Feature: End of 2018 Reads

Friends, it is that time. The time of year when publishing pretty much halts and we all start to panic over our unmet Goodreads goals. So we want to know – what the heck are you speed-reading through the end of the year? Check our a few of our choices below and sound off in the comments with your own!

 

Christy’s 2018 Series Catch-up

I have been in a dang slump for almost two months now, barely scraping by on my reading goal (thank you, graphic novels) and getting a little bit panicked. I like to end every year finishing out series I have started that are now ended. So here are my series finishers to end the year with!

 

Ozland (Everland, #3)

by Wendy Spinale
Published by: Scholastic Press
on April 24, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy
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With Everland and Umberland both destroyed, the survivors have taken refuge in a small village tucked within the shadows of the Bloodred Queen's castle. Doc has found an actual cure for the Horologia virus, while Gwen, Pete, and Alyssa begin plotting the assassination of the queen with the help of Gail, an excellent huntress. But killing the queen won't be enough. The world has been destroyed and its needs a ruler to set things right again. A ruler who is good, kind, and fair. Someone like the former king of Germany. But he's dead ... or is he?

There's a rumor that the king has been hidden away in a secret land, where only the worthiest can find him. Desperate to end the war, a plan is hatched that could put everything right again, only before it's set in motion, the village is burned to the ground, all survivors taken prisoner to the castle. Except Gail.

But is one girl enough to find a long-dead king, kill the wicked queen, and save the world?

I absolutely adored Everland and Umberland and I can’t believe I haven’t read Ozland yet! I’m coming for you!

 

The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2)

by Veronica Roth
Published by: Katherine Tegen Books
on April 10, 2018
Genres: Sci-Fi, Young Adult
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Fate brought them together. Now it will divide them.

The lives of Cyra Noavek and Akos Kereseth are ruled by their fates, spoken by the oracles at their births. The fates, once determined, are inescapable.

Akos is in love with Cyra, in spite of his fate: He will die in service to Cyra’s family. And when Cyra’s father, Lazmet Noavek—a soulless tyrant, thought to be dead—reclaims the Shotet throne, Akos believes his end is closer than ever.

As Lazmet ignites a barbaric war, Cyra and Akos are desperate to stop him at any cost. For Cyra, that could mean taking the life of the man who may—or may not—be her father. For Akos, it could mean giving his own. In a stunning twist, the two will discover how fate defines their lives in ways most unexpected.

With the addition of two powerful new voices, Veronica Roth's sequel to Carve the Mark is a chorus of hope, humor, faith, and resilience.

To be honest, this book’s audiobook length is what’s holding me back. But I do own it…and will listen to it.

 

The Towering Sky (Thousandth Floor)

by Katharine McGee
on August 28, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
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Welcome back to New York, 2119. A skyscraper city, fueled by impossible dreams, where the lives of five teenagers have become intertwined in ways that no one could have imagined.

Leda just wants to move on from what happened in Dubai. Until a new investigation forces her to seek help—from the person she’s spent all year trying to forget.

Rylin is back in her old life, reunited with an old flame. But when she starts seeing Cord again, she finds herself torn: between two worlds, and two very different boys.

Calliope feels trapped, playing a long con that costs more than she bargained for. What happens when all her lies catch up with her?

Watt is still desperately in love with Leda. He’ll do anything to win her back—even dig up secrets that are better left buried.

And now that Avery is home from England—with a new boyfriend, Max—her life seems more picture-perfect than ever. So why does she feel like she would rather be anything but perfect?

In this breathtaking finale to The Thousandth Floor trilogy, Katharine McGee returns to her vision of 22nd-century New York: a world of startling glamour, dazzling technology, and unthinkable secrets. After all, when you have everything… you have everything to lose.

I can’t wait to see what direction everything goes!

 

Gone Rogue (Wires and Nerve, #2)

by Marissa Meyer, Stephen Gilpin, Douglas Holgate
on January 30, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy
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Goodreads

Iko – an audacious android and best friend to the Lunar Queen Cinder – has been tasked with hunting down Alpha Lysander Steele, the leader of a rogue band of bioengineered wolf-soldiers who threaten to undo the tenuous peace agreement between Earth and Luna. Unless Cinder can reverse the mutations that were forced on them years before, Steele and his soldiers plan to satisfy their monstrous appetites with a massacre of the innocent people of Earth.

And to show he’s serious, Steele is taking hostages.

Cinder and Kai, Scarlet and Wolf, Cress and Thorne, and Winter and Jacin all feature in this epic new battle. But it is Iko who must face her deepest fears when she uncovers the truth about her own unusual programming.

I am in denial that we have to leave the world of The Lunar Chronicles…

 

Kelly’s End of 2018 Must Reads

When November rolls around, I usually panic and worry I haven’t read all the impactful books to add to my Best Reads list for the year. Then I binge read those titles. So here are a few 2018 releases that I will be reading before the year is out.

 

A Very Large Expanse of Sea

by Tahereh Mafi
Published by: HarperTeen
on October 16, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Contemporary
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Goodreads

It’s 2002, a year after 9/11. It’s an extremely turbulent time politically, but especially so for someone like Shirin, a sixteen-year-old Muslim girl who’s tired of being stereotyped.

Shirin is never surprised by how horrible people can be. She’s tired of the rude stares, the degrading comments—even the physical violence—she endures as a result of her race, her religion, and the hijab she wears every day. So she’s built up protective walls and refuses to let anyone close enough to hurt her. Instead, she drowns her frustrations in music and spends her afternoons break-dancing with her brother.

But then she meets Ocean James. He’s the first person in forever who really seems to want to get to know Shirin. It terrifies her—they seem to come from two irreconcilable worlds—and Shirin has had her guard up for so long that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to let it down.

In my defense, AVLEOS was just released less than a month ago…I know I am going to love it.

 

Lifel1k3 (Lifelike, #1)

by Jay Kristoff
Published by: Knopf Books for Young Readers
on May 29, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Sci-Fi
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Goodreads

On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.

Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.

But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.

Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.

Somehow I own 3 copies of this book (Hardcover, Audio, and ARC) and I still haven’t read it! WTF is wrong with me? Also, it is a goodreads nominee for best Sci-fi fantasy!

 

Not Even Bones (Market of Monsters, #1)

by Rebecca Schaeffer
Published by: HMH Books for Young Readers
on September 4, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Horror
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Goodreads

Dexter meets This Savage Song in this dark fantasy about a girl who sells magical body parts on the black market — until she’s betrayed.   Nita doesn’t murder supernatural beings and sell their body parts on the internet—her mother does that. Nita just dissects the bodies after they’ve been “acquired.” Until her mom brings home a live specimen and Nita decides she wants out; dissecting a scared teenage boy is a step too far. But when she decides to save her mother’s victim, she ends up sold in his place—because Nita herself isn’t exactly “human.” She has the ability to alter her biology, a talent that is priceless on the black market. Now on the other side of the bars, if she wants to escape, Nita must ask herself if she’s willing to become the worst kind of monster.

This one has been recommended a few times, but without an audiobook the chances of me reading it before the end of the year are lower than usual.

 

Blanca & Roja

by Anna-Marie McLemore
Published by: Feiwel Friends
on October 9, 2018
Genres: Young Adult, Magical Realism, Retellings
Bookshop
Goodreads

The biggest lie of all is the story you think you already know.

The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan.

But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans’ spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them. Blanca & Roja is the captivating story of sisters, friendship, love, hatred, and the price we pay to protect our hearts.

I love all of Anna-Marie’s books and I am really excited to read this one too!