New Year's Book Tag

Hello everyone and Happy New Year! For today's post I really wanted to do a New Year's related book tag and I found two that I really liked (Heather from Bookables New Year's Tag and Char Frears's New Year's Book Tag). However, I did not have an answer for every question in each so I made a hybrid of both book tags. Feel free to answer the questions in the comments section below as I would love to know your 2019 bookish goals. If you are curious to see mine then keep reading!

1. Do you set reading goals? If so, how many books do you want to read in 2019?

I set reading goals every year and the amount of book ranges depending on how busy I think my life will be that year. Since last year, I have been cutting my reading goal in half because I am in college and I do not have as much time to read as I used to. For 2019, my reading goal is 12 books. I want to read one book a month and hopefully read more during summer break when I have more time.

2. An author you’d like to read that you’ve never read before.

I have wanted to read Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng for years and I finally bought it in 2018. I have also been hearing nothing but incredible things about her sophomore novel, Little Fires Everywhere. My goal for 2019 is to read both of her novels and hopefully love them as much as everyone else.

Everything I Never Told You

Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet . . . So begins the story of this exquisite debut novel, about a Chinese American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favorite child of Marilyn and James Lee; their middle daughter, a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue—in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the center of every party.

When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together tumbles into chaos, forcing them to confront the long-kept secrets that have been slowly pulling them apart. James, consumed by guilt, sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to find a responsible party, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is certain that the neighborhood bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest of the family—Hannah—who observes far more than anyone realizes and who may be the only one who knows the truth about what happened.

A profoundly moving story of family, history, and the meaning of home, Everything I Never Told You is both a gripping page-turner and a sensitive family portrait, exploring the divisions between cultures and the rifts within a family, and uncovering the ways in which mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, and husbands and wives struggle, all their lives, to understand one another.

Little Fires Everywhere

Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother – who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When the Richardsons' friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family – and Mia's.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.

3. A classic you’d like to read.

I'm absolutely in love with this Puffin in Bloom cover designed by Anna Bond, founder of Rifle Paper Co. I have been wanting to read more classics recently and I decided that I wanted to start with children's classics. I bought all the Puffin in Bloom editions in 2018 and I look forward to getting to all of them but especially Anne of Green Gables!

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

Buy at Indigo and Amazon  

Summary:

Marilla Cuthbert and Matthew Cuthbert, middle-aged siblings who live together at Green Gables, a farm in Avonlea, on Prince Edward Island, decide to adopt a boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia as a helper on their farm. Through a series of mishaps, the person who ends up under their roof is a precocious girl of eleven named Anne Shirley. Anne is bright and quick, eager to please but dissatisfied with her name, her pale countenance dotted with freckles, and with her long braids of red hair. Being a child of imagination, however, Anne takes much joy in life, and adapts quickly, thriving in the environment of Prince Edward Island.

4. A book you’d like to re-read.

I read A Darker Shade of Magic back in 2017 and I absolutely loved it. I planned on reading the second book right after but that never happened. Now, I have the second and thrid book in the trilogy and I really hope to read both this year! I want to reread A Darker Shade of Magic to refresh my memory as it is coming up two years since I have read it. 

A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab

Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

Kell is one of the last Travelers-magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes, connected by one magical city.

There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, and with one mad King-George III. Red London, where life and magic are revered-and where Kell was raised alongside Rhys Maresh, the rougish heir to a flourishing empire. White London-a place where people fight to control magic, and the magic fights back, draining the city to its very bones. And once upon a time, there was Black London. But no one speaks of that now.

Officially, Kell is the Red Traveler, ambassador of the Maresh empire, carrying the monthly correspondences between the royals of each London. Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

Fleeing into Grey London, Kell runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.

5. A book you’ve had for ages and want to read.

The Nightingale is a book that has rave reviews since it came out and seems to be everyone's favourite book after they finish reading it. I have has this book on my shelf for over two years and I really want to get to it this year. 

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

In love we find out who we want to be. In war we find out who we are.

France, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. She doesn’t believe that the Nazis will invade France...but invade they do, in droves of marching soldiers, in caravans of trucks and tanks, in planes that fill the skies and drop bombs upon the innocent. When France is overrun, Vianne is forced to take an enemy into her house, and suddenly her every move is watched; her life and her child’s life is at constant risk. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates around her, she must make one terrible choice after another. 

Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets the compelling and mysterious Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can...completely. When he betrays her, Isabelle races headlong into danger and joins the Resistance, never looking back or giving a thought to the real--and deadly--consequences.

6. An author you’ve previously read and want to read more of.

I read Helen Hoang's debut novel The Kiss Quotient and I fell in love with it. When I heard she was turning this into a series I was so ecstatic! I cannot wait until this book comes out because I am already hearing amazing things about it which I am not suprised about since her first one is amazing!

The Bride Test by Helen Hoang

Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.

As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.

With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.

7. A series you want to read from start to finish.

In 2017 I read Laini Taylor's most popular novels, the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I really enjoyed them and after I finished them I planned on reading the Strange the Dreamer duology. I did not get to them in 2018 but I hope 2019 is the year I start and finish this series. I have heard nothing but AMAZING things about this series and everyone seems to give it a 5-stars so I am really looking forward to reading them both!

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around--and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old, he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? And who is the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams?

In this sweeping and breathtaking novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the New York Times bestselling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, the shadow of the past is as real as the ghosts who haunt the citadel of murdered gods. Fall into a mythical world of dread and wonder, moths and nightmares, love and carnage.

The answers await in Weep.

8. A series you want to finish that you’ve already started.

I have been reading the Harry Potter series since fall of 2017. I reread the first three books in the summer of 2018 and wrote detailed notes so I would not forget the events that took place within each book. I really, really, really need to get to the last four books in the series this year. It is going to be difficult during the school year because I like to write notes and the books get longer as the series go on but I will try my best! I'm really looking forward to completing this series as it has been on my bucket list for a while now. 

9. What book did you not get to this year but want to make a priority in 2019?

I keep planning to read this book every year but I keep putting it off because as much as I love reading historical fiction, particularly WWII novels, they are really difficult books to get through. I really want to read this book this year as I have wanted to read it for the past three years.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Buy at Indigo and Amazon

Summary:

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.

10. One word that you're hoping 2019 will be: 

I hope you enjoyed today's post and it gave you some recommendations of books to read in the new year! Have a wonderful day and a fabulous week. I'll see you next week Friday with my Most Anticipated Releases of 2019!