Books I Missed in 2021
Inevitably, every year I get to the last month and realize that there were so many books on my radar that I just never got to. It’s a fact! I mean, so many amazing stories come out month after month. I’d need to be immortal to give them all of the love they deserve. However, there are always a few books that I was SO EXCITED for and then things got busy or I had too many review books to read, and they just vanished into the ether.
This is a post to honor the top 5 of these books. Well, and also to remind me to put them on my reading list for next year. Let’s go!
Up first is Zach Smedley’s new book, that I pined for when I found out that it was coming out. I absolutely LOVED Deposing Nathan. You can find my gushing review on this blog, in fact. So it’s no surprise that I was really excited about this one too. It’s definitely going in my 2022 MUST READ list.
From the critically acclaimed author of Deposing Nathan comes an explosive examination of identity, voice, and the indelible ways our stories are rewritten by others.
In the beginning, Owen’s story was blank . . . then he was befriended by Lily, the aspiring author who helped him find his voice. Together, the two have spent years navigating first love and amassing an inseparable friend group. But all of it is upended one day when his school’s administration learns Owen’s secret: that he was sexually assaulted by a classmate.
In the ensuing investigation, everyone scrambles to hold their worlds together.
Owen, still wrestling with his self-destructive thoughts and choices.
His father, a mission-driven military vet ready to start a war to find his son’s attacker.
The school bureaucrats, who seem most concerned with kowtowing to the local media attention.
And Lily, who can’t learn that Owen is the mystery victim everyone is talking about . . . because once she does, it will set off a chain of events that will change their lives forever.
Heartbreaking and hopeful, this is a coming-of-age story that explores how we rebuild after the world comes crumbling down.
Tonight We Rule the World by Zack Smedley
Next is a book that stole my heart the moment that I saw the blurb. Ryka Aoki’s book sounds like something I would absolutely LOVE, and I wanted this so very badly. To add insult to injury… I actually bought this book. Yes, friends. I own it. Did I read it though? Nope. So, onto the 2022 list it goes.
Good Omens meets The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in this defiantly joyful adventure set in California’s San Gabriel Valley, with cursed violins, Faustian bargains, and queer alien courtship over fresh-made donuts.
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.
When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka’s ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She’s found her final candidate.
But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn’t have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan’s kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul’s worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.
As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
In my eyes, Anne Ursu can do no wrong! Seriously, I’ve loved everything that she’s ever written. So it is unsurprising that this book ended up on my most wanted list. Not only is it an Ursu book, but it’s also all about magical girls. What more could you ask for? I think this might be my first read of 2022.
A fantasy about a kingdom beset by monsters, a mysterious school, and a girl caught in between them.
If no one notices Marya Lupu, it is likely because of her brother, Luka. And that’s because of what everyone knows: that Luka is destined to become a sorcerer.
The Lupus might be from a small village far from the capital city of Illyria, but that doesn’t matter. Every young boy born in in the kingdom holds the potential for the rare ability to wield magic, to protect the country from the terrifying force known only as the Dread.
For all the hopes the family has for Luka, no one has any for Marya, who can never seem to do anything right. But even so, no one is prepared for the day that the sorcerers finally arrive to test Luka for magical ability, and Marya makes a terrible mistake. Nor the day after, when the Lupus receive a letter from a place called Dragomir Academy–a mysterious school for wayward young girls. Girls like Marya.
Soon she is a hundred miles from home, in a strange and unfamiliar place, surrounded by girls she’s never met. Dragomir Academy promises Marya and her classmates a chance to make something of themselves in service to one of the country’s powerful sorcerers. But as they learn how to fit into a world with no place for them, they begin to discover things about the magic the men of their country wield, as well as the Dread itself–things that threaten the precarious balance upon which Illyria is built.
The Troubled Girls of Dragomir Academy by Anne Ursu
A new to me author from this year was TJ Klune. I fell head over heels for The House in the Cerulean Sea, and devoured his superhero novel right after that. I wanted to read his newest book so badly, but I was on a buying ban and the library copies were on infinite hold. So, I just decided to wait for 2022. I’m so ready!
When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead.
Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop’s owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over.
But Wallace isn’t ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo’s help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life.
When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days.
Under the Whispering Door is a contemporary fantasy about a ghost who refuses to cross over and the ferryman he falls in love with.
Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
Last up on this list is this gorgeous TOR novel! I won’t even lie, this was cover love at first site. However the blurb is equally as intriguing. Who doesn’t love a good story full of magic and conspiracy? I can’t wait to read this is in 2022!
Red White & Royal Blue meets Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light, featuring an Edwardian England full of magic, contracts, and conspiracies.
Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.
Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.
Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep.
A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
That’s it for me! Were there any 2021 releases that you missed out on that you really want to catch up on? Any that you’re planning on starting the new year with? Are any of these on your list? I’d love to hear all about it!
