New To My Wishlist #4

Welcome to a new feature at The Left-Handed Book Lover! Basically, this feature is meant to showcase books I really want to read, whether they were released years ago or don't come out for another six months. Enjoy!

Heart of Iron by Ashley Poston

Published: February 13, 2018 by Balzer + Bray 

Summary from Goodreads: 
Ana is a scoundrel by nurture and an outlaw by nature. Found as a child drifting through space with a sentient android called D09, Ana was saved by a fearsome space captain and the grizzled crew she now calls family. But D09 — one of the last remaining illegal Metals — has been glitching, and Ana will stop at nothing to find a way to fix him.

Ana’s desperate effort to save D09 leads her on a quest to steal the coordinates to a lost ship that could offer all the answers. But at the last moment, a spoiled Ironblood boy beats Ana to her prize. He has his own reasons for taking the coordinates, and he doesn’t care what he’ll sacrifice to keep them.

When everything goes wrong, she and the Ironblood end up as fugitives on the run. Now their entire kingdom is after them — and the coordinates — and not everyone wants them captured alive.

First of all, I am Ashley Poston trash. I will read anything she writes. Also, this sounds friggin epic, my dudes. It's a space opera! And look at that cover. Massive heart eyes.

In a Perfect World by Trish Doller
Published: May 23, 2017 by Simon Pulse

Summary from Goodreads: 
Caroline Kelly is excited to be spending her summer vacation working at the local amusement park with her best friend, exploring weird Ohio with her boyfriend, and attending soccer camp with the hope she’ll be her team’s captain in the fall.

But when Caroline’s mother is hired to open an eye clinic in Cairo, Egypt, Caroline’s plans are upended. Caroline is now expected to spend her summer and her senior year in a foreign country, away from her friends, her home, and everything she’s ever known.

With this move, Caroline predicts she’ll spend her time navigating crowded streets, eating unfamiliar food, and having terrible bouts of homesickness. But when she finds instead is a culture that surprises her, a city that astounds her, and a charming, unpredictable boy who challenges everything she thought she knew about life, love, and privilege.

I read a really raving review for this book, which is what originally piqued my interest, but re-reading the summary got me intrigued all over again. I've never read anything set in Egypt, and I've also heard that this sheds a lot of light on privilege. I'm sure reading this will be both emotional and informative.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanen McGuire
Published: April 5, 2016 by Tor

Summary from Goodreads: 

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No Quests

Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else.

But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.

Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.

No matter the cost.

A ton of people rave about this book, especially a ton of people whose opinions I trust. I never really paid much attention to what it was actually about, but the more I learned about it, the more I realized how up my alley it sounds!

Lefty's Lowdown: Vicious by V.E. Schwab

Vicious by V.E. Schwab
(Vicious #1)
Published: September 24, 2013 by Tor
Source: Purchased

Summary from Goodreads: 
Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong. Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

This book has received SO MUCH hype and I was thrilled when BookTube-A-Thon gave me an excuse to read it. While I did like it a lot, I didn't fall in love with it the way some people did. I think part of that may be due to the fact that I read it for a read-a-thon and therefore was more concerned with finishing it than savoring it. Because this is the book you need to savor. You need to luxuriate in the gorgeous writing and complex characters, and I didn't give myself the chance to fully appreciate the beauty of this book.

This was my first ever Victoria Schwab book, and I'd gone in with high expectations for the writing, as everyone raves about how beautiful it is. I will say, I was not disappointed in that regard, but I was surprised. It's not beautiful in the way I expected it to be. It's not lyrical and poetic and bursting with these artsy metaphors. Instead, Schwab wields words like a paintbrush, gracefully filling our minds with vivid images and sucking us into the story & characters. And I just think it is so funny that everyone talks about the beauty of this book when there is so much stabbing and shooting and killing.

Another thing that really makes Vicious stand out is the unique execution of a tired premise. At its core, Vicious is about two college kids who gain super powers. It's an idea that's been written countless times, right? Not like this. Schwab makes it feel fresh and new, like you've never read anything like it before. It was fascinating to see Victor and Eli, the two main characters, unravel how people develop these super powers, and even more interesting to read the ways they try to acquire powers themselves. My favorite part was, by far, the flashbacks to their college days as their mindsets and their relationship developed and changed.

Now, I don't think it's fair to discuss Vicious without mentioning the characters. It's kind of a daunting task, talking about these characters, because there is so much that could be said. Eli and Victor are complex and well-developed. Schwab brings the concept of heroes and villains into question, as well as intentions vs. actions. It's all kind of a giant mindfuck because you think you know who is the villain and who is the hero, but then your brain just gets completely scrambled because NOPE. You know who thinks they're the villain and who thinks they're the hero, but it's all so fantastically twisted. I have to say, I ended up really rooting for Victor, who is the protagonist. I didn't agree with all of his methods, and I didn't think he was a particularly great guy, but that's kind of the point. Humans are messy and selfish sometimes, but that doesn't make them evil. Victor was just kind of doing the best he could, in my opinion, and I love the fatherly role he begins to play for Sydney, a young girl he meets and adds to his team.

What prevented me from falling head over heels for this book, though, was the pacing. I found the novel to be a bit slow sometimes. I think a major part of that was all the jumping from character to character. There's a ton of perspective shifting and I understand why it was done, but it just got to be a bit exhausting sometimes. There were some parts that I just would have liked to stay in one person's head.

Vicious is such a complicated, intricate book, and even though I've written quite a bit already, I feel like I have not even come close to doing it justice. It is a dark, twisted book that will really make you think about the nature of humanity and right and wrong. It's truly a brilliant piece of literature and I now understand why everyone speaks so highly of it.

4/5