Library of Souls

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Best Books I Read In 2015. I’ve narrowed it down to the best books I’ve read this year that were released in 2015 (I read some good ones that are at least a year old!).

Each one is linked to my review (the first three are in order).

Every Word – Ellie Marney
The Hollow Boy – Jonathan Stroud
The Wondrous and the Wicked – Page Morgan
Simon vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda – Becky Albertali
Nimona – Noelle Stevenson
Mad Miss Mimic – Sarah Henstra
The Singular and Extraordinary Tale of Mirror and Goliath / The Contrary Tale of the Butterfly Girl – Ishbelle Bee
Dumplin’ – Julie Murphy
Library of Souls – Ransom Riggs
Alice Takes Back Wonderland – David D. Hammons

BONUS
Here are another five books that I rated 5 interrobangs that weren’t released in 2015 (and that don’t include any re-reads!):

Daughter of Smoke and Bone – Laini Taylor (review coming soon!)
The Universe Versus Alex Woods – Gavin Extence
The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen – Susin Nielsen
Soulless – Gail Carriger
Outlander – Diana Gabaldon

What were your top ten books this year?

Library of Souls – Ransom Riggs

As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.

They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all.

Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography.

Before I start this review, I just want to warn you: if you’re going to read Library of Souls and it’s been a while since you read Hollow City, you should probably re-read that first because this book picks up literally ten seconds after the events of book two.

I think that’s part of the reason why I ultimately gave Library of Souls four stars instead of five. Well, that, and the fact that it took a while to get going, not unlike the previous two books. I do wish I had been given some sort of recap at the beginning.

That being said, I enjoyed this one a lot more than Hollow City. While I’ll probably never accept Jacob/Emma’s relationship (seriously, did she have to be Abe’s ex-girlfriend?? Why couldn’t they have just been friends??), the overall story was more interesting than the book two.

I liked the introduction of Sharon, who helps the peculiars on their quest. And the final showdown with Caul and his siblings was well done. I especially liked the way everything was resolved at the end, which brought the series to a nice close.

I’m being vague here because I don’t want to spoil it. I will say that it ended much better than I thought it would. And even though Jacob still doesn’t strike me as overly intelligent, I felt like he was more alive in this installment than in the previous ones, that you could really feel his personality coming off the page, whereas he felt flat and 2D in the first two books.

Recommended if you enjoyed the first two books; if you didn’t love Hollow City, I’d still suggest picking this up for a good conclusion to an interesting series.

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