Weekend Pick for July 15, 2022
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Check out our weekly suggestions!
Are your students looking for book recommendations?
Send them to browse through the picks for this or past years.
For the picks from 2021 click here
For the picks from 2020 click here.
For older picks click from 2019 click here.
For the even older picks click here.
While it is still too hot to spend days outside, you may want to get cozy with a book somewhere in the shade. Shelly Shaffer continues to suggest new gems to our summer reading list. Welcome to her weekend pick for mid-July!
I started off the year reading Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels. After seeing that a Netflix series based on the books was being released, and I became interested. I knew that I hadn’t read them yet, but when YA books are turned into movies or Netflix series, I am always intrigued. I began searching my library shelves to see if I owned any of the books. I actually found that I owned two of the books already (Shadow and Bone and Crooked Kingdom), so I knew I had to quickly purchase the other five. I started reading Shadow and Bone, finishing it within a day, and moved on to the second book I owned, which was NOT in order of the series--Crooked Kingdom. Spoiler alert! For this series, it’s much better to read the books in order, since it’s hard to follow the characters and chronology if you read them out of order. |
The Grishaverse, which is the world Bardugo creates in the series, came to life in these books. With strong worldbuilding, readers are able to step into the world of magic and science and superstition—and fall in love with the characters and story taking place there. A helpful map can be found in the peritext of each book, and this helps readers to follow the journeys of main character, Alina Starkov, as well as her friends (and enemies). |
I quickly fell in love with Alina. She is a very likeable character, who is willing to sacrifice herself, and her powers, if that’s what it takes to save Ravka. Though she is sometimes swept up in the glitz and glamour she finds herself in once her powers are discovered, she manages to hold onto her beliefs and values. Alina is vulnerable—as an orphan of the realm, and when Alina discovers that she’s actually a Grisha, with unique powers that no other Grisha possesses, she immediately discovers that there are people in the world who want her power and will do anything to control her.
In the companion series, Six of Crows, Bardugo expands the Grishaverse across the sea to Ketterdam, a kingdom rules by capitalism and greed. Characters in Ketterdam interact with some of the characters from Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising, but the stories taking place with characters Kaz Brekker and crew of daring outlaws take readers on adventures that create ripples across the Grishaverse.
In the third part of the series, Bardugo takes us yet to another part of the Grishaverse to Fjerda and the characters must confront extremism, superstitions, and a possible genocide. This stunning conclusion to the series is amazing.
In the third part of the series, Bardugo takes us yet to another part of the Grishaverse to Fjerda and the characters must confront extremism, superstitions, and a possible genocide. This stunning conclusion to the series is amazing.
I read the entire series in less than two weeks, and I would recommend it to lovers of fantasy, Netflix, books that build on one another, and strong female characters. Though not recently released (Rule of Wolves--the final book—came out in March 2021), Bardugo does not disappoint with this series.