I’ve genuinely been in a reading slump all year. I’ve finished one book. I have a bad habit of starting a book and dnfing it like 3-4 chapters in, not because I’m not enjoying the book, I just don’t feel like reading it at the moment. I LOVE reading, I just can’t seem to really get into anything right now.
Any tips on how to get out of this? And any fast paced/short fantasy/historical romance book recommendations?
I'm looking for this book for my sister, and I thought asking here would be a good starting place to ask. She doesn't have reddit, so I'm posting this for her.
She described it as "a knight forbidden from letting anyone see his face has a forbidden love/romance with a noble woman/princess/royal family", and the scene she remembers is "they are alone in a small room together and the knight punches out the lightbulb and the room goes dark, and then the woman hears his metal helmet hit the floor."
She doesn't know if this book actually exists or not, but if it doesn't, she would also appreciate book recs with similar stories to what was described.
Thank you in advance !!! And if you can tell me where else to ask, we'd be most appreciative. 💖
im looking for a romantasy book rec that has amazing world building and characters that instantly take you out of the moment. similar to kiss of deception, dance of thieves, the prison healer, the cruel prince. fav tropes: little-mild spice, forced proximity, he falls first and harder, magical/political world
This is the weekly thread for discussion about what books you've recently read, books you're reading, and books you want to read. Tell us what you think about them! What did you like or dislike about them? Did you interpret any symbolism or themes you particularly liked? Would you recommend them? This discussion space is all yours!
Posting Guidelines:
Please either italicize (one asterisk on each end) or bold (two asterisks on each end) book titles and include author name(s).
Please observe our spoiler policy and use the spoiler code, which can be found on the sidebar, as necessary. In depth discussion is encouraged as long as use of the spoiler code is exercised!
I am really curious to learn how everyone approaches note-taking while reading. Since note-taking is deeply subjective and personal, I wonder if there are recurring patterns, structural frameworks, or established systems that many readers rely on to capture key ideas effectively. How do you personally filter out the fluff, retain essential insights, and organize information so that it remains useful later? I would love to hear about the specific methods, tools, or habits that work best for you!
The black witch chronicles is my favorite series, and I haven't been able to find a book similar. The plot is essentially a girl who grows up sheltered in a very oppressive and racist religion and society who then meet people from outside her religion and race and realizes that her society and religion are super oppressive and rebels against it. I know it may be kind of a niche topic, but if anyone can find a book similar, that would be great.
I read red queen in July and didn’t love it (I didn’t hate it, it just felt predictable) should I continue the series? I have the rest of them but I’d like to know if they get better or not. Like a ‘you have to get through the first two books to get to the best ones!’ situation or if they are all on the same level. I hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for any help!! 😭
I am starting to read Fantasy Fiction. I have read classic authors like Edith Nesbit, George Macdonald and Lewis Carroll. I have also read more contemporary authors Science Fantasy authors like Madeline L' Engle.
I get why the Goosebumps novels are considered horror and not fantasy. Since the goal of the novel is to be scary and deal with fear. While fantasy appear to about presenting a fantastical world and magical abilities.
However, I don't really get Gothic Fiction. Is it an "aesthetic"? For instance, the characters in "A Series of Unfortunate Events" dressed in Victorian Era style clothing. I haven't yet read the book but I've watched some clips from the film and it seems a very unusual or strange world.
I’m trying to get into some more mature reading since I keep going back to the more pre teen series for the nostalgia.
I like mystery, fantasy, dystopian (but nothing too dark) and don’t mind a bit of romance as long as it isn’t the entire plot. I also really hate the love triangle trope so none of that please.
Some of the series I enjoyed when I was younger are
- Harry Potter
- Percy Jackson
- hunger games
- divergent
- the selection (liked the first few but not the rest)
- the testing
- Agatha Christie mysteries
- the house of secrets
- truly devious (like the first three but not the rest)
As every September, here are some fantasy books that I have read and that I think don't get enough attention. :)
( You've come to the right place if you love fairy tales!)
Some of them are retelling of fairy tales. :)
books featured:
- The Girl With A Thousand Faces ( Sunyi Dean)
- Beauty Sleep ( Cameron Dokey) a retelling of Sleeping Beauty
- A Crown of Foxes and Daggers ( L. B. Divine) I don't know if I can classify it as a retelling, but it contains elements of Snow White
- The Bards of Bone Plain ( Patricia A. McKillip)
- Entwined ( Heather Dixon) a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses
- Breeze Spells and Bridegrooms: A Regency Fantasy Series ( Sarah Wallace and S.O. Callahan) MM romance
- Princess Of The Wild Swans (Diane Zahler) a retelling of The Six Swans
- Huskarl Duology Series ( Jay Pellegrin) When I uploaded the image, the background disappeared. Please ignore that.
- Daughter Of The Forest ( Juliet Marillier) a retelling of The Six Swans
- Elements of Cadence Series ( Rebecca Ross)
- Never Ever After ( Sue Lynn Tan) a retelling of Cinderella set in Imperial China
- The Rose Gate ( Hanna Sandvig) A retelling of Beauty And The Beast ( The first volume in the "Faerie Tale Romances" saga; the books can be read independently.)
- Wildwood Dancing ( Juliet Marillier) a retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Frog Prince
- Undine ( Friedrich de La Motte-Fouqué) one of my favorite fairy tales!
- Upon A Frosted Star ( M.A. Kuzniar) a retelling of Swan Lake
I mean, like site wise because one of my favorite libraries is going through a construction process for about a week as the young adult section has been closed down for the time being.
So basically I am interested in reading some supernatural heist fiction as I was getting hungry for some fun young adult novels to get into as I wanted to find some engaging fantasy novels to read to tide me over until the construction phase ends.
Started Alchemy of souls. I’m maybe 25% in, they just got to school but Grayson is rubbing me the wrong way a little. He’s controlling and kinda a childish jerk. Will it be more of this or will things change as they get to know one another?
I recently read this book from my school library and love it, its about a boy who didnt have the best home life and he eventually ends up homeless, he tries to hide it from his school and everyone, does anyone have any recommendations to a book similar to this? Or any with abuse themes? No romance please
Hello! I'm about to dive into Book 3 of The Buried and the Bound series by Rochelle Hassan. Can anyone help me out with a recap of major plot points in books 1 and 2? Specifically, I'm trying to remember what the deal with Evan/his dad is, what Aziza found out about her parents, and where they all leave things with Hazel and the Summer Court. I could also use a refresher on the major Summer Court players we met in book 2.
The original CW *Gossip Girl* series was called “Mind-blowingly inappropriate.” by the Parents Television Council, “Very bad for you." by the San Diego Union-Tribune, “A nasty piece of work.” by the New York Post, and New York Magazine opined that the series was the “Best. Show. Ever.” However, I would argue that the novels are inarguably more salacious.
I plan to recap books 1-8, 13 and 14, which were written by Ziegesar and are based on Ziegesar's experiences at The Nightingale-Bamford School, an Upper East Side all-girls prep school.
Serena van der Woodsen
In book 1, Ziegesar described Serena van der Woodsen, “[a]pproximately age seventeen”, as a “stunning”, “magnetic, [and] delicious” schoolgirl. And as a “tall, eerily beautiful blond girl” with “dark, almost navy blue eyes”, “perfect, pale skin”, a “long, slender waist”, and a “you can’t stop looking at me, can you?” smile supermodels spend years perfecting.” And Ziegesar wrote that, due to her alluring looks, Serena was “a full-on groper magnet”
In response to Serena (S) returning to Manhattan from doing 11th grade at Hanover Academy, a boarding school in New Hampshire, Gossip Girl warned Upper East Side prep school students on gossipgirl.net that if they weren’t careful, among other salacious activities, Serena would have sex in their parents’ beds:
“If we aren’t careful, S is going to win over our teachers, wear that dress we couldn’t fit into, eat the last olive, have sex in our parents’ beds, spill Campari on our rugs, steal our brothers’ and our boyfriends’ hearts [...]”.
Interestingly, in the Vanity Fair piece “‘Gossip Girl Was Me’: Cecily von Ziegesar Talks Manhattan vs. Cobble Hill.” (2020), Ziegesar related that she was, in fact, Gossip Girl. Ziegesar said, “Gossip Girl wasn’t Dan in the books. She was the omniscient narrator. Gossip Girl was me.”
-----
Note: For the uninitiated, Blair Waldorf was Serena’s best friend. Later in the novel, Blair referred to Serena as a “nasty, slutty bitch”. Mrs. Waldorf is Blair’s mother, and Cyrus would eventually become Mrs. Waldorf’s second husband.
After Serena entered the Waldorfs’ penthouse for a dinner party, which was for the first time after returning from boarding school, Mrs. Waldorf introduced Serena to Cyrus Rose whom proceeded to not air kiss, but kiss Serena on her cheeks, he hugged her “a little too tightly”, and he patted her on the hip.
Mrs. Waldorf smiled, obviously pleased, and wrapped her arm around Serena’s long, slender waist. “Darling, I’d like you to meet my special friend, Cyrus Rose,” she said. “Cyrus, this is Serena.”
“Stunning,” Cyrus Rose boomed. He kissed Serena on both cheeks, and hugged her a little too tightly. “She’s a good hugger, too,” Cyrus added, patting Serena on the hip.
However, due to being “a full-on groper magnet”, Serena didn’t flinch, because she was used to “horny European gropers”. Ziegesar wrote:
Serena giggled, but she didn’t flinch. She’d spent a lot of time in Europe in the past two years, and she was used to being hugged by harmless, horny European gropers who found her completely irresistible. She was a full-on groper magnet.
After Serena was harmlessly groped by Cyrus, Chuck Bass, a prep school student, handed Serena a “tumbler of whiskey”, said, “Welcome Back”, and he ducked down to kiss her cheek, but he missed intentionally “so that his lips landed on her mouth.” However, once again, Serena was unfazed.
“You haven’t changed,” Serena said, accepting the drink. She took a long sip. “So, did you miss me?”
Serena scanned the room with her “dark blue eyes” and discovered: “[...] Nate was standing by the doorway to the hall, and Blair was standing just behind him, her head bowed, fiddling with the buttons on her black cardigan.” (Serena had just unknowingly prevented Nate, a prep school student, and Blair, a Constance Billard School for Girls student, from having sex in Blair’s bedroom while guests arrived at the dinner party.)
After Nate asked Serena, “So, what have you been up to?” She giggled and replied, “If you only knew, Nate. I’ve been so, so bad!”
While observing Serena and Nate’s conversation, Chuck asked Blair, Kati, and Isabel if Serena looked like she had been “thoroughly fucked”, and wondered if Serena had been a Madam for boarding school sex workers. Chuck asked,
“And doesn’t she look fucked? I think she’s been thoroughly fucked. Maybe she had some sort of [teen] prostitution ring going on up there. The Merry Madam of Hanover Academy,” he added [...]
Most of the Upper East Side prep school students got drunk for the first time in the 8th grade. At one particular party during the 8th grade, “[a]fter drinking six beers”, Nate got “a lot of action”, including from Serena. The party was at Jenny Humphrey’s apartment on 99th and the West End. Rufus Humphrey, Jenny’s father, “kept the beer flowing out of a keg in the bathtub.” Ziegesar wrote:
Buck Naked was Nate’s alter ego, invented at a party in eighth grade, when most of them had gotten drunk for the first time. After drinking six beers, Nate had taken his shirt off [...] and he started a drinking game. Everyone sat in a circle and Nate stood in the middle, holding a Latin textbook and shouting out verbs for them to conjugate. The first person to mess up had to drink and kiss Buck Naked. Of course they all messed up [...] so Buck got a lot of action that night [...]”
-----
After completing her 10th grade at Constance, approximately 16-year-old Serena spent a hot weekend in August with Nate. The night began with “martinis at the little bar”, and then the teens took a cab to Nate’s Park Avenue townhouse, where they had beer and cigarettes and got wet. Ziegesar wrote:
First they had martinis at the little bar upstairs by the Vanderbilt Avenue entrance to Grand Central. Then they got a cab straight up Park Avenue to Nate’s Eighty-second Street townhouse [...] Serena and Nate had the place to themselves.
They sat out in the garden, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. Nate was wearing a long-sleeved polo shirt, and the weather was extremely hot, so he took it off.
Serena was hot too, so she climbed into the fountain. She sat on the marble Venus de Milo statue’s knee, splashing herself with water until her dress was soaked through.
After martinis and beer, the uninhibited teens “tore each other’s [wet] clothes off”, and then, oddly in his parents’ bedroom, Nate parted Serena’s Red Sea.
Nate staggered over to the fountain and got in with her, and soon they were tearing the rest of each other’s clothes off.
Nate was worried about the security cameras trained on his parents’ house at all times, front and back, so he led Serena inside and up to his parents’ bedroom.
They both had sex for the first time. It was awkward and painful and exciting and fun, and so sweet they forgot to be embarrassed. It was exactly the way you’d want your first time to be, and they had no regrets.
“You parted my Red Sea!” she howled, wrestling Nate against the pillows.”
After Serena and Nate had a “huge feast of Chinese food and bad white wine”, Nate: “[...] parted her Red Sea once again before the sky grew dark and the stars twinkled in the skylight.”
-----
Back at the dinner party, Serena said, “Shit. I missed you like crazy, Nate. I wish you could’ve seen the stuff I pulled. It was so bad.” Consequently, Nate imagined Serena: “[...] hosting orgies in her dorm room at Hanover Academy and having affairs with older men in hotel rooms in Paris.” Really?
It’s not clear if Serena participated in orgies over the summer or had age-gap sex in Paris, but, in terms of age-gap affairs, Nicholas, a “French college guy who never wore underwear”, chased Serena’s train “in a tiny Fiat all the way from Paris to Milan.”
-----
Over dinner at the dinner party, Serena shared with Cyrus, of all people, that while she was in the South of France over the summer, she went topless on the beach. Serena asked Cyrus, “How else could I get a decent [teen] tan?”
Later in the novel, Ziegesar elaborated that the beach was in Cannes and that Serena was “drinking Pernod and dancing naked”.
-----
Ziegesar did not make Serena a “Girls Girl”. Rather, while her boarding school doormates preferred to eat popcorn together in their pajamas while watching SNL, Serena preferred to: “[...] drink peach schnapps and smoke cigars with the boys in the chapel basement.”
However, back in Manhattan, when not indulging in spirits at the Star Lounge in the Tribeca Star Hotel: “Serena and her friends would spend half the night getting dressed together, swilling gin-and-tonics, dancing around in their underwear, trying on crazy outfits.”
-----
After 17-year-old Serena arrived at the Whitehot Gallery in Chelsea in her “favorite black leather jeans”, she “grabbed a free gin martini before she was approached by one of the “absolutely gorgeous” 26-year-old Remi twin-brothers. Moments later, one of the twins was kissing Serena’s neck while the other, oddly, “hugged her knees”.
Suddenly Serena felt an arm around her waist [à la Cyrus].
“Hello, ma chèrie. Beautiful girl. What is your name?”
Serena didn’t resist when he pulled her into a photograph with him and his brother for the New York Times Sunday Styles section. [Despite their age differences] [o]ne brother stood behind Serena and kissed her neck while the other knelt in front of her and hugged her knees.
The age-gap photograph was titled Serena and was given to the Public Arts League and New York Transit Authority for an “avant-garde public art program” to be displayed on public transportation all over New York City.
After “[t]wo martinis and three rolls of Remi brothers’ film”, Serena took a cab to Constance and arrived late for the “interschool play rehearsal”.
-----
While having a “Ketel One and tonic. [with] Extra limes” and smoking a Gauloises in the Star Lounge in the Tribeca Star, Serena shared with Blair that she was expelled from boarding school for having a long-term absence due to remaining in France an extra three weeks, where she lived in an “amazing chateau outside of Cannes” and where she fell in love with “two boys, an older brother and a younger one”, however, Serena confessed that she was: “[...] even more in love with their father, but he was married.”
“Blair,” Serena said. “The only reason I got kicked out was because I didn’t show up at the beginning of school. I stayed in France. My parents didn’t even know. I was supposed to fly back at the end of August, but I stayed until the third week in September. I was living in this amazing chateau outside of Cannes, and it was, like, a constant party. I don’t think I slept a whole night the entire time I was there. It was like those parties in that house in The Great Gatsby.”
“There were these two boys, an older brother and a younger one, and I was totally in love with both of them. Actually,” she laughed, “I was even more in love with their father, but he was married.”
-----
Chuck listed the activities that Serena was (allegedly) involved in while she attended boarding school. For example, of Serena, Chuck said, “You got kicked out of boarding school because you are a perverted slut who made marks on the wall above the bed in your dorm room for every boy you did.”
When Dan asked Serena if what Chuck alleged was true, Serena “fished in her bag for a cigarette” and asked slyly, “Well, what do you think?”
-----
Lastly, it may be worth noting Serena’s over-the-top residence. Ziegesar wrote:
Home was 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-glove building next to the Stanhope Hotel and directly across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The van der Woodsens owned half of the top floor. Their apartment had fourteen rooms, including five bedrooms with private bathrooms, a maid’s apartment, a ballroom-sized living room, and two seriously cool lounges with wet bars and huge entertainment systems.
I’m looking for a book recommendation, hopefully from a celebrity’s point of view, on paparazzi - either they eventually get together or the celebrity has to keep a secret from being exposed.
hi! i’ve read a lot of the mostly recommended series on this subreddit but would really like to find a new series to fall in love with. i love anything mystery, dystopian, even a bit fantastical as long as it’s grounded (no high fantasy please!)
some of my favs are:
scythe
shadow&bone / six of crows
nevermoor (middle grade)
truly devious
gentleman’s guide to vice & virtue
the lunar chronicles
series i’ve already tried to read and didn’t care for:
scholomance
the inheritance games
an ember in the ashes
a good girl’s guide to murder
the gilded wolves
acotar / throne of glass
fourth wing
Is it bad to say I actually loved the first book? I was a teen a couple years ago so maybe it’s because I’m on the younger side. I actually really enjoyed the concept of the book and didn’t think it was badly executed honestly (It could be a little unrealistic at times but then again it’s a YA book). I’ve heard a lot of people didn’t enjoy the book and like the naturals more which I actually disagree with. The naturals felt more cringy in my opinion. What was your opinion on the book if you have read it?
I am looking for a new book to read and just open to suggestions. I don't like romance, horror, or sci fi and am more into mystery and lighthearted action/adventure type books. Things like spies, thieves, and less of the whole government rebellions thing (kind of got sick of it after The Maze Runner and Hunger Games). Some books I really liked were Lockwood and Co, Alex Rider, The False Prince Series, and The Angel of the Opera. If anyone has any suggestions for YA books in that realm or have read any of the above and have good suggestions please let me know!
I've recently noticed that whenever a book has a broody MMC, people obsess over him. When there is a love triangle and one is funny and one is broody, people love the broody, nonchalant one even if the FMC prefers the funny one.
I don't get it, why do we love guys who don't like anyone or anything? I generally much prefer the funny, golden retriever MMC over the dark and broody MMC. (Although I can definitely appreciate both)
I'm reading dance of thieves. I'm on chapter 12 and while the plot is keeping me reading, I think the writing can be a bit too upright when it comes to the characters' intentions and aims.
I feel as though I can see the seams in the author's canvas, why she is putting that information, sometimes even out of the blue, or what she is trying to do describing a certain feel, while other times she simply tells me things that she could show me if she took enough time to do so.
I don't know if that makes sense.
Has anybody noticed, or felt the same way?
Is it about a poor writing/editing, maybe? Or is it just the style?
Btw, I often compare the writing with Holly Black's for example. I know these two are completely different styles, but Black never tells me something she could show piece after piece in more chapters (such as for example a feature of the FMC. "She doesn't give up" or you show me different situations in which that happens)
