Jade Song

Here is my final 2023 reading bracket! (Hopefully I’m not jinxing it by posting it 3 days before the end of the year–I’m in the middle of reading a book that is fine but not a favorite, here’s to hoping I don’t finish it and then read something Earth shattering in the next 72 hours!)

I reconsidered and made a change since the last time I posted this bracket, but the final outcome would have been the same either way. I think this supports what I already knew: I love me some Gothic fantasy and science fiction, but not quite as much as I love some moving literary fiction!

Books included as some of my favorite reads of the year: “What Moves the Dead” by T. Kingfisher, “Trust” by Hernan Diaz, “Nettle & Bone” by T. Kingfisher, “The Mountain in the Sea” by Ray Nayler, “A House with Good Bones” by T. Kingfisher, “Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries” by Heather Fawcett (I actually read an ARC of the sequel and enjoyed it even more, but decided not to count it as a 2023 favorite since it won’t be published until after the new year), “A Face Like Glass” by Frances Hardinge, “Chlorine” by Jade Song, “Chain-Gang All-Stars” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, “If We Were Villains” by M. L. Rio, “North Woods” by Daniel Mason, and “The Seventh Bride” by T. Kingfisher.

Wow, that’s a lot of T. Kingfisher!

But the top honor goes to “North Woods” 🎉💯❤️

What was your favorite book you read this year?

A classic trait of girlhood—forever confusing your desires with that of an older man’s.

Jade Song’s debut novel, “Chlorine”, is a bit like if you crossed “The Vegetarian” by Han Kang with “The Art of Starving” by Sam J. Miller.

🌿 + 🩻 = 🧜‍♀️

This is YA contemporary fiction about Ren Yu, who has loved mermaids ever since she was a little girl. She took to the water right away herself and now swims competitively on her school’s cutthroat swim team. As one of the school’s top swimmers, she has a parasitic relationship with her touchy-feely, quick-to-anger coach, Jim. She and her teammates follow very specific dietary protocols that vacillate between pasta parties and restricting to snacking on small portions of protein throughout the day. Her father leaves to return to China, she suffers a concussion that threatens her athletic career, and her family expects her to get into an Ivy League school. 🏊‍♀️🥜🥦🤕📑🙇‍♀️👩‍🎓 No pressure, right?

Amidst all this stress from a human life catering to human sensibilities and values, Ren Yu experiences an epiphany: she’s not actually a human after all, but has always been a mermaid herself. She is not afraid to take matters into her own hands in order to complete the transformation for her to transcend to her true form. 🩸🩸🩸

Star athletes had to be delusional enough to think they could withstand physics and gravity enough to fly up onto the first-place podium and shine with the sheer force of athletic ability; there was nothing more bold than a star, after all, visible with the human naked eye despite its death eons ago.

I found this to be a smart novel about the mental gymnastics that can be induced by the pressures and traumas of human adolescence.

Bookshop

Bookstagram

Goodreads