Many college students feel like their schoolwork combined with the general craziness of life leaves them no time to read books for pleasure. This has held true for me— I don’t remember the last time I finished a book I actually wanted to read, and as a result, I’m about seven books behind on my reading challenge for this year. I need to have ten books read by January 1st to meet my quota of forty books, so I’m starting to plan what I’m going to read once break begins. I’m going to have so much more time to read after Christmas, and keeping in this mind has really helped me stay positive during finals! Here are three books recent releases I’m looking forward to reading over break:
1. Dry by Neal and Jarrod Shusterman
Dry, written by Neal Shusterman and his son Jarrod, is a YA speculative fiction novel in which the California drought escalates to the point where the state’s taps run dry. The protagonist and her family must desperately search as neighbor is turned against neighbor in the fight for water. Neal Shusterman is my favorite author, and his last collaboration with Jarrod Shusterman— a unique and memorable novel about a boy with schizophrenia called Challenger Deep— was amazing, so I’m hoping Dry will be similar.
2. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan
I’m a total sucker for YA fantasy— especially when the cover is gorgeous, and the plot involves badass women. However, this one also happens to be gay, so it’s a shoo-in for me. Apparently, the book is about Lei, a girl who is chosen as one out of nine girls to serve the king as a “Paper Girl,” or a consort. But here’s the twist— Lei falls in love with one of the other girls. I’ll probably just like cry or something if I’ve been baited and Lei ends up falling in love with some boring, angsty straight dude instead. I don’t think that’s the case, though, because someone asked the author on Goodreads if the book was LGBT, and she responded with “Absolutely YES.” Fingers crossed!
3. Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman
This one is a late 2017 release while the first two were both released in 2018. Starfish is about a girl named Kiko Himura whose greatest dream is to get into a prestigious art school called Prism. Kiko doesn’t make it in, so when her friend invites her to tour art schools together on the west coast, she sets aside her anxieties and takes the leap. I didn’t make it sound all that interesting, but if you like YA realistic fiction that confronts issues such as identity and mental illness, you should check out the blurb and see if you might want to read this book.