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The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE **Note: Freda @ Freda's Voice is taking a break from The Friday 56; Anne @Head is Full of Books is hosting for now.**
It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.
Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her. His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble. But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little. For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.
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When mysterious faeries from other realms appear at her university, curmudgeonly professor Emily Wilde must uncover their secrets before it’s too late in this heartwarming, enchanting second installment of the Emily Wilde series.
Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore—she just wrote the world’s first comprehensive of encylopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Folk on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival, Wendell Bambleby. Because Bambleby is more than infuriatingly charming. He’s an exiled faerie king on the run from his murderous mother, and in search of a door back to his realm. So despite Emily’s feelings for Bambleby, she’s not ready to accept his proposal of Loving one of the Fair Folk comes with secrets and danger. And she also has a new project to focus a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by Bambleby’s mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambley’s realm, and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans. But with new relationships for the prickly Emily to navigate and dangerous Folk lurking in every forest and hollow, Emily must unravel the mysterious workings of faerie doors, and of her own heart.
Heather Fawcett is the Sunday Times and internationally bestselling Canadian author of books for adults, kids, and teens, including Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Even the Darkest Stars, Ember and the Ice Dragons, The Grace of Wild Things, and more. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and somehow all include dragons in one form or another. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature and a Bachelor’s in Archaeology. She lives on Vancouver Island.
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It's December 25th, so Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! And Happy Holidays to everyone else! I hope everyone has not only a great day but a safe one.
Today I'm going to participate in The Cookie Book Tag. It's the only book tag we do annually on Our Thoughts Precisely, because it's a fun way to look back at the books we've read. It's a year to the day since Batch 5. Adri usually participates but, this year, she's decided to skip it. Before we begin, here are the more technical details about the tag.
The Cookie Book Tag was created by Nicole @ Sorry, I’m Booked. And you can check out the original tag post here: Sorry, I’m Booked, The Cookie Book Tag.
The blogging year is coming to a close, and I thought it was time to go over some of my favorite things from 2023. This concerns media—books, short stories, music, movies, and TV shows—that I read, watched, or listened to this year. In this part, I’m focusing on books and short stories.
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It’s the fifteenth of December. So it’s time to talk about the short stories, miscellaneous posts, and podcast episodes I read or listened to in November.
On the Fox Roads by Nghi Vo (Tor.com; October 31, 2023)
I know Nghi Vo’s work best by The Singing Hills Cycle, a series of interconnected novellas that can be read in any order—as noted in the synopsis of the 2023 installment, Mammoths at the Gates. Since Vo is one of my favorite authors, I was very excited to check out her short story on Tor.com, On the Fox Roads. I loved this story a lot. It’s a historical cops and robbers kind of tale set in the Jazz Age—think Bonnie and Clyde—only there are subtle hints of magic from the mysterious and titular “Fox Roads.” But it’s also something of a character study, especially when I think about how the narrator was handled. Part of On the Fox Roads was their journey of discovering who they are and what they really want, within a journey that was dangerous and also extraordinary. I highly recommend this one!
From around the web…
