Calendar Girls is hosted by bloggers, Flavia the Bibliophile and Melanie Noell Bernard – both have amazing blogs full of fun, bookish posts. Calendar Girls is a brand new monthly blog event inspired by Neil Sedaka’s 1961 song Calendar Girl. Just like in the song, we decided to use a specific theme for each month and choose a book based on these themes! The event is meant to incite discussions with other bloggers about books we’ve read and loved, is meant to help bloggers meet other bloggers, and also for bloggers and readers to find out about blogs which they normally may not have come across! Want to know more? Click on the links above! And it’s not too late to jump on the Calendar Girl train! Join now!
Favourite Book Published in 2017
Well, it's the last Calendar Girls 2017, and personally, I think it's been a superb inaugural year for Melanie and Flavia! And I am looking forward to continuing in 2018. This is actually kind of a tricky category for me. I think I am unusual among book bloggers in that, I really don't read a lot of new releases. Between an always growing unread book collection at my house (about 250 at the moment), working in a library, and having easy access to audio and ebooks through my public library, I read a lot of "older" stuff. At the time of writing this, I have so far completed 142 books for the year, and of that, only 10 are books that were published in 2017. Two of those 10 are audible special editions of previously published books and 1 is a new English translation. The 10 books published in 2017 that I read are as follows:
- The Handmaid's Tale - by Margaret Atwood, Audible Exclusive edition narrated by Claire Danes published on April 4, 2017
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them - by J.K. Rowling, narrated by Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander published on March 14, 2017
- A Darkness Absolute - by Kelley Armstrong, published February 7, 2017
- The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue - by Mackenzi Lee, published June 27, 2017
- The Love Interest - by Cale Dietrich, published May 16, 2017
- Meddling Kids - by Edgar Cantero, published July 11, 2017
- History of Bees - by Maja Lunde & Diane Oatley, published in English August 22, 2017
- Faith, Volume 3: Superstar by Jody Houser, published May 10, 2017
- Bring the Heat by G.A. Aiken, published August 15, 2017
- Mockingbird, Vol. 2: My Feminist Agenda by Chelsea Cain, published May 2, 2017
Now which one ended up being my favourite book published in 2017? Let's see:
HE SAYS . . .This is the 9th book in the Dragon Kin series, which is one of my favourite ongoing series right now like you don't even understand how much I love these books right now haha. I actually forgot this one was only published this year I thought it was a 2016 but it wasn't!! It's got a horrible cover, I do not like the cover model they chose for Aidan AT ALL. He doesn't look cheerful or charming and not especially divine either. This is the first time the cover model choice has been off with this series.
I, Aidan the Divine, am, well divine. My name was given to me by the Dragon Queen herself! I’m a delight! Cheerful. Charming. And a mighty warrior who is extremely handsome with a very large and well-hidden hoard of gold. I am also royal born, despite the fact that most in my family are horrendous beings that don’t deserve to live. And yet, Branwen the Awful—a low-born, no less—either tells me to shut up or, worse, ignores me completely.
SHE SAYS . . .
I’ll admit, I ignore Aidan the Divine because it annoys him. A lot. But, we have so much to do right now, I can’t worry about why he keeps staring at me, or why he always sits so close, or why he keeps looking at me like he’s thinking about kissing me. We have our nations to save and no time for such bloody foolishness . . . no matter how good Aidan looks or how long his spiked tail is. Because if we’re going to win this war before it destroys everything we love, we’ll have to face our enemies together, side by side and without distractions. But if we make it out alive, who knows what the future will hold . . .
-- via Goodreads
Aidan and Brannie have been some of my favourite supporting characters for AGES. I've been waiting and WAITING to see who she was going to pair Brannie up with. I was so annoyed when she wrote Brannie's brother Celyn's book first because Celyn was a dickhead before that (he got put in his place in his book - his heroine is amazing...). I'm super pleased that she chose Aidan because it just makes so much sense. Her best friend is married to her cousin who happens to be Aidan's best friend. So it's just nice and tidy in that regard.
The best part of this series is the characters, they are all absolutely bloody hilarious. The main characters in this book both happen to be dragons (who can shapeshift into human form - which is how they spend a lot of their time, they mainly use their dragon-forms for travelling long distances and battles). But there's plenty of straight-up humans around. And also some dragon-human hybrids because several of the earlier main character pairings were dragon/human matches. Brannie is an adorakbly clueless Cadwalladr. The Cadwalladrs are a warrior clan they have battling on the brain and Brannie is no different. Brannie will HAPPILY take weapons before boys and is actually pretty much clueless about the fact that Aidan likes her. Which is a nice twist to me because it seems like usually in a romance novel it's the other way around. Aidan's no slouch either though he's an elite berserker warrior which actually goes a long way to explaining why he's attracted to Brannie. Of course, he'd want a female who is as into fighting as he is.
What I love best about this series though is Aiken's ability to have a fantastic overarching fantasy saga be told through the romances of the main characters. All of the romance is happening against the backdrop of this Game of Thrones-esque story and all of the involved characters are a part of the goings-on. All that and yet nothing about these books feels forced. The next one hasn't been announced yet, but I await it eagerly.
Do you tend to read more new releases or more books that have already been out for awhile?
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