Hello my darlings. Winter is around the corner and I thought it would be great to create a blog post about great books to read during the winter time. These five books are known pieces and gems you must discover await you this winter time. The cold season is a wonderful time to discover a new book and merge yourself into a different world. From young adult, romance, fantasy, and more, I wanted to speak on five excellent books to read this winter that you should highly consider buying.
Title: How To Set A Fire & Why
Author: Jesse Ball
Genre: YA Fiction
Jesse Ball’s latest novel tells the story of Lucy, a teenage girl who lives in a garage-turned-bedroom with her aunt after her father’s death and her mother’s placement in a mental institute. On top of that, she got herself kicked out of school, again, but is certain that she’ll get through the world with only a book, a zippo lighter, a pocket full of stolen licorice, a biting wit, and striking intelligence she tries to hide.
Lucy spends her days riding the bus to visit her mother and following the only rule that makes any sense to her: don't do things you aren't proud of.
When she discovers that her new school has a secret Arson Club, she's willing to do anything to be a part of it, and her life is suddenly lit up. And as her fascination with the Arson Club grows, her story becomes one of misguided friendship and, ultimately, destruction.
Though this description might seem average and not very out-of-the-ordinary, this book is far more than what it expresses on the back cover. The story has a deeper meaning and interpretation behind it that creates a different experience once finished.
Ball’s sixth novel was cataloged under the tag Fiction/Young Adult and is ideal for winter reading and it can be finished in one afternoon, though its 320 pages can be extended for as long as you want.
One of the many powerful lines in this book:
“Can you imagine? That you can say something, offhand, and it can matter, it can really matter to someone else? Can you imagine what it's like to hear something like that? To hear someone say something and feel the world ripple around you?”
Title: The Hate You Give
Author: Angie Thomas
Genre: YA Fiction
Angie Thomas broke several charts when she published this book, inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, where she created a powerful and gripping young adult novel about one girl’s struggle for justice.
Star Carter is only sixteen years old and moves between two different worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The thin balance between both breaks when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer, even though Khalil was unarmed.
Soon afterward, his death became a national headline, where some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family and what everyone wants to know is what really went down that night. To which the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. What she does, or does not, say could upend her community and possibly endanger her life.
Thomas’ book is a thought-provoking piece that narrates the daily fights some have to face in order to protect their rights and their people. It is a book filled with different perspectives and a remarkable job at addressing society’s racial, social and political issues. Containing 444 pages and a Fiction/Young Adult tag, one of the most memorable lines of this book goes as follows:
“What's the point of having a voice if you're gonna be silent in those moments you shouldn't be?”
Title: The Worse Best Man
Author: Mia Sosa
Genre: Romance
Mia Sosa is an award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of contemporary romance that released Worst Best Man in 2020.
Sosa’s novel is all about drama, fun, and romance, where DC’s top-tier wedding planner Carolina Santos has been left at her own altar, praised by the irony. But the golden ticket is handed when she’s offered a once-in-a-life opportunity, but there’s one little problem: she has to collaborate with the best (make that worst) man from her own failed nuptials.
Max Hartley is a marketing expert determined to make his mark and stop living under his brother’s shadow by helping a coveted hotel client looking to expand its brand. Further on he learns he’ll be working with his brother’s whip-smart, stunning, and absolutely off-limits ex-fiancée, which she loathes him.
They have to survive the next few weeks without killing each other to succeed in their presentation, but it will be very hard since Max became public enemy number one by having encouraged his brother to jilt the bride. Even the best plans can turn around and soon both parts discover an unimaginable spark lighting between them but Lina isn’t interested in falling in love with him, and Max refuses to play runner-up to his brother ever again.
Mia Sosa created a contemporary romance masterpiece filled with everything you need to spend a wonderful, fun, and dramatic winter. With 368 pages ready to take you into this unimaginable life story, many reviewers chose the following line as the most remarkable of the book:
“Thing is," he says, his chin resting on my head, "there's no single way to be a badass. Your mother and aunts coming here and making new lives for themselves? Badass. My mother running her own firm even after she and my father divorced? Badass. You facing the obstacles in your path and reinventing yourself in the process? Badass. There's room for different kinds of greatness. Even if you cry doing it. Hell, especially if you cry doing it.”
Title: The Underground Railroad
Author: Colson Whitehead
Genre: Fiction
The Underground Railroad is an Adult Fiction written by award-winning Colson Whitehead based on harrowing true events.
Whitehead’s book starts narrating the life of Cora, a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia, and how she feels in hell every day that passes. Cora is an outcast, even among her fellow Africans, and because she’s coming into womanhood, greater pain awaits. Her fate suddenly changes when a recent arrival from Virginia, Caesar, tells her about the Underground Railroad to which they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Tables quickly turn around when Cora kills a young white boy who tried to capture her, and though they manage to find a station and head north, they are now being hunted.
The Underground Railroad is not a mere metaphor in this piece, engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil; Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, an almost-utopian city that seems like heaven but rapidly shows otherwise by displaying an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. Face-to-face with this and relentless slave catcher Ridgeway, Cora is forced to embark on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.
Whitehead’s story represents an odyssey through time and space that brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era. In 306 pages, the author creates a fast-moving and true adventure of a woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage. One of the most praised lines of this book goes as follows:
“All men are created equal, unless we decide you are not a man."
Title: The Fifth Season
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Science Fantasy
Jemisin’s shelve-wrecker fantasy trilogy The Broken Earth begins with The Fifth Season, where the story of how the world ends, again, is told.
This book begins with three atrocious things happening in a single day. Essun, an average woman living a normal life, comes home to find her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter; Sanze, a world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance; and across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.
Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land facing no sunlight, nor clean water or arable land. With limited stockpiles of supplies, a war is soon to be released across the Stillness but nothing matters to Essun more than saving her daughter.
N.K. Jemisin creates a fantastic dystopian world filled with adventure, mystery, and suspense in a vast 468 pages. Reader’s most favorite line was the following:
“Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.”
Have you read some of these books? I plan on having a great winter session of reading with a cup of tea, treats and my throw blanket with candles being lit everywhere. I hope some of these books peak your interest and you have a great winter of reading. Until next time...Happy Reading!
