Top 10 Week #1: Best Books I've Read in 2012

Top 10 of 2012 is one week of bookish goodness hosted by the fantastic peeps at Two Chicks on Books, Fiktshun, Confessions of a Bookaholic, and Magical Urban Fantasy Reads! Every day from December 24th to December 28th, I'll have a Top 10 list up regarding to the day's topic. Today's topic is:

Best Book I've Read in 2012

In no particular order, here are my choices (LOL, you'd laugh if you knew how long it took me to narrow this list down to just ten). You can click on the cover to reach their Goodreads link!


1) Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green

These were my exact words right when I finished the book, per my Goodreads review:

"So I just and finally read WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON by John Green and David Levithan (TOO MUCH AWESOME FOR LE EYES). Holy freaking Adele-granting, marshmallow-indulging, nutella-smearing gods, that was like, I don't even know. SO FREAKING GOOD AND ADDICTIVE and my first gay book ever, and you can bet it won't be my last! *grins giddily* Gods, it's just SO FREAKING GOOD. I know I said it already but it is--and like who the heck cares about me being a broken record anyway, at least a broken record has use enough to become an idiom. *flails* *sighs* *hugs book to chest*

Oh yeah, btw, it totally sucks that my nose decided to bleed for the first time in 37,000 years WHILE I WAS READING. So now it looks like someone murdered like, a tiny tomato or something and bled all over the sides of the pages. SO NOT COOL. Although I suppose I could pretend that it was all a marketing ploy by myself to color-match the pages to the cover in an attempt to woo me from my sleep and get me addicted to this fantasticness of a book again."

2) Tiger Lily by Jodi Lynn Anderson

My starred review of Tiger Lily (which got featured on Story Crush- someone hold me before I faint) starts out like this (pretty sure this doesn't encapsulate ALL LES FEELS):

"I devoured this book the way a starved man engulfs food.

Tiger Lily has this addictive quality to it, kind of like a drug. It's beautiful and sad and terrible and heartbreaking; it's merciless and benign and desperate and raw [...] [T]he characters in this book are all independent--they are wild, but so in very many different ways--yet at one point or another, the decision was dependence, or nothing at all. It's astounding the choices we all make, to see them reflected in these characters so real they were like people burning through the pages."

3) Insignia by S. J. Kincaid

 This book. My gosh. I started a fansite for this book, did you know? I met the amazing S. J. at RT Teen Day (by accident! Imagine that! Meeting one of your favorite authors by chance. I'm pretty sure my fangirling was enough to scare her out of her wits), and ever since I've been stalking consistently checking in for whatever news her majesty beholds. Here is a snippet of my starred review for Insignia:

"Insignia is insane. It is beautifully simplistic and complicatedly evocative. Crushingly despairing and hilariously witty. Intelligently phrased and bluntly honest.

I am completely, head-over-heels in love with it."

4) Audrey, wait! by Robin Benway 

Here is what my reaction was right after I finished the book, per my Goodreads review: 

"One of the best books I've ever read. So amazing. Wow. I'm completely smitten with it. Someone please find me a James--seriously. Wow. Wowwowowowowowowowowowowowowow.

You know what's funny, though? I read this right after WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRYASON, because I'm on a kick for contemporary + music awesomeness (someone please give me a rec, yeah?), but I'm reading the reviews and people are complaining that there's too much cussing and stuff. IDK, I find that funny, I guess, 'cause the "too-much-cussing" didn't even register to me. I was just along for the freaking fantastic ride.

Here's the thing: I do not cuss. Well, maybe sometimes if the occasion really calls for it, I think a cuss word in my head, but I do not cuss IRL. Also, I am probably in the age range for this book, so that might be a possible factor, too. But honestly, I didn't really get sidetracked by the cussing. It's the STORY, I think, that counts. And I loved the story.

So there you go."

 

5) Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff

Besides that ogle-worthy cover, my starred review of Stormdancer starts off like this:

"In Stormdancer there is desperation edging anger and loss, and there is something very, very fierce, the face of defiance and cracking facades. That is this epic and this epic is phenomenal in every color and word.

I think what so cleanly separates movies from books is that movies generate more action and therefore often more epic than books do. Books can be epic, like Eon and Eona by Alison Goodman, but they are not images clamoring your vision. But see, I was wrong. Stormdancer is not so much of a book or a movie rather that it is a keen and enthralling combination of both, an epic that digs into your bones and words that shiver through your skin. It's very, very beautiful, in a savage, feral sort of way. The imagery is vivid and the world is so real you can feel the branches snapping at you and the thunder smacking your ears. I knew this was going to be epic, because Jay Kristoff has a knack for it, but what I did not expect was a tale woven of blood and family that is so, so, so good it is beyond capable human processing."

6) The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

Arghh I love fantasy SO MUCH I CAN'T STAND IT.

My incapability to form words whenever faced with these feverish masterpieces also computes into why the heck I haven't written a  review for this astounding book yet. But here is my quick reaction, taken straight from my Goodreads review right after I finished the book:

"WHY IS THIS OVER.

WHY.

I KNOW I'M USING INCORRECT GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION BUT I DON'T CARE, I DON'T CARE. I CAN'T SURVIVE THIS WAIT! I CAN'T! *slams head against lamp* ARGHHH

*collapses*"

7) Prodigy by Marie Lu

OMG MARIE STOP KILLING ME. I'm sorry. These caps. I just- I can't. Oh yeah, here is a tiny part of my quick reaction, once again from my Goodreads account. (So much Goodreads-ness... here is my account, in case you're curious for more incidents of me exploding.)

" ...
ohmygod.


ohmygod.



NO.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

8) The Lost Girl by Sangu Mandanna

excuse me while i weep in a corner k.

Oh yeah. here's my starred review. here is a snippet of it:

"You know how there are all these different types of instruments, how they're all so different and powerful and how, when they all clash together, the noises and sounds merge into this tinkling, spine-chilling sound? Imagine those instruments as essential parts of a book. The piano is the plot, the characters the violin. The flute is the emotional depth and the drums the pacing. These all sound beautiful on their own, but often the drums and the flutes clamor or the piano and violin are out of sync and [...] it's incomplete even though all the needed plot elements are there.

The Lost Girl is the song that meshes everything together and emerges with a masterpiece--one deserving waterfalls of tears and thousands of standing ovations. [...]

It's just... so hard to review this wide, haunting vision. I feel like I'll just rant on and on and I won't ever say anything remotely meaningful because The Lost Girl is indescribable."

9) Shine by Jeri Smith-Ready

afjwejgrjgo. my review of insane GIFs. here is part of what it says:

10) Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

I would like to marry this book, please. Oh, and here's my starred review. Here is part of what it says:

"SARAH REES BRENNAN IS LIKE TECHNOLOGY. She gets better and better and addictive-r and addictive-r.

Going into this book, I had the suspicion that most people did: this sounds awfully like Beautiful Creatures. I mean, even the main character's name is Kami! But oh, I couldn't have been more wrong.

Yes, Unspoken is gothic, it's got a mystery, it's got a Kami, it's got creepiness. But it's got the key component: originality. While its synopsis resounds crazily with Beautiful Creatures, it is its own novel, its own Sarah-esque humor, its own amazing characters, and its own story that is in no way a retelling of anything but the awesomeness of Sarah Rees Brennan.

The characters are just completely flail-worthy."

And because I'm like a freaking marshmallow and can't stand without some sort of fluffy reassurance, here are my honorable mentions:

Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard (my starred review); Eona by Alison Goodman (my review); Splintered by A. G. Howard (my review will be coming on January 1st, 2013!); Hallowed by Cynthia Hand (my starred review); A Million Suns by Beth Revis (my starred review); Insurgent by Veronica Roth (this book was very close to me, so I neglected to write a review of my emotional turmoils, ha); The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan (yeah no I just didn't write a review for this one); and Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard (nope, no review for this either, though it's totally starred in my head).

In the MG field, I absolutely loved A Tale Dark & Grimm by Adam Gidwitz (...I have my quick reaction???); Scary School by Derek the Ghost (oh look! A review!); A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness (a starred review!); and The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angleberger (oh hey, it's a quick reaction!) .

Dang. So many links. (And the only reason why The Fault in Our Stars didn't make it to my list is because I received the early shipment, so I actually read it early in late 2011, not 2012. :( )

So yeah. Those are my top books of 2012. I know, I know. Some of them aren't even released in 2012. But hey, it's just books I read in 2012, so there ya go. 

What books did you absolutely love in 2012?