The written word has been a way for people to get their messages across for – since I don’t even know how long! Whether it was a scholarly piece of information; or a passionate response to a topic; or even a love letter hidden in the lines of fiction; literature has always been around.
Sometimes it’s good, and sometimes it’s not so good, but everyone has their own opinion. But even if a person (a ‘bookaholic’ if one must be frank) has read thousands of books they have liked, or thousands of books they haven’t liked, there is always the specific ones that come to mind as soon as someone asks “what’s your favourite book?”
Now, I know that not everyone has read enough books, or liked enough of them, that they have specific ones at the ready for when someone asks. But I, in fact (sadly enough) do have them. Maybe it’s because I am one of those aforementioned ‘bookaholics’, or maybe it’s just because I have been stuck in a hole (a pit of paper more like) for the last 4 years and have no idea how to get out.
Well, here are my list of 3 books that i believe you cannot, and I mean cannot, miss out on:
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
This is a story about a girl, a boy and a devil. It explores how their story is forgotten, remembered and lost.
What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind.
The girl, Addie Larue, someone who wanted more and lost. Someone who gambled and is still reaping the consequences. Someone who has lived for three centuries, which is yet nothing compared to the monster that she is playing against.
Until one day, three words change the whole world.
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?
No matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark
The devil is Luc, a being who is Addie’s saviour tormentor killer everything. A being who made a mistake. A fatal mistake that is now coming back to haunt him three hundred years later. His love hate nothing obsession with her, his want for her to come back to the dark, hasn’t dimmed and will burn for the rest of eternity.
But he has the time, and he will do anything, anything, to get back what he has lost.
“Do not mistake this—any of it— for kindness, Adeline.” His eyes go bright with mischief. “I simply want to be the one who breaks you.”
His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.
The boy is Henry Strauss, someone who has lived his life seeing stories in theology. Someone who both fears being himself, as much as he hates not being seen as himself. A contradiction. His whole life has been a mess of thousands of tastes, but too little time and too little opportunity to explore them all.
He also made a bargain with a devil. But life comes rushing in and now he’s stuck in an endless loop of regrets but not regrets.
But one day he meets someone…
Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.
Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you.
“Do you know how to live three hundred years?” she says. And when he asks how, she smiles. “The same way you live one. A second at a time.”
“I love you too,” she says. She wants it to be true.
The story is a beautiful novel. Not of love, but of hatred, lies, comfort, joy, and the agony of having the world at your fingertips, but being it too far to reach.
I give it 5 stars. The pacing was beautiful, the writing was a melody, and the sadness and relatable characters hit you like a truck.
The Poppy War
A girl, all too aware of the world’s ruthlessness, has set her mind on passing the Empire-wide placement test, in a desperate attempt to escape the gruesome reality of an arranged marriage.
But the world doesn’t wait for anyone, and despite having passed the impossible test, and having spent the last 3 years at the only possible school for a young dark-skinned war orphan like herself, she has to leave. Because peace is not an option, and hatred and revenge can lead to the cruellest of actions.
“I don’t need your pity. I need you to kill them for me. You have to kill them for me,” Venka hissed. “Swear it. Swear on your blood that you will burn them.”
“They were monsters!” Rin shrieked. “They were not human!”
“Have you ever considered,” he said slowly, “that that was exactly what they thought of us?”
—- War doesn’t determine who’s right. War determines who remains.
Another 5 star read. This story is gruesome, hateful and unbelievably real. I don’t think I have ever read something that has made me understand the reality of war more, which was unexpected as it is set in a fantasy world. There is no sugarcoating and there is no attempt to hide the reality of what such hatred, insanity and desire for revenge can do to a nation and its people.
The Nevernight Chronicles (a series)
A child of a failed rebellion and murdered parents, Mia Corvere is a girl who lives and breathes hatred, while vengeance and loathing scream in her blood like a forbidden war cry.
Living in a city built from the bones of a dead god, Mia slowly inches her way through her kill list, until only three remain at the top. Three impossible figures: one, a general who took her fathers life work away from him, while laughing when he hung from a rope; two, a priest, one who sentenced the death penalty to all the leaders of the rebellion, and watched stone faced as their faces went blue; three, the consul, the worst of them, who gutted her mother, while watching nonchalantly as Mia is dragged away to be drowned at sea
These three men, these three books, and all the adventure, lies, love and betrayal in between.
“You can keep the glory. I’m just here for the blood.”
There’s no softer pillow than a clear conscience.
So much wealth held in so few palms. A kingdom of the blind, built on the backs of the bruised and the broken.
Even if you only choose to read one of these recommendations, I hope you enjoy it! We would love to hear about your top reads here at The View. So if there’s a book that you’ve loved (it doesn’t have to be 3!), write us a review and you can share your views and opinions in our next edition.
By Fatima Gondal