2018 was a very strange year… I don’t know whether it went really quick, or really slow. I will be doing a reflection on 2018 post as well that will cover my reading and my personal life, but for now, I’m going to do the much-loved end of year book tag. You can check out last year’s tag here, and also my 2018 mid year book tag!

 

Best Book You’ve Read in 2018

This is my most dreaded question ever. There’s been a lot. Hang on:

• Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan: I was lucky enough to read this in August, 3 months before it came out, and OH MY GOD. I fell in love with everything about it.
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas: Do I need to even explain why?
• Genesis by Brendan Reichs: see next question
• Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman: see next question
• Heart of Mist and Reign of Mist by Helen Scheuerer: see basically the whole of this post.

 

Best Sequel You’ve Read in 2018

 

 

Noooooo, I read so many brilliant sequels in 2018. I don’t think that I can narrow it down to one!! Genesis by Brendan Reichs was just fantastic, and so was Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman (that ending though?!?!!!) There was Reign of Mist by Helen Scheuerer which was absolutely captivating, and there was also Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore which was a brilliant conclusion to the Graceling Realms trilogy… See what I mean? There were just so many awesome sequels that I read.

 

Best Duology/Trilogy/Quartet/Series You’ve Read in 2018

Like the first question, I read a lot of amazing series in 2018, but I did absolutely love Daughter of the Pirate King series by Tricia Levenseller, and I loved the two books of the Heart of Mist series that I read (and that are actually out), and I did love my re-read of the Rebel of the Sands trilogy…

 

New Release You Haven’t Read, But Want To

There ARE SO MANY!! I haven’t read Children of Blood and Bone yet. I don’t think it even counts as a new release anymore? But a NEW NEW release that I haven’t read yet is What If It’s Us. I love Becky Albertalli’s writing, and even though I wasn’t a big fan of Adam Silvera’s History is all You Left Me, I do still really want to read their collaborative novel. I also really really want to read The Ladies Guide to Petticoats and Piracy as soon as I can because I loved the first book SO MUCH!

Read my review of Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda

Read my review of The Upside of Unrequited

Read my review of Leah on the Offbeat

Read my review of The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue

 

Most Anticipated Release for 2019

Bloody hell. I don’t know. There is going to be a WHOLE POST about the books that I’m looking forward to in 2019 because it’s going to be such an amazing year for releases. But I can’t wait for Kerri Maniscalco’s Capturing the Devil, which is the fourth and final book in the Stalking Jack the Ripper series. I’m also really excited for On the Come Up by Angie Thomas!

Read my review of Stalking Jack the Ripper

Read my review of Hunting Prince Dracula

Read my review of The Hate U Give

 

Biggest Disappointment

There quite a few for this year. It’s not that these books are awful because they aren’t. I think most of them are due to the hype that was surrounding them and I just got let down by it…

• Monstress Vol. 1 by Marjorie Liu: it was the hype that ruined this for me. That and the really confusing storyline
• The Dark Intercept by Julia Keller: for this, it was the fact that the blurb made the book sound like the perfect novel for me. Unfortunately, the author’s execution did not match up to how good it sounded.
• The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton: another one that fell down to to the hype that surrounded it. I’m so sad that I didn’t love this
• The Bone Witch by Ron Chupeco: another hyped up novel. I’m definitely going to continue with the series because I’ve heard that it gets better, but as a first book, it was quite bland.
• The Lantern’s Ember by Colleen Houck: another hyped up novel. I’d heard so many amazing things about this book, but it just came across as really childish.
• Escaping from Houdini by Kerri Maniscalco: I hate myself for putting this book on this list, but it just wasn’t as good as the previous two books… The romance was all over the place, and even though the storyline was intriguing, the romance just ruined it.

Biggest Surprise

• Dawn by Octavia E. Butler: I had to read this for my science fiction class for university and I ended up loving it! I just love how Butler explores gender and I love the main protagonist of Lilith.
• A Sky Painted Gold by Laura Wood: I was sent this book by Scholastic to review and historical fiction isn’t really my thing. But I was genuinely surprised by how much I loved this book. It definitely captured my heart.
• The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss: I thought that mixing loads of fantasy/science fiction characters together would be a mess and prove difficult to follow, but it didn’t seem to be hard for Goss. The characters fit together perfectly, and it quickly became one of my favourite series.

 

 

Favourite New Author (Or New to You)

Helen Scheuerer. Definitely. Heart of Mist and Reign of Mist are probably two of my favourite books of this year because of how well the world has been built and how well the characters are portrayed.

Newest Fictional Crush

Wren from Girls of Paper and Fire. I love this woman so much. She is just the epitome of amazingness and the way that she treats Lei with such care and love is amazing.

 

Newest Favourite Character

Because of how many amazing books I read this year, of course there is going to be a lot of amazing characters that accompany them. So here is a few of them. It was VERY hard to narrow the list down.

• Lei from Girls of Paper and Fire
• Starr Carter from The Hate U Give 
• Bitterblue from Graceling Realms trilogy
• Bleak from Heart of Mist series

Read my review of The Hate U Give

Read my review of Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue

Read my review of Heart of Mist, and Reign of Mist

 

Book That Made You Cry/Upset

The Hate U Give. Without a doubt.

Wait… Does Escaping from Houdini count as making me cry with utter frustration??

 

Book That Made You Laugh/Happy

The Strange Case of the Alchemists’s Daughter and European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman by Theodora Goss. I love how she writes this series, with the narrative and then the side comments from the characters. I think it adds a lot of humour and also a lot of depth to the story.

 

Favourite Book To Film/TV Adaptation

The Hate U Give. I’ve seen that film 6 times at the cinema and I can’t wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can continue watching it. It’s a masterpiece.

Favourite Post You Have Done This Year

Oh god… Umm… I loved working with Macmillan this year on the release of Genesis by Brendan Reichs, and I managed to get an interview with Reichs, which you can read here. I loved doing that as it was great experience for me (I want to work in publishing), and it meant that I made contacts at an amazing publishing company.

I wouldn’t count it as my favourite post, but I wrote a post last week outlining why I haven’t been blogging a lot and it was very hard for me to write. It’s been a very tough last half of the year and writing about it in that blog post took every ounce of strength that I had, but I’m so glad that I did it.

 

Most Beautiful Book You Have Bought This Year

There’s been way too many to list.

As you can see…

 

 

What Book Do You Really Need To Read By The End Of 2018?

Again, there are way too many that I would have loved to read by the end of 2018, but unfortunately, happenings in life stopped me from doing this. But I would have loved to read A Darker Shade of Magic…

 

Any Bookish Goals for 2019?

A LOT! I’m going to be going into more detail about my aims for 2019 in a separate blog post, so keep your eyes peeled for that. But I think the main one for me, is not to stress about keeping up with my Goodreads challenge so much!

 

So, there we have it guys! It’s the end of another year here at The Bibliophile Girl. It has been a rollercoaster of a year. So many good things have happened, and so much shit stuff has happened but there is one thing that has stayed constant over the year and that is…

HOW MUCH I LOVE KPOP!

Only joking (although I do love KPop). It’s my love for this blog and this brand that I’ve slowly built up over the past few years.

If it wasn’t for you guys keep coming back to read my posts, then I would have just given up, so thank you so much. I love you all.

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