Jul 1
Hope everyone had a good Pride Month! Here’s some upcoming queer books you may want to preorder or request at your local library! 📚
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Hope everyone had a good Pride Month! Here’s some upcoming queer books you may want to preorder or request at your local library! 📚
this was insane honestly
— shatter me, tahereh mafi
BURN THE WATER: Read an Excerpt
From award-winning screenwriter of The Hunger Games Billy Ray comes an immersive and breathtaking enemies-to-lovers epic romance about war, loyalty, and the power that love has to save... or destroy.
The year is 2425 and London is underwater.
Three hundred years ago, rising oceans drowned a vast majority of the English Isle. London is now a jungle of dead skyscrapers and submerged streets.
Fighting over the scraps of a world none can remember, two Houses -- the Crowns and the Rogues -- have been at war for three centuries.
Rafe is the Rogue army's fiercest captain. Jule is the Crown army's deadliest soldier. They are vicious and merciless, courageous and beloved by their Houses. They are sworn enemies.
And then they fall in love.
It's a death sentence. But their love is all-consuming. As Rafe and Jule try to keep each other alive in their war-torn world, they are forced to confront new, horrifying threats to their loved ones while the hatred between their Houses only grows.
When mysterious foreigners appear on their shores, the warring factions may destroy each other, unless their two most ruthless soldiers can become beacons of peace and possibility, showing their people a different way, and save them all.
From the award-winning screenwriter of The Hunger Games comes a visceral and breathless forbidden romance about sacrifice, the neverending cycle of violence, and fiery, all-powerful love.
READ AN EXCERPT
Burn the Water Excerpt by I Read YA
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what are some good YA dystopian/ scifi/ fantasy/ apocalypse books or series that aren’t too cringe for a 22 year old? i need something like the hunger games or the maze runner or the 100 or stranger things where it has good ships but romance isn’t the main part of it 💌
k, controversial opinion but I liked the Uglies movie. It is fairly accurate to the book, cringe and all, and it is exactly what it is trying to be - an early 2010s dystopian movie, cringe and all. I think trying to be anything else would have made the movie worse, because it would have failed to live up to any higher expectations unless it removed its faithfulness to the books, thus losing the one demographic (aka me) who would go out of their way to watch the movie
Reasons The Hunger Games Works and None of the Knock-Offs Do:
I just reread The Hunger Games Trilogy, and I have some thoughts about why they work so well and so many others just don’t.
Katniss Is Lucky: At every turn Katniss gets lucky. This isn’t a “anyone could have done this but no one’s tried before” or “main characters is special in some way” story. If Katniss’s name had been called instead of Prim’s, she probably wouldn’t have won. If anyone other then Peeta had been called she wouldn’t have won. If Cinna had picked any other year to become a stylist she wouldn’t have won. If her father hadn’t been a hunter she wouldn’t have won. If Madge didn’t give her the pin (how Rue decided to trust her) she wouldn’t have won. I can’t really explain why this is so important to me, but it is. Katniss isn’t special or super powered. She’s lucky.
Katniss Is A Symbol and 13 Has an Army: Katniss is not a rebel leader. There isn’t a group of ragtag teenagers who follow her and take on a corrupt government all on their own. She’s a symbol to inspire the people in the districts to fight, but no one ever puts her in charge of an army. Why should they? She’s a 17 year old, traumatized, child. The only time we do see Katniss lead is at the end of Mockingjay, and then it’s a group of about ten people, most of who end up dead and the mission doesn’t succeed. More importantly, 13 beats the capital because they have a fully functioning, highly trained, military ready to go.
These Are CHILDREN: Yes, every young adult story focuses on a teenager, but so many of these stories seem to forge they’re talking about teenagers. They act as if they are twenty somethings, or in the society set up you are considered an adult at 16. The Hunger Games hammers you over the head with the fact that these are kids. Katniss goes to school. I do not know a single hunger games rip off where the main character goes to completely normal every day school.
The Death’s Aren’t Shock Value: Yes, Prim’s death is shocking. It’s heartbreaking. I knew it was coming and still cried. That’s not why it’s there though. The point is how far Coin is willing to go to make sure Katniss is on her side. Everyone else’s deaths also have a point. Finnick and the others on Katniss’s team show the sacrifice people are willing to make for the cause and for Katniss. Cinna to show Katniss what happens when she resists. Rue is the cruelty of the game. Madge, the cruelness of the capital.
The Goal Is Clear: Mazerunner comes to mind with this one. What was the actual goal after the first book? Hell if I know. In The Hunger Games series there’s no fancy plan or convoluted thing they need to do. The plan is simple. Hunger Games and Catching Fire: “Don’t die”. Mockingjay there’s a lot of background stuff happening, but for Katniss the goal is always one thing: kill Snow. Everything she does is a straightforward line to that goal for almost the entire book.
Gale and Peeta: Both Gale and Peeta are totally realistic and reasonable love interests for Katniss. Neither of them are always nice or always perfect, but it easy to see why Katniss struggles to balance the two of them. There is no clear choice between the two. More importantly, the choice is representative of a larger concept. Katniss herself makes the comparison, saying Gale is rage and Peeta is calm. It’s not just between two guys, it’s between two ways of life and what Katniss needs in her life.
She Picks Peeta: I can not stress enough how important this is. In any of the knock offs I guarantee you that she would have picked Gale. Or, more accurately what would have happened is they would have switched Gale and Peeta’s personalities. Peeta would have been the angry, tortured, mysterious guy, and Gale would have been the kind, artistic, best friend. In this case, she would have still picked Peeta, but the whole point would have been lost. For all intents and purposes it would have been picking Gale. But no. Katniss picks Peeta. She picks calm and peace rather then giving in to Gale’s anger.
no but why doesn’t this past decade have any “great” YA book series? where’s the harry potter, the percy jackson, the hunger games of the 2020s? it makes me a little sad that you just don’t see books being talked about online at that kind of near-universal level anymore. i seriously think we need to go back to the over-the-top fantasy dystopian type stuff of the early 2000s. we need pure indulgence again. we need those cliche personality-quiz type of stories where readers can say stuff like “if i was in this universe, i’d be in House Sparklypoop!” we need dragons and quests and gods and wizards and the power of friendship and hope...
Old school YA dystopia books that deserve some love:
Ever since the well-deserved success of The Hunger Games books that was skyrocketed by the movies, we have been inundated by so-called YA Dystopian books. Unfortunately, it seems that a disproportionate amount of them are hollow copy and pasted versions that get paler and paler with each incarnation.
This post is brought to you by my love of dystopia from books published before or around such books as the Divergent series.
(no hate to those who enjoy the ya dystopian books that have been coming out in droves in the past decade) (if you love the book then you love it, that’s the point of literature)
I bring these to you in the hopes that I can entice those who are sick of the YA dystopian genre into seeing how they should be written. YA dystopia is what revolutionized teenagers into thinking that they could change the world, they could go head-to-head against corrupt governments. Now that we’ve grown up, it’s time to inspire the next generation.
disclaimer that this is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list, just what i have read over the years