Suspense is essential to propel a plot forward. It’s what fiction is made of as readers want to know, what happens next? An effective way to build suspense is to withhold information, make the reader guess, then reveal things later. That’s exactly what The Invisible Library sought to do. However, that for me, also was the downfall of the book. Too much information was withheld, to the point that there was little for me to hang on to. Instead of wanting to know what would happen next, I found myself asking what the point was.
THE GIRL AT MIDNIGHT by Melissa Grey
The overlapping elements between The Girl at Midnight and Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor is uncanny. If you’ve read and loved DoSaB, you may be overjoyed that there’s another book out there with similar tropes. On the flip side, you may not like it at all because DoSaB was built with much more lyrical prose.
FANGIRL by Rainbow Rowell
Fangirl was funny and sweet and wonderful. What I liked best was the college setting without an intense focus on romance. This book was about Cath who tried to find herself, even though she felt she was losing everything. She so desperately tried to hold on to familiarity through her high school boyfriend, her father and most importantly to her, her twin sister Wren. For the first time, she had to be truly independent. I believe that for many, college is the time to find oneself and Rowell presented this transition very well in Fangirl.
THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green
I braved the hype and finally read The Fault in Our Stars. Before I read this book, I knew surprisingly little about it, considering the massive popularity and the release of the movie. Of course I knew that John Green wrote it and that it was about cancer. For the most part, I managed to skip past all the spoilers, especially on Tumblr. Although I didn’t manage to escape the metaphor of the cigarette. Then again, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, so it didn’t matter in the end.
CONVERTING KATE by Beckie Weinheimer
Kate is a character I’m going to remember for a long time to come. She is someone I’d like to be friends with if I were to meet her in real life. Most of the time I remember books for their stories and their ideas but I will remember this book for the person whose…
