TTT: Authors I Fell In Love With in 2016

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke & the Bookish.

When I read that this week's TTT topic was going to be 'Authors you discovered this year' I got super excited! I have read so many amazing books this year, and got to know so many amazing authors, and I desperately wanted to share my love for those authors with you guys 💖 So here are a few of the authors I fell in love with in 2016!

I fell in love with Heidi Heilig, not only for her amazingly descriptive writing and amazing characters, but also for being vocal about the things she believes in on social media. 
I fell in love with Rachel Caine because her book, Ink and Bone, was one of my favorite reads of 2016.
I fell in love with Nina LaCour because the romance in Everything Leads to You had me smiling for days.
I fell in love with Mary E. Pearson because I'm still blown away by the world she crafted in The Remnant Chronicles.
I fell in love with Virginia Woolf because of her voice, and because she made me fall in love with classics, even though I never thought I would. 

I fell in love with Amanda Lovelace because her poetry collection made me feel a lot, even when I didn't want it to.
I fell in love with Nicola Yoon because of her amazing writing, her beautiful characters, and because she's an incredibly kind person.
I fell in love with Tara Sim because I finished Timekeeper in 2 days, despite the fact that I was in a reading slump.
I fell in love with Roshani Chokshi because her writing is magical, and because she's a beautiful person.
I fell in love with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because she's an incredibly strong, intelligent en beautiful person, inside and out. I could watch interviews with her all day. She inspires me.

What authors did you fall in love with in 2016?

November Wrap-Up

November was a bit of a weird month for me. It was a very busy month, with a lot of different emotions.
First of all, my grandma got ill. One day she was fine, and the next day she was in so much pain she couldn't walk. It was scary, seeing her that way. She has spend 2 weeks in the hospital before getting surgery, and because I wanted to visit her I had to conquer my fear of hospitals (I succeeded 😁). She had surgery at the beginning of the week, and she's doing a lot better now, thank God!
I also started seeing a new therapist. I had a good relationship with my previous one, but I needed to go to a new one to really get the help I need. It was very scary, because getting a new therapist is a scary thing. Having a good one that you can connect with is just so vitally important. I've seen her twice now, and she's very nice, so that's great!
I've also talked about the fact that I'm kind of homeschooling myself right now, and that I was doing 3 subjects. This month, I added a 4th one 🙌 I decided to add chemistry, and it's been very though. I've forgotten everything I've learned previously, and it's very very frustrating. 
And of course, there were the US elections. I don't really want to say much about them, but let's just say that I was, and still am, devastated.
So overall, November wasn't really the best month for me, so I hope December is going to be a lot better!

Reading-wise, my November was okay. I didn't read as much as I wish I had, but I've been so busy with other things that I kind of forgot about it. Overall, I've still managed to read 6 books.

Timekeeper, by Tara Sim - ★★★★★/5 stars
The Blazing Star, by Imani Josey - ★★★/5 stars
The Sun is Also a Star, by Nicola Yoon - ★★★★★/5 stars
Holding Up the Universe, by Jennifer Niven - ★★★/5 stars
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan (re-read) - ★★★★★/5 stars
Meester Bart op zijn best, by Bart Ongering - ★★★★★/5 stars

I'm currently reading both Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne and The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg. Am I Normal Yet? is a very difficult read for me, because I can see a lot of myself in the MC Evie, and that's very confronting. Luckily, The One Hundred Nights of Hero is a bit of an easier read, and it's absolutely beautiful so far! I haven't seen it around a lot, but I would definitely recommend it 🙌

Someone on Twitter mentioned that they made a playlist every month, so they could look back on the past month's playlists and remember exactly what they were feeling those months. Those playlists became some kind of timecapsule for them. I thought that was an amazing idea, so I started doing them too!

As you can see, I was really on a Disney kick this month. I watched Hercules again, and I absolutely fell in love with the songs I Won't Say (I'm in Love) and Go the Distance! There were also a few Youtubers that came out with their albums, and I loved them SO MUCH. 

Another thing that was very exciting to me was the Hamilton mixtape! I loved each and every song that came out in November, and you can expect a lot of the newly released mixtape songs on my December playlist 💖💖

So, that was what my month was like. Now tell me, did you have a good November? What books did you read?

Review: The Sun Is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon

Title: The Sun Is Also a Star
Author: Nicola Yoon
Genres: YA, contemporary, romance
Goodreads

'Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Not destiny. Or dreams that will never come true. I’m definitely not the kind of girl who meets a cute boy on a crowded New York City street and falls in love with him. Not when my family is twelve hours away from being deported to Jamaica. Falling in love with him won’t be my story.Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. But when I see her, I forget about all that. Something about Natasha makes me think that fate has something much more extraordinary in store—for both of us.The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?'

★★★★★/5 stars

Here it is, the best YA contemporary I've read all year!

I went into this one with extremely high expectations. I loved Nicola Yoon's first book, Everything Everything, and I fell in love with this book when I saw the cover and I read it's synopsis. Having high expectations when going into a book is almost never a good idea, because I usually end up being extremely disappointed, but The Sun Is Also A Star managed to exceed my expectations!

While I first thought that this book would include a lot of insta-love, it didn't. Not really. Daniel, the hopeless romantic poet that he is, knows that wants to be with Natascha almost the second he sees here, but Natascha is very hesitant. Throughout the book, you can see them starting to really fall for each other, and it's incredibly cute. And even though the romance takes place over the course of a day, it feels very real and authentic.

This book did have something I needed to get used to, and that was all the different POV's. You don't only get to read from the POV of Natascha and Daniel, but also from the POV of a lot of minor characters, like the driver of the tram Daniel's in, and the security guard at the immigration office. This added a lot to the story, and I absolutely loved it. Besides this, Nicola Yoon's writing was absolutely beautiful, and almost magical. 

Something I also really liked was the exploration of the Jamaican and Korean-American cultures in the book. It was incredibly interesting, especially Daniel talking about the struggles of being both Korean and American.

I would highly recommend you picking this one up, even if it's only to frame the book and hang it on your wall because it's GORGEOUS.

#DiversityDecBingo TBR

When I first heard of the #DiversityDecBingo readathon, I was a bit hesitant. I had just made up my mind about wanting to read less, and a readathon didn't really go with that. Besides, I participated in the #DiverseAThon and I didn't really love it, so why do another readathon?

But with December getting closer, I started feeling a bit more excited thinking about this readathon. You only have to read 5 books for this readathon, which is very do-able, and I love the whole bingo card thing! Besides that, I also follow the lovely people hosting this on Twitter, and they are so enthusiastic about it, that I couldn't help but be enthusiastic too.


So, if you didn't already know, here's how the #DiversityDecBingo is going to work: from the 25 squares pictured in the image above, you choose a horizontal, vertical or diagonal line. You read one book for each category in the line you've chosen. You have an entire month to complete these five books, because the readathon will start on December 1st, and end on December 31st. 

The line I chose is the second vertical line and these are the books I've picked:

• For non-binary MC I'll be reading None of the Above by I.W. Gregorio
• For Muslim MC I'll be reading Ms Marvel, Vol. 1 by Willson and Alphona
• For Asian MC I'll be reading The Forbidden Wish by Jessica Khoury
• For PoC with curly hair I'll be reading Iron Cast by Destiny Soria
• For f/f romance I'll be reading The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg

Now, the thing is that I'm not 100% sure if the MC from The Forbidden Wish is Asian. I remember reading it somewhere, but if it turns out not to be true, I will put it down and pick up The Abyss Surrounds Us by Emily Skrutskie. 

So tell me, are you also participating in the #DiversityDecBingo readathon? If yes, what books are on your TBR?