Hey guys! It's Trina and this is my
December Monthly Recommendations video.
Our topic for this month was new to us
authors. We thought it would be a great
way to end the year by reflecting on the
authors that we discovered for the first
time this year. In 2016 I read a total of
twenty authors that I had never read
anything by before. Some of these I read
more than one book by them this year.
There were 12 authors who had backlist
titles, so some of these authors have had
dozens of books published in the past
or they have multiple series and I just had
never read anything by them before. Those
12 authors were Jojo Moyes, Michael Punke,
April Genevieve Tucholke, Adam Silvera,
Shannon Hale, Robin Talley, Melissa Grey,
Marisha Pessl, Becky Albertalli, Jessica Love,
Alexandra Bracken, and Ann Brashares.
The other eight authors who were new to
me this year were actually debut authors
so the first book that they've ever
published came out in 2016 and those
eight authors were Emily Henry, Emily France,
Roshani Chokshi, Jeff Zentner,
Shannon Parker, Sara Ella, Meredith Russo,
and Julie Eshbaugh. So out of these 20
authors there are ten books that were my
favorites of this list that I want to
recommend to you guys today. The one I'm going to
start with is the Sisterhood series by
Ann Brashares. She has many books out and I
read her entire Sisterhood series this
year. It's about a group of four girls
that have been friends all of their
lives and in the first book they are
facing their first ever summer apart and
they vowed to keep in touch by sending
each other letters and mailing this
pair of jeans that somehow fits all of
them back and forth hopefully to have
like these grand adventures and great
experiences while wearing these jeans
because they feel like the jeans are
kind of a symbol of their bond and their
friendship. There are five books in this
series and one of the things that I really
love about it is that it grows with the
characters from high school, to college,
and then the last book does have a big
time jump and follow them as adults.
I love many aspects to the characters and
their lives and I really loved the
friendships and how that was really the
forefront of the message in these books.
Next, I finally read Alexandra Bracken.
I ended up reading two books by her this
year and she's probably the most known
for her The Darkest Minds trilogy but I
actually started by reading Passenger
which came out in January and I really
had trouble getting into this book
but then by the end I had totally turned
around and was really really enjoying it.
Having read passenger first even
though it's her most recent book, that
really made me want to get into her
writing more so then I went back and
read The Darkest Minds. If you aren't
familiar with either of these, Passenger is
a time travel story. You travel to so
many different times and locations
around the world. I really enjoyed the
travel aspect, I thought she really
nailed the atmosphere of each location. I
really felt like I was traveling the
world in that book. The Darkest Minds is
a dystopian trilogy where in the future
teenagers have developed these psychic
mind powers. I really enjoyed both of
these and would recommend them both. The
next author who was new to me this
year that I would recommend is Jessica
Love. I read In Real Life by her and I
really really enjoyed this one. It is
about two people who have an online
friendship and one of them develops
feelings for the other one and she
decides to actually go and meet him in
real life and see if they have more than
a friendly connection. When she does
meet him she finds out that he may not
have been totally honest about some of
the things that she thought she knew
about him. I found the premise of this
book like totally interesting - this whole
thing with online friendships, online
dating, people portraying themselves in a
certain way online. It is a pretty fluffy
kind of contemporary novel but I blew
through it in like just a couple of
sittings and I really appreciated that about it.
Becky Albertalli was also a new-to-me
author this year. I read Simon vs. the
Homo Sapiens Agenda. This book was my
favorite book of the year. It was
number one in my best books of the year
list. If you missed that video, by the way,
I'm gonna put a link to it down below
where I do talk about my six favorite
books of the year.
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
was number one. If you aren't familiar with
this one, it is about a boy named Simon
who is not out to school or to his
family but he is gay.
He has a crush on a boy that he knows
online and all he knows about this boy
is his nickname and that he goes to his
same high school but he's not out either.
So Simon is having these feelings and
maybe wanting to come out and also
figuring out who his online crush is. It's
so adorable and it really really
captured the feelings of high school
crushes and online relationships and
like friendships to romance and stuff like
that. I really enjoyed this book so much
and just... I loved it. I loved it. I loved it! It's my
book of the year, of course I loved it.
This year I also read Melissa Grey for
the first time. I read The Girl at
Midnight and its sequel, The Shadow Hour.
This is an urban fantasy series that has
a lot of elements to it that I think
fans of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone
series would love. Like, there's just a lot
of good things about it that are common
in very popular YA series. It is also
own voices in terms of the Latina main
character and there are some male/male
relationships and I just thought it was
a very exciting thing so I enjoyed it and I
would definitely recommend it.
Next, I really enjoyed Night Film by
Marisha Pessl. This is an adult mystery
novel and I just enjoyed this book and
like how it made you wonder which thing
was true because it kind of set up the
story to go a couple different ways. It's
about a director who's very famous and
very reclusive. His daughter ends up dead
one day. It was declared a suicide by
police but there's a little bit of like
evidence that says maybe she was
actually murdered. And the main character
we follow is a journalist who decides
he wants to start investigating this
case because something just has never
felt right about this girl and her
father and maybe like their whole family
and the relationship they have with each
other and he thinks she was being
haunted by some kind of demons from her
past and he's trying to figure out what
that was. The next four books on this
list are all of my debut authors who I read
this year, so first of all I have to
mention Sara Ella. She wrote
Unblemished. She is one of my good
friends and she is a fellow booktuber so
I'm gonna have a link to her channel down below.
Unblemished is an urban fantasy series
about a girl who discovers that there
are parallel worlds and there's another
parallel world where she finds herself
wrapped up in this ongoing eternal
battle between light and darkness. There
are so many fairytale-esque themes in
this book and I just really think if you
like fairy tales you would enjoy this one too.
This is the start of a trilogy so I did
feel like it was kind of complicated for
me to keep up with all the characters
and all of the world building that was
going on but this is a story that was very
unique and it did stand out to me and I
can't wait to see where this series goes.
I also really loved The Girl Who Fell by
S. M. Parker. This is another book that made
it into my top six list of the year. It
just was such an impactful story to me.
This one is about an abusive
relationship. You know that from the book
jacket, from the summary, and you're
watching these two characters meet and
how they get involved with each other
and then how the main female character
figures out that this is not a healthy relationship.
The writing was really easy to read, it
kept me engaged. I like that in some
parts this book took stereotypes about
abusive relationships and ran with it
because those things are stereotypes for
a reason, and then in other ways the book
kind of broke out of different
stereotypes. I do feel like it's such an
important thing to talk about in YA
fiction. This is definitely not like the
only book out there that handles abusive
relationships for young adults but we
need more like this and I really
appreciated that this book was giving us
a story like that.
Next is Meredith Russo who wrote If I
Was Your Girl. This is a book about a
trans girl and the author is also a
trans woman so it is own voices.
Primarily, this is a contemporary romance.
This is about Amanda after she has
transitioned, having her first relationship
with a boy and she's moved to a new
school where people don't know that she
is trans. We also have flashbacks that
show what it was like being bullied as a
young child. There were a couple of
things about the writing and like the
progression of the story that weren't my
favorite but this is still a book that I
really loved. I would consider it one of
my favorites of the year even though it
didn't quite make the top six but I
highly highly recommend this one.
And finally I would recommend Ivory and
Bone by Julie Eshbaugh. This is the first
book in - I think it's going to be a
trilogy. This one is set in a prehistoric
time period which I've never really read
about. It is kind of a romance but it's a
very slow burn romance. like hate to love
type of situation. It is very reminiscent
of Pride and Prejudice and that is because
it is a kind of inspired by, very loose
retelling and I knew that going into
this book and it made it so fun for me
to read it and kind of figure out which
character was representing which
original character from Pride and
Prejudice. Another thing that was
really interesting to me about this book
was the way that it was told. I know that
this did not work for everyone but it
really worked for me - it is told in kind
of a second person narrative. The book
starts with our character Kol telling
Mya the story of how he met her. That,
plus the prehistoric time period which I
have never really read anything set at
that time just made this story really
refreshing and unique to me and I really
really enjoyed it.
So those are my 10 favorite books that
were by new to me authors that I
first read this year. I definitely am
looking forward to reading more by
all of these authors. I do also want to
quickly say that although they did not
make it into my top 10 favorite books
Robin Talley, Adam Silveira, and Roshani
Chokshi are also new to me authors this
year that I want to read more by. Let me
know who your favorite newly-discovered
authors this year were down below.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I
hope you will join in with our monthly
recommendations topics in the new year.
Our topic for January is historical
fiction and I need some recommendations
from you guys! Thank you for watching
and I will see you in the comments. Bye!
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