Guess what! It’s my mom’s birthday today!!! Since she (and my dad) got me into reading, I thought I’d celebrate by dedicating a post to books with awesome mom characters. There are quite a few books where there are moms as side characters. However, I wanted to highlight books where the mom is the main character! Half of my choices are books that I’ve read, and the other half are ones that I’m really excited to read. These books are all adult fiction – I guess it’s natural that young adult books would center, well, young adults, who tend to not have become mothers yet.
The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is 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.
So apparently May 15th was International Day of Families. NATURALLY this means that we had to pick found family as our Happy Place 5 topic this month! You (probably) already know that I’m a huge sucker for found family. Luckily, my friends are as well so we are all very happy to have this as our topic this month haha. As you may have noticed, I am posting this month’s post on the last day of the month. May has been kind of a hard month for me, so I haven’t been able to do much blogging. But I did want to share my choices with you!! Since I don’t have much energy I’m just going to post the Goodreads summary for each book, but I really hope you check them all out. So what are my choices??
The Bone Maker by Sarah Beth Durst Published by Harper Voyager on March 9, 2021
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 496
Format: eARC
Goodreads
Twenty-five years ago, five heroes risked their lives to defeat the bone maker Eklor—a corrupt magician who created an inhuman army using animal bones. But victory came at a tragic price. Only four of the heroes survived.
Since then, Kreya, the group’s leader, has exiled herself to a remote tower and devoted herself to one purpose: resurrecting her dead husband. But such a task requires both a cache of human bones and a sacrifice—for each day he lives, she will live one less.
She’d rather live one year with her husband than a hundred without him, but using human bones for magic is illegal in Vos. The dead are burned—as are any bone workers who violate the law. Yet Kreya knows where she can find the bones she needs: the battlefield where her husband and countless others lost their lives.
But defying the laws of the land exposes a terrible possibility. Maybe the dead don’t rest in peace after all.
Five warriors—one broken, one gone soft, one pursuing a simple life, one stuck in the past, and one who should be dead. Their story should have been finished. But evil doesn’t stop just because someone once said, “the end.”
Thank you Harper Voyager for providing me with an eARC for review via NetGalley!
When I heard about this book, I immediately put it on my TBR for two reasons. One being that synopsis – I mean the good guy potentially going bad for love? And five warriors who saved the world have to reunite?? Yes. Dear god yes. The second reason was the author. I read the Queens of Renthia trilogy by Sarah Beth Durst a few years ago and LOVED it, so I was definitely excited to read more from her. That trilogy had such cool magic, and a mom as a main character! I really love seeing older protagonists, so I was excited that this one also feature a group of older heroes.
If you have read any of my blog posts, you probably know what I’m going to mention first about this book. Yes! That’s right! FOUND FAMILY!!!!! Let’s go baby!!!! I think the cool thing about this one was that we don’t actually get to see how they all came together, because that’s in the past. However! We get to see how their relationships with one another have evolved, and just how strong found family ties can be. I like that Durst didn’t make it easy for them to all reconnect, because obviously over 25 years people have changed a LOT.
Another thing I love: the bone magic. Yeah it’s a little creepy, but it’s also so cool!!!! Like enchanting specific bones from different animals to enhance specific traits? So awesome. If that doesn’t make sense, then think like, using bear bones for strength/stability, or cheetah bones for speed, etc. And also being able to read the future in bones? Terrifying but awesome. I kinda do wish we could have seen a bit more of the magic, but maybe that’s just me being magic greedy haha.
To be honest, reviews are kind of hard for me right now so I don’t have much more to say. But just know that this is definitely one of my favorites of the year. The adventures! The magic! The found family! And also that villain!!!! He was very well done. I also just really like the concept of this book, i.e. dealing with what could happen after the heroes save the world. So yes, I hope you go pick it up and see for yourself!
The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is 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.
Aaaaand just like that, it’s March. Which means! Yes, it’s time again for The Happy Place 5! This month we are talking about “Places you’d take a portal to in an instant.” To be honest, this one was kind of hard for me. Mostly because a lot of the settings in the books I read seem really cool but also really dangerous or scary lol. I tried to pick books where I’d be okay living there if there’s no portal back. Buuuuut really, I’m making this post assuming that I can portal back home if I want to hahaha.
