Favourite Books of 2015

2015 has been a great reading year for me. My Goodreads Challenge started off at 50 books, then it was 60, then 70 and so on until I had it set for 100. In the end I reached 120 books and that's not including the books I have forgotten to add. The following is a list of my top 10 books of 2015. This list is in no particular order and only some of these books were published this year.

The Ruby Circle by Richelle Mead

This book which was released at the beginning of 2015 brought about the conclusion of the Bloodlines series and also brought about an absolutely fabulous ending to the Vampire Academy world. The ending of this book is one of those endings when you need more than 5 stars.

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

This book was an intense and mind boggling read. This is one of those book that will test you and hold onto you long after you have read the last page. You will question everything in this book as to whether what you are reading is reality or not. So if you love a book that challenges your sanity this is your kind of book.

Click here for my full review.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Outlander (previously published as Cross Stich) is one behemoth of a historical novel. But don't let this put you off. This story is filled with history, action, romance and a little bit of time travel. This book will draw you into a dark past and make you wish you could stay there.

Click here for my full review.

Red Queen by Victoria Averyard

While I must confess that it was the cover that originally drew me in, the story itself was absolutely incredible. It took me a couple of chapters to get hooked into this story but in the end I read it in one sitting. This book is filled with betrayal and treachery around every corner.

Click here for my full review.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl

This is the first book in the Caster Chronicles and is set in a small Southern American town. This book makes many references to To Kill a Mockingbird and the two stories share many similarities in the sense that both books are about overcoming prejudice with Beautiful Creatures being the paranormal take.

Click here for my full review.

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

All the Bright Places is Jennifer Niven's debut novel. This book will make you cry and laugh as you are drawn into the intense and dark lives of Violet and Finch as they through each other they try and learn to find happiness. This book is an emotional roller coaster but well worth the read.

Click here for my full review.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Lani Taylor

This is the first novel in a trilogy and a book I can find no faults in. The characters, the plot, the worlds, the writing style. This book is like nothing I have ever read before.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

This sci-fi book which is set on Mars was not what I expected. While I was intrigued I never believed I was going to be amazed. The characters are well thought out and the plot is well balanced. The book is filled with quite a bit of politics but this did not diminish the story.

Click here for my full review.

Cut & Run Series by Abigail Roux and Madeleine Urban

Cut & Run is the first book in a 9 book series which follows two FBI agents Zane Garret and Ty Grady as they struggle with falling in love with each other and trying to solve some of their toughest cases yet. Where Garret and Grady are involved things are bound to blow up, someone is sure to get shot and their may even be a big cat or two.

Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

Queen of Shadows is the fourth book in the Throne of Glass series. A series which is quickly forging itself a permanent spot on my favourites shelf. While many people feel that this book sees the characters developing some major character shifts, I personally felt that this book was the first time none of the characters had to pretend to be anyone else in order to survive.

Click here for my full review.

Red Rising

Title: Red Rising

Series: Red Rising Trilogy - book 1

Author: Pierce Brown

Rating: 5 stars

Genre: Science Fiction

Number of Pages: 382

Publication Date: 2014

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Summary: The Earth is dying. Darrow is a Red, a miner in the interior of Mars. His mission is to extract enough precious elements to one day tame the surface of the planet and allow humans to live on it. The Red are humanity's last hope.

Or so it appears, until the day Darrow discovers it's all a lie. That Mars has been habitable - and inhabited - for generations, by a class of people calling themselves the Golds. A class of people who look down on Darrow and his fellows as slave labour, to be exploited and worked to death without a second thought.

Until the day Darrow, with the help of a mysterious group of rebels, disguises himself as a Gold and infiltrates their command school, intent on taking down his oppressors from the inside. But the command school is a battlefield - and Darrow isn't the only student with an agenda.

Red Rising was not what I expected. When I first heard about this book I was intrigued but was not expecting to be amazed. I figured that this was just another book in which the repressed attempt to overthrow those that are the oppressors. Instead I was faced with a book that does this while also pointing out the faults in human nature and looking deep in to the mind of what fundamentally makes a person who they are.

Red Rising follows 17 year old Darrow, a Red, a miner of Mars, attempting to make Mars inhabitable as Earth's resources dye out. But then Darrow discovers that Mars has had people living on it for hundreds of years, and his life has been a lie - he is nothing more than a slave to the system. Following the execution of his wife, Eo, Darrow finds himself involved with a group of rebels who want him to help take the Golds down from the inside by pretending to be one of them after some intensive transformations.

The characters that Pierce Brown has created are perhaps some of the most well thought out and in depth characters that I have ever met, even if you only see them for a page or two. Each character has got a clear back story that influences their decisions and actions in the book while not coming across as an over bearing backlog of information.

The characters also balance with the story line of this book. There is nothing worse than when you get stuck with a character who doesn't quite mesh with the plot. The characters of Red Rising always have a purpose, no character is just there to fill in space. Each character is there to show you the fundamentals of who the Golds are as a group or to teach the reader some detail about the plot.

But be warned this book can be incredible dark and gruesome at times. When I read the summary and it said that school was a battlefield, I must admit I figured it was the kind of battlefield where people try to out play each other mentally...in reality, it's a battlefield...as in the kind where people slaughter each other or risk being slaughtered themselves. Yet despite this the book is still absolutely amazing.

This book gets an easy 5 stars.