Favorite Books of 2019

hey guys it's Sam and these are my favorite books of 2019 so in all the previous years of booktube I've actually done the Book Awards and I've kind of talked about my favorite books using like Oscar award categories but this year I just didn't feel like I could quite do that I feel like I have a much smaller list and that makes it a lot harder so I just want to talk about my favorite books of which there are 12 and I have somebody who always post these videos in January because for me I always end up reading a favorite book in December and I actually read three of my favorite books in December so I'm glad that I didn't do this in December because I want to left out those books also yes I still have a head cold because I'm filming this the same day as my other videos and this is something I caught the day before I drove home from Christmas loved it these are also in no particular order I don't really feel like I can categorize them by like absolute favorites these are just in the order that I read them throughout the year so the first book is - like the Lightning by ADA Palmer this is the first book in an adult science fiction quartet and this was what I think the first book that I read in 2019 and it's such a weird book I will link my review on the screen because I really can't describe this very easily but there's a lot of like weird intricate things happening and the way that the systems are set up in the politics and things and how people are sort of classed differently not quite in a like dystopian society almost more of a utopian and our narrator and one of the protagonists is somebody who is incredibly unlikable but you don't find that out until later in the story and it was just a very complex intricately a beautifully written story that is so different from anything else that I've read and really did stick with me even though I'm forgetting a lot of the major plot points from it I'll probably have to reread it before I continue out the series it's a book that I still like thought about it's like too like the lightning man what a trip then inevitably because the newest installment in this series is always featured in my favorite books of that year we have blood which by susan dennard this is the third book in the witch land series and it's so good I love the series so much of my favorite fantasy series right now it's a wife Anna Sea series but it's definitely upper yaa I believe all the characters are 18 19 and above and I adore this I really can't talk much about it because obviously it's a third book in the series but I enjoy the character arcs so immensely what I love about the series is that all the characters have really well-developed arcs within each story but then throughout the overarching story like these characters go through so much learn so much the character relationships are so good both romantic and familial and platonic and I just love it I love the world I love the magic I love the magical creatures that we have and I can just tell that this is going to be woven into this beautiful intricate story throughout all of the books especially when I go back and reread the books before the next installment comes out I'm able to see so many hints of things that I didn't know we're even significant in the earlier books and this is just so marvelously well done and it has some of my favorite characters of all time in it and this installment certainly did not disappoint then we have never knight by Jay Kristoff this is the first book in an adult fantasy trilogy which is now complete this wins the award for the book that you guys harass me about the most to read and I finally did but I did not read it right away eventually out of spite because y'all would not leave me alone but this follows the main character whose primitive entrance quest and she becomes an assassin that is a very basic storyline Mishima comes an assassin that worships death and a deaf goddess and has so many things that I deeply enjoy so I love this story it's much more complicated than just that because that basic storyline is a very basic trope in a lot of books about assassins but I really enjoy this world it's brutal it's definitely grimdark it's not gonna be for everybody but I really like the characters I love our main character of Mia I'm really interested to see where this series goes and the magic and everything gotta love like death gods in assassin's Man there's some of my favorites then we have foundry side by Robert Jackson Bennett this is the first book in an adult fantasy trilogy and this takes place in a world in which magic is more about inscription and there are things inscribed on inanimate objects that then make them animated so it is more like a twisted version of Technology and it basically makes inanimate objects think they are something or that they're do something that they're not it's very cool and it follows really three main characters one is like a mad scientist mad magician type character one is a thief and one is more of a like lawful good type almost policeman but not quite character and it takes place within this world in which the guilds and the merchant guilds control the magic that I talked about so well a lot about this series and the stories I could very beautifully imagine the world I really liked some of the like magical companions that are going on which never Knight also had by the way and the tropes of the kinds of characters I just described as far as like mad magician thief whatever those tropes kind of got spun on their head and many of those characters so much more their own and believable and real feeling and I just deeply connected to the story and really loved it then we have Cersei by Madeline Miller this is an adult retelling of the myths surrounding Circe who is a character with in Greek mythology more specifically in the Odyssey and the Iliad I believe more The Odyssey but anyway you see her interact with a lot of other Greek myths that you would be familiar with if you're at all familiar with any classics listen to this on audio and I was so attached to this story it's beautiful and Circe as a character and the things that she goes through and how she learns because she's sort of one of these characters that is a mix of human and God and so she doesn't quite fit in either part and there's a lot of stories of love because she's a this goddess and this like witch but she's lived so long and so she falls in love with multiple men throughout her life and you just get to see like different kinds of love and different kinds of relationships and the twisted beauty of a lot of Greek mythology because Greek mythology is up man and I just loved how Madeline Miller is able to capture that I deeply need Madeline Miller to write a Persephone story like I deeply need and want that for myself then no surprise here we have the starless II by Erin Morgenstern this is an adult fantasy standalone and erin morgenstern also wrote the Night Circus which is my favorite book of all time and this mostly follows her main character of Zachary and when he was a boy he encountered a door that he had a suspicion was magical but he didn't really pursue it and then as an adult he discovers his book in which the story of him finding the store is in that and he sort of discovers that there is an alternate magical world and there are people that protect this world that want to destroy this world that there's all these stories involving this world and everything kind of goes from there so you have this main storyline of Zachary story but you also get stories about the world and people within that world and it is this complex web of love of storytelling and all different kinds of storytelling and different kinds of love and it's just so magical I will link my review specifically for this book because this is one that I feel like needs the full attention of like the probably 11 or 12 minutes I gave it in the review but I of course love this story I love Aaron Morgan terms writing I love which you can do with writing and what you can do with character relationships and how she can make you feel for characters in such a short amount of time and the symbols and everything about stories and I just loved it in every way then it was the part of the year when I started to read adult romance because Who am I buta told me that there have been multiple adult romance books on my favorites of the year list Beth the beginning of 2019 I've been like who do you think I am but Here I am a changed person that also reads adult romance along with adult science fiction and fantasy I don't know but the book that started it all was the honeymooners by Christina Lauren this is such a huge contemporary adult romance it follows two characters who have known each other for some time they are in each other siblings wedding and everyone in the wedding and the wedding party gets sick after the wedding and these two who don't like each other and a vicar for years have to go on the honeymoon there are so many tropes in here that I love in a door as far as like they have to be like fake married to go on this honeymoon there's the hate to love there's the banter there's the getting stuck in close quarters though there's only one bed there's so much here this book filled me with giddiness I had times where I squealed out loud while reading I was just like and like had to like kick my feet you know like it was just so good and I read it in two sittings and I loved everything about it this was the first adult contemporary that I had and I adored and it opened the world of adult contemporary romance to me as something that I can read what I want a break from the stress of life I then read twelve kings in sheer Chi by Bradley ballet oh this is the first book in the song of shattered sands shattered shattered sans series and this follows our main character sada who is a pit fighter and her mother was killed by the reigning government which are these God Kings there are twelve God Kings that rule share Chi and they each had these magical powers but these magical powers also take something from them and she wants to infiltrate their sort of guard which are sort of like an assassin sort of like a city guard in order to take them down one by one I loved this this is a wonderful grim dark desert fantasy and I felt so attached to this I had a whole playlist of music to play in the background listening to this because I was so invested in it this has a series of flashbacks as well so we get to see se in his life as she's growing up and how she becomes this very believable badass person and just like the mythology of this world and just how like deadly this world is but there's like old gods and new gods and creative gods and like desert beings and it's so good and I cannot wait to continue on with this series I believe this is gonna be a five or six book series a couple of the books are already out I think three of the books are out I love this and it's one of my new favorite fantasy series that I started this year then we have these seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins read this is an adult standalone contemporary but also historical fiction story this is a story of Evelyn Hugo who is his aging starlet and she is telling her life story for the first time ever to this young journalist and she is sort of teaching that woman things through her story but then you also learned things through her story and it's about her seven husbands and why did she have these seven husbands and what is the story behind that and her as a person and it's so good this features a bisexual protagonist in which her bisexuality is a very key main point of the story she tells people that she's bisexual in the story she identifies as that which is something that I very rarely seen in fiction and I just luck this I felt like so much of this spoke to me there's a lot of things that Evelyn says about like heartbreak and loss and relationships and your own intuition and things that were just like hit me so hard when I was reading this and I like saved so many lines from it and I just really adored it it's a book that I also feel like I could reread over and over again and I'm so glad that I finally read this because so many people said it was so good and it was and it just hit me in the fields over and over then these last three books are all books that I read in December we have Empire of sand by Tasha Surrey this is the first book in an adult companion series of fantasies this book follows the main character of my hair and she is a biracial woman who is living in one of the main cities her dad is the governor of that city and she is very much tied to the magic of this world as well because that's part of where her mother's culture came into the story and one day she goes out into the dream fire which is like magical storm and gets pulled along in it and some people discover her and everything kind of goes from there I loved this this had so many of my favorite tropes and things own world mythology really interesting mythology and folklore and rituals and religion and the way that the government was set up and just the characters and the way they interact with one another and there is a wonderful slow burn enemies two lovers type romance which was so good and like one of the best romances I've ever read in my life because it is such a supportive couple built on like time and Trust and wonderfulness and the romance is a part of the story but I wouldn't call this like a fantasy romance it's not the main part the plot and the romance are intricately woven together so that you don't feel like one is existing just to motivate the other in long it's so good and I love this world and I definitely plan on continuing with the series and reading the second book in the companion series because I desperately want to get back to this world then we have amber Lowe by Laura Elena Donnelly this is the first book in a speculative fiction story because this takes place in a world that's not our own but I have struggles calling it a fantasy world because there's no magic there's no magical creatures there's nothing like that but this is taking place almost in like a 20s 30s Art Deco noir punk setting and there features a lot of like political machinations and espionage and such we follow three characters one is a spy one is a cabaret dancer and one is also a cabaret dancer and smuggler and you get to see how they're all interacting and pushed together by this political system and this coup that's happening in this world and I really enjoyed it I didn't really understand a lot of political stuff especially at first but I ended up really connected to the characters and really how the characters are responding to what's going on around them and responding to each other this is dark it's very no are the main relationship in here is a male-male relationship which is so interesting and complicated and like gut-wrenching and I just loved these characters I listened to this on audiobook and the audiobook performance is out of this world wonderful and I found myself just so enamored with this story this is one that I end up giving four and not five stars but it just has gripped me and I am very invested in these characters and the story and hope that the end works out for everybody and my last favorite was one day in December by Josie silver this is an adult contemporary romance and it follows two characters who see each other at a bus stop right before Christmas she's on the bus he's at the bus stop they lock eyes and there's this moment of like oh my god I feel like I've known this person forever I want to talk to that person and the bus goes away without them being able to interact and so the woman is looking for him kind of casually throughout the next ear being like I want to find bus boy and she finally sees him again and he is her best friend's new boyfriend because they've met under different circumstances and everything kind of goes from there so this follows them over ten years of their lives not continuously we kind of get jumps in the story where we kind of follow them at different points of time throughout each year most of it around like that Thanksgiving and Christmas season in like New Year's but we do get stuff throughout the rest of the years as well and just these two people who are sort of like ships in the night and what happens and the complicated things that happen when like they met first but not really and all of that so this is a very complicated story that not everyone is going to enjoy because there are some elements that you can obviously kind of tell like possibly emotional cheating and things like that which are not things that I love seeing in romance by any means in this case I love the story so much that I was able to overlook as the wrong word but it made sense to me like it wasn't something that I'm like condoning but it definitely made sense and it felt more real than a lot of other fluffier romances that I've read throughout this year this just like pining and the missing each other and the like wondering about the missed moments and like some of these things just felt so real to me and it's like just really like hit me in the chest and as I've mentioned other videos like if a romance can like make me feel things the way that like this did or the in honeymooners did then that is a favorite romance for me so I really really enjoyed this one and it was my last favorite book that I read in 2019 so those are all my favorite books of 2019 comments below let me know your favorite books of 2019 and if any of these also made your list so thank you all for watching and I'll see all of you guys soon bye [Music] you

Channel: Thoughts on Tomes

Views: 18,898

Rating: 4.9762912 out of 5

Keywords: booktube, readables, bookables, book, review, goodreads, book haul, thoughts on tomes, thoughtsontomes, favorite books of 2019, best books of 2019, top books of 2019

Id: kPXAbelq8Ww

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 11 2020