A year’s worth of reading, the book “The Cruel Prince” takes the cake as a favorite for its flawed but lovable characters. PHOTO CREDIT: litjoycrate.com
As the year is coming to an end, I always love to reflect on all of the books I’ve read in the last 12 months. I had quite a bit of a reading slump in the summer, and it never really went away, so I didn’t read as many books as I wanted, but luckily, I found some that I loved.
- “The Cruel Prince” by Holly Black
In this book, the main character, Jude, is kidnapped from the human world at a young age and forced to live in the High Court of Faerie with her siblings. As she grows into adulthood, she tries to find a way to fit in and belong in the Faerie world by becoming strategically involved in Faerie politics while also sparring with her tormentors from school, namely Cardan, the son of the High King.
This book is an absolute favorite of mine, and I loved reading it (and the rest of the series, “The Wicked King” and “The Queen of Nothing”) the first time around last year. I got a library card this summer so that I could listen to audiobooks on my commutes to school, and I decided to pick up this series again while I drove to class. I was nervous because, in my experience, the version of the book I remember is always way better than the actual book, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I loved this story even more the second time around. Jude is a deeply flawed character but still very lovable and relatable, and reading about her experiences with politics, angst, action, love and betrayal was a fun time.
- “The Roughest Draft” by Austin Siegemund-Broka and Emily Wibberley
This story follows Katrina and Nathan, an ex-writing duo forced to write one last novel together because of a contract they’d signed before they had a falling out. Throughout the story, we learn about the current novel they’re working on and why they broke apart all those years ago.
This is one of the few books I read in the summer, and I loved it. I read it in between rushes at my summer job at a drive-in movie theater, and it was so hard to put it down and get back to work. I liked the flashback scenes in between all of the present-day moments of them writing their story together. It was suspenseful and kept me interested in the secret reason they split apart years ago, and I was super satisfied with the ending. I also really love how meta this novel is, in that the co-authors of this book are a married couple in real life that decided to write a book about a fictional co-author couple who have to write a book together and develop their romantic relationship.
- “Faking Ms. Right” by Claire Kingsley
This rom-com follows Shepherd, a billionaire CEO, and Everly, his assistant. Shepard is tired of women using him for his money and wants to spend his time running his corporate empire instead of dating, so he convinces Everly to become his new fake live-in girlfriend. We get to follow their fake love story and watch it turn into a real one as they’re forced to learn more about one another and open up in a way that their work environment didn’t let them.
I wasn’t expecting much based on both the cringy title and cringy cover, but this story was so fun. In the real world, this would be an absolute nightmare, with lots of HR meetings and moral implications about the ethics of dating a billionaire, but I don’t read romance for realism. I wanted escapism, to pretend my only problem was dating a hot rich man that’s obsessed with me, and that’s exactly what this story provided.
Now that it’s finally acceptable to start celebrating the winter holidays, I’m super excited to get ready for winter break and to read a bunch of Christmas-y rom-coms and hopefully add some books to my “Books Read in 2022” list.