has sex for the first time and gets pregnant. I find it to often be pointless to the plot and very much overdone. However, the end of the novel made me a lot less annoyed with this and I can see how this is going to tie into the plot of the next book and I'm looking forward to seeing how the characters deal with this. As a reader, I just wish that we saw more of a relationship between Gild and Serilda before getting to this point. 

This brings me to my next negative of the book; we didn't see all of the characters enough. I'm sure the intention is to explore Gild and the Erlking in the next book and I understand that their pasts could not have been revealed too early and there needs to be enough kept secret for the next book, but again this is why I found the book to be far too long. Also, I really wanted to see the Erlking more in this book! I felt as though the first half of the book did not include him enough considering that he is the villain. 

Personally, I gave Gilded a 3.5 star rating. However, I think other readers may find this novel more enjoyable than I did and may find it to be 4 stars. I will definitely be picking up the sequel, the last 100 pages of Gilded were very enjoyable and has made me excited to read more of this story.  

Tabs:

I used 59 tabs in total for this book. This was my second time using tabs whist reading. I used a lot less tabs for this read, however this book was longer than my previous read. I used my tabs as follows:

Yellow dislike/ when I was bored. 

Purple quotes

Blue plot

Green surprise

Orange laugh

Red sad

Pink really liked

Unfortunately, I used more yellow tabs than I was hoping to. I used 5 yellow tabs throughout Gilded, and changed the way I had originally intended to use them. My initial intention was to use them for any parts of novel that I did not like, but I found myself using them to mark when I was getting bored of reading the book and found myself wanting to take a break. 4 out of the 5 yellow tabs were for this, with 3 of them being within the first 200 pages. After this point I found that the story really got going and was very enjoyable. The 5th yellow tab was for the unplanned pregnancy. 

I used 6 purple tabs for Gilded. This is less than I thought I would use but I did find some very interesting quotes from this book; 

"The wheel of fate and fortune, which, if you are wise, you know is the greatest deception of all." 

"She did not remember her heart healing, and yet it seemed clear that it had." 

"This was just a game to the Erlking, Predator and prey." 

"Hero and villain. 

The dark and the light. 

There are two sides to every story." 

29 blue tabs were used throughout Gilded. This was a lot more than I was expecting, but it does have a very complex and interesting plot, I just would have found it more enjoyable if it had not have been so drawn out. Following on from this, I used 7 green tabs, mostly towards the end of the book when the plot developed further. 

Lastly, I used 3 red tabs, 2 orange tabs, and 2 pink tabs. There weren't many moments of this book that made me feel sad, and the ones that did were related to the difficult times Serilda had gone through. The orange and pink tabs both related to Gild. There were some moments that his sarcasm and mischief did make me laugh, and I loved his interactions with Serilda. I hope to see much more of him in the sequel, and if we do I'm sure I will use far more of these tabs then. 

Who was my favourite character? 

I can't say that I actually have a favourite character in Gilded. I liked Serilda, and I am looking forward to seeing her again in the sequel, but I am more looking forward to seeing Gild and the Erlking again. 

How long did it take me to read?

As I found myself falling into a reading slump and finding the book very difficult to get into this one did take me a while. I began reading on November 29th, and did not complete reading it until December 16th. Once i finally got into the book, I finished the second half within two days.