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Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2024
There are so many that I’m so excited for!!! Almost all of these are authors I have read and loved, and I would read anything they write so that’s why I can’t wait for these. I know they are going to be good!
Top Ten Most Anticipated Books Releasing Jan-Jun 2024
Top-Bottom, Left-Right:
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo – releasing Feb 13. She’s a Malaysian author writing about Malaysian Chinese folklore. I’ve read The Ghost Bride and The Night Tiger, both written by her and I loved them. I’m very excited for this one.
The Bride Bet by Tessa Dare – releasing Jan 15. This is the fourth book in the Girl Meets Duke series, and I’ve read the first three, so obviously this is next on the list!
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher – releasing Feb 13. I love T. Kingfisher, and I loved the first book in this series. I didn’t even know there was going to be a second book, but of course I have to read it too!
Funny Story by Emily Henry – releasing Apr 23. I’ve read several of Emily Henry’s books and always enjoy them. This one has a storyline that is just too good to pass up.
The Girl in Question by Tess Sharpe – releasing May 14. The first book I read by Tess Sharpe is the first book in this series, The Girls I’ve Been, and I was hooked. I love her strong female protagonists, and I was so excited to find out she wrote a sequel.
The Dark Fable by Katherine Harbour – releasing Jan 30. The only author on this list whom I’ve never read. I’m not sure what to expect and I hope I won’t be disappointed, but I love the premise and I love fantasy stories, so I’m excited to read this!
You Like It Darker by Stephen King – releasing Mar 21. I mean, it’s Stephen King. I haven’t read all his books but I’m sure going to try, and his new stories keep getting better so of course I’m going to read this.
The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo – releasing Apr 9. I loved many of Leigh Bardugo’s books, and I am very interested in this story too. Anticipating it very much!
The Bad Weather Friend by Dean Koontz – releasing Jan 23. I’ve only read one of Koontz books so far and I loved it, and I keep meaning to read more. I love the premise of this book, it sounds so deliciously creepy and I just can’t wait to read it.
Have you read any of these authors? What did you think of them? What are your most anticipated books this year?
Peter is quick, daring, and full of mischief—and like all boys, he loves to play, though his games often end in blood. His eyes are sparkling gold, and when he graces you with his smile you are his friend for life, but his promised land is not Neverland. Fourteen-year-old Nick would have been murdered by the drug dealers preying on his family had Peter not saved him. Now the irresistibly charismatic wild boy wants Nick to follow him to a secret place of great adventure, where magic is alive and you never grow old. Even though he is wary of Peter’s crazy talk of faeries and monsters, Nick agrees. After all, New York City is no longer safe for him, and what more could he possibly lose?
There is always more to lose.
Accompanying Peter to a gray and ravished island that was once a lush, enchanted paradise, Nick finds himself unwittingly recruited for a war that has raged for centuries—one where he must learn to fight or die among the “Devils,” Peter’s savage tribe of lost and stolen children.
There, Peter’s dark past is revealed: left to wolves as an infant, despised and hunted, Peter moves restlessly between the worlds of faerie and man. The Child Thief is a leader of bloodthirsty children, a brave friend, and a creature driven to do whatever he must to stop the “Flesh-eaters” and save the last, wild magic in this dying land.
The Reason
Another one of his books – Slewfoot – came highly recommended, so I went to check him out and saw that most of his books had high ratings. I went on Libby to borrow a whole bunch of his books and this one just happened to be the first one available.
The Quotes
“Men who fear demons see demons everywhere.”
“Everything comes with a price. Everything. Some things just cost more than others.”
“Both sides so blinded by their fear and hate of each other that they couldn’t see they were all fighting for the same thing.”
The Characters
Well, this is a mash up retelling of a few different stories, but most notably, Peter Pan and the Mists of Avalon, so we see some familiar characters, but also a lot of new ones.
I want to state upfront that I’m having a lot of trouble with this review because I am a character-driven reader, and I hated the character inconsistencies in this book. I wanted so badly to DNF by the time I was 75% in, but I also wanted to give it a chance because of the great ratings.
My Thoughts
To give credit where it’s due, I think the story idea is really good and I love how creative Brom got with fitting in the Peter Pan story with the Mists of Avalon, and a bunch of other Scottish folklore. I also liked that he didn’t shy away from the darkness and gory, and I think that the story in general was very well-written.
In trying to stay objective, I think that if I wasn’t a character-driven reader, and if character motivations and inconsistencies wasn’t such a big deal to me, I might have really liked this book. But I don’t.
My Feels
This book made me angry, and not in a good way. It’s mostly my own fault because the longer I stay with a book I don’t like, the angrier I get, and maybe I should have DNF’d earlier but I ended up finishing it instead because of the sunk-cost fallacy and wanting to mark it as finished.
The Issues
I’m going to put them in spoiler tags because I’ve got rants and they give away a lot of the story. Click on the arrows to read more, but only if you’ve already read the book or don’t care that you get spoiled. You’ve been warned!
Nick
Nick ran away because he was in an unsafe environment that his mother put him in and he was originally very angry with his mother. During a conversation with the Devils, they said something about him being a bad person for leaving his mom in that unsafe situation (that she put him in), and he began to feel guilty and wanted to go home to her. First of all, it’s not Nick’s responsibility to take care of his mother, but the other way around, but that’s another story and not really part of the character inconsistencies. What I didn’t like was that in the beginning of the book, Nick knew that it was a situation his mother put him and rightly blamed her for it and it was a reason for him to run away. Then later in the book, he started thinking he was the bad person for leaving his mom behind, and it became a reason for him to want to go home. His change of heart didn’t feel organic or reasonable, it felt like a plot point.
Not to mention the whole time he kept complaining about being there in Devil Tree and wanting to go home, he never actually tried to go home and kept inserting himself into situations and helping people whom he said he didn’t care about. I just didn’t connect to his character motivations, like there was no reason for him to do whatever he did.
The Devils
Leroy killed one of the Devils (I forget her name and I can’t check it because I listened on audiobook) and framed Nick for it. The rest of the Devils were upset because they liked Nick and didn’t want it to be true, but if it was true, they had to go after Nick for justice. Later on, they did find out that it wasn’t true, and instead of being happy, they were disappointed that they couldn’t get to kill him?! That doesn’t make sense at all. Again, I don’t get the character motivations.
It also didn’t make sense to me that they used Nick’s guilt about leaving his mother to make him stay with them. They tell him he’s a bad person for leaving his mother, so he wants to go home. But then they use the fact that he left his mother to guilt him into staying with them. It just doesn’t make sense, it’s counterproductive!
Leroy
As a character, Leroy just doesn’t make sense. He was a bully, and a blustering one at that, but yet he was so meek when it came to challenges? He was picking fights with everyone and everything, you’d think his fake bravado would at least get him fighting in the real world. He might not be good enough to win fights, and I can totally see him taking the credit for Nick’s fight, yes, but not running from fights. Especially when we find out later that he ran away because he killed his father! And not to mention he’s the one I’d have expected to take the Captain’s offer of water in exchange for betraying the Devils. His character is just all over the place for me.
I should also say here that after Leroy framed Nick, Nick was obviously not a huge fan of Leroy and wished him dead in not very kind ways. And yet, not long after, when Leroy was actually dying and Peter wanted to leave him behind, Nick defended Leroy and condemned Peter for being heartless. I mean… there was no reason for Nick’s change of heart, it felt like he just wanted to be contrary.
Peter
Was he a good guy? Was he a bad guy? I don’t even know. He believed in Nick, until he didn’t, because it was a convenient plot point. He was strong and resilient and independent, until he became weak and in thrall to the Lady’s every wish, because it was a convenient plot point. Look, I like character arcs, but there are no character arcs here. I don’t even know if there are any real characters here, they’re all just puppets and caricatures.
There are actually lots of other issues but I don’t want to get into them because the more I do, the more upset I’ll get. I actually still intend to read Brom’s other book, Slewfoot, because it was the original recommendation and there are 12 years in between the two books and authors can improve. But I’m also going to be more discerning and allow myself to bail at the first sign of character inconsistencies!
My Rating
2/5 stars. I’m sorry, I just can’t get past all the issues.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
