IT’S MY BIRTHDAYYYYY!!! This tag is from Antonia @ Always Books, and I actually did it last year on my birthday (find it here). I figured, why not do it again and see how my answers differ this year! So let’s get started!

The Happy Place who? The Happy Place 5 what? Guess what y’all – it’s time for a new regular feature on the blog! The Happy Place 5 is going to be a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. For example, you can see that this month’s topic is “Books that Kept Us Afloat in 2020.” The name came from a Discord group that I am a part of – we created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers, so we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.

Okay, now that I’ve explained this new feature, let’s get to January’s topic! There’s no mincing words, 2020 was a shitshow for everyone. I naturally turned to books as an escape from the real world. There are definitely a handful that were really comforting for me during the year. So I’m going to share them with you, and hopefully they can do the same for you!

This year has been very good to me, reading and book wise. One of the best things has been finding a new favorite author!! Not only that, but an author who has a RIDICULOUS amount of books published already. Sooo many more books to read and look forward to! Seanan McGuire has very very quickly become one of my top five favorite authors.

First encounters:

I read Middlegame in late April, right before it was released. At the time, this was her most recent novel. I am like…still blown away by how fucking GOOD this book is. You can read my full review of it here, but like, it’s probably my favorite read of 2019. I don’t think anything else really comes close. It was so dark and complex and mind blowing, and everything I could possibly want in a book. Middlegame blends science and magic and mystery, and tackles subjects like isolation due to others being unable to understand you, suicide attempts, greed, and attaining the ultimate power. The best part though is that it’s really about a sibling relationship at it’s core, and that drives the novel. It’s brilliant and you all must read it!

Jana (That Artsy Reader Girl) hosts the Top Ten Tuesday tag, and while looking at the topics (and her blog) I found this fun book tag! To be honest I don’t love Christmas songs haha. Mostly just because they’re overplayed – however! I love seeing the ideas/prompts that came out of each of these songs.

She answered her questions with books that she read this year, which I think is a great idea so I’m going to do that as well! As much as I can anyway.

1. “All I Want for Christmas Is You”: Favorite bookish couple.

Okay I’m going to do two, one that is non-spoilery and one that is kinda spoilery. I don’t know how to make the text secret so the spoiler one will just be at the end of this section.

So the non-spoiler one! Josh and Hazel from Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating!! I love each of their personalities separately and I love even more how they are with each other.

SPOILERS FOR THE OCTOBER DAYE SERIES!!!!

(I love Toby and Tybalt!!!!!! I knew from the first book it would happen and when it finally did I was so happy).

END SPOILERS.

2. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”: Name a book where a character is away from home (school, vacation, etc.).

Gideon the Ninth! By Tamsyn Muir. Takes place at a semi-creepy crumbling down house (think more like mansion) where they can’t leave or contact anyone on the outside!

3. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”: Name your favorite “little” book (children’s book, short story, novella, etc.).

Way back at the beginning of the year I read The Test, a novella by Sylvain Neuvel. It was an easy 5 stars from me! It’s definitely better to go into it not knowing much, but it’s a really great sci-fi/dystopian novella.

4. “Santa Claus is Coming to Town“: What book(s) do you hope Santa brings you this year?

SOooooooo many. The new box set of the first three books in the Expanse series, Senlin Ascends, A Labyrinth of Scions and Sorcery.…I could go on forever haha.

5. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”: Which book turned your nose red (made you cry)?

Magic of Blood and Sea by Cassandra Rose Clarke! It’s not really a sad book at all haha it’s just that some of the scenes reminded me a lot of certain emotions I was dealing with at the time.

6. “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”: Your favorite book/kind of book to read during the holidays.

I’m not too much of a mood reader but I like being able to read series over the holidays! Since I have a lot of free time to binge read whole series haha. So I think this upcoming holiday season I’m going to continue the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire! I binge read the first 6 books in early October (whoa, how fitting for her name – didn’t even realize that at the time) so now I’m ready to continue Toby’s journey.

7. “We Three Kings”: Your favorite trilogy.

I didn’t actually read/finish many trilogies this year! But I did read The Queen of Sorrow which was the third in the Queens of Renthia trilogy. This is a super underrated adult fantasy trilogy that I love! And this installment was amazing.

8. “Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow”: A character you would love to be snowed in with.

I’m cheating and I’m gonna pick a group of characters rather than just one – I pick the characters from A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe! It would definitely be an entertaining day with all of them.

9. “Last Christmas”: A book that seriously let you down.

Circle of Shadows by Evelyn Skye 🙁 I loved the premise of this one! But it just really fell flat for me and it’s one of the rare books that I actually dislike (rather than feel ambivalent towards).

10. “White Christmas”: An upcoming release you’re dreaming about.

Probably The Shadow Saint! I still haven’t finished the first book (The Gutter Prayer) but the first half of it was AMAZING so I’m already looking forward to the second book! And I already have it preordered too haha.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my choices! And if you haven’t read these, I hope you check them out 🙂

Yes you are reading this correctly – an actual blog post after 2.5ish months. Seeing as this is a hobby for both me and Shari, I don’t feel guilty about taking some time away but I do miss blogging! It’s fun 🙂

So it’s time to come back! For me at least haha. Shari, as you may or may not know, is a BOSS who is following her dreams at animation school!! How cool is that?!? But that also means she’s quite busy with projects and art and all that incredible stuff. I have no such excuse – I just got out of the habit of blogging lol.

What have I been up to these past 2.5ish months? Well, I’m glad you asked. If you didn’t, too bad. I’m gonna tell you anyway.