Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag (2023 Edition) 📆

hello everyone and welcome back!! we are officially halfway through july and it is a cruel(ly hot) summer here where i live on the east coast ☀️💘 i’ve been trying to sneak in a bit of reading in between doing my internship and procrastinating on drafting my personal statement (someone please hold me accountable 😭), and i’ve already had some amazing reads this month! today, i wanted to talk a bit more about my favorite books of the year so far with the mid-year book freak out tag—thank you so much to the lovely eleanor for tagging me a couple of weeks ago 🤩

as of writing this, i’ve read exactly 20 books, which is eight more than this time last year 🥳 i’ve started and finished two trilogies, started two more, and dnfed one book so far. the genres have been pretty eclectic, so can’t wait to ramble about them today!

so without further ado, here’s the tag!!

The best book you’ve read so far this year

i’m going to have to go with as long as the lemon trees grow by zoulfa katouh. i’ve been unable to move on from this book for the past week and i’ve half a mind to just give up and reread it. i quite literally cried through the entire thing, all 400+ pages, and it didn’t even take a hundred pages for me to realize that it would be a five-star read 😭 beautiful writing, important subject matter, amazing characters, and the tenderest romance ever add up to actual perfection, as painful as it is 🤍🥲 please feel free to ask away in the comments if you’d like trigger warnings for this one—it’s a heavy one.

“empires have collapsed throughout history. they rise, they build, and they fall. nothing lasts forever. not even our pain.”

as long as the lemon trees grow

The best sequel you’ve read this year

asking me to choose between the dragon republic and clockwork prince??? no way.

the dragon republic is the action-packed, political intrigue-filled, backstabbing-loaded (iykyk) second book in the poppy war series. we have rin being rin, kitay being precious, and lovely characterization and writing. my second favorite quote in the entire series comes from this book, only second to that rinkitay line in the burning god ⤵️

Yes, Rin knew; in the abstract she knew this truth, that to the cosmos they were fundamentally irrelevant, that they came from dust and returned to dust and ash.

And she should have taken comfort in that, but in that moment she didn’t want to be temporary and immaterial; she wanted to be forever preserved in the material world in a moment with [redacted], their foreheads pressed together, eyes meeting, arms touching and interlacing, trying to meld into the pure physicality of the other.

She wanted to be alive and mortal and eternally temporary with him, and that was why she cried.

the dragon republic

clockwork prince has enough wessa, jessa, and heronstairs content to satisfy everyone invested in their love triangle, not to mention lots of banter, angsty friendships, angry love confessions, and the most precious love interests you’ll meet. the drawing room scene tears my heart in two every time i think about it 🥺

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that somehow the rest of the world seemed to vanish when I was with you.”

clockwork prince

New releases you haven’t read yet but want to

(for this and the following prompt, i tried to pick 2023 releases that i didn’t talk about in my anticipated releases post back in december. what can i say, my list just keeps on growing 😅)

this time it’s real by ann liang. i absolutely devoured ann liang’s debut if you could see the sun, so much so that i’m pretty sure i was singlehandedly responsible for at least five of my school friends finally yielding to my incessant raving and reading it 😆 which is why i need to pick up her newest fake-dating rom-com asap!!

happy place by emily henry. after loving people we meet on vacation and book lovers, i trust emily henry with the slightly depressing, angsty, pining-filled, found family-steeped concept that i’ve heard happy place espouses. i have a physical copy of this, so i’m just waiting for my hold on the audiobook to come in to complete the reading experience!

divine rivals by rebecca ross. i’m found myself growing more and more cautious with the ya romantasy books i choose to pick up these days, but i’ve heard so many good things about divine rivals that i can’t just ignore the hype. enemies-to-lovers? pen pals? world war ii setting? the power of hope and love? yes please 🥹

Most anticipated releases for the second half of the year

everyone’s thinking it by aleema omotoni (september 5). i love myself a good mystery thriller, especially if it features a dark academia-coded boarding school, nigerian representation, and a loose shakespeare retelling element 🤩

i loved you in another life by david arnold (october 10). i’m either going to adore this book or hate it, but i’m choosing to lean toward the former based on the cover alone 😍 but also, the premise of a love that transcends time, space, and history is so intriguing and is already making me emotional.

the rosewood hunt by mackenzie reed (october 31). it’s giving the inheritance games, but with characters who are slightly more self-aware and slightly less pretentious—what more could i ask for? 👍 sometimes we all just need a healthy dose of angsty teen drama with the found family trope and a missing family fortune thrown in for the mix.

Biggest disappointment

if we’re not counting dnfs, kismat connection by ananya devarajan. i’m not an astrology person, but i was really looking forward to reading a heart-warming friends-to-lovers romance in the vein of when you wish upon a lantern (more on that book below). unfortunately, kismat connection delivered a relationship that i found more toxic than push-and-pull and a premise more confusing than endearing 😭 #JusticeForArjun—he deserves better.

Biggest surprise

everything i never told you by celeste ng. this book broke me on a level i was most definitely not expecting 🤧 the messed-up dynamics of the lee family pulled me in almost immediately—a family in which each character’s motivations and flaws and deepest desires are entangled so irreparably with everyone else’s that you can’t pull on the loose thread of misery without knocking down the entire delicately-balanced tower. ng writes that fragile, ominous state of limbo so, so compellingly. will absolutely have to check out little fires everywhere.

Favorite new-to-you or debut author

zoulfa katouh. i am in awe and utter shock that this is katouh’s debut. that feeling when a single novel does more to help me understand the situation in syria than semesters upon semesters of high school and college-level social studies. i can’t really say too much about the story without spoiling it, but take my word for it, please?? 💔

also, this is only semi-related, but salama and kenan—or lemonblossom, as their official ship name goes—are so “timeless”-coded from speak now (taylor’s version) 😭

“we’ll be okay,” i whisper, letting the night capture my wish. we’re owed that at least. a life of not scanning rooftops, of not being relieved the ceiling didn’t cave in on us during the night.

he and i are owed a love story that doesn’t end in tragedy.

as long as the lemon trees grow

Newest fictional crush

william owen herondale, love of my life. how can you not love a man who loves books, has a flair for words, is perfectly imperfect, has a heart as easy to break as it’s carefully guarded, who loves not wisely but entirely and with everything he has.

He was Will, in all his perfect imperfection; Will, whose heart was as easy to break as it was carefully guarded; Will, who loved not wisely but entirely and with everything he had.

clockwork princess

(i love you too, jem 😭🫶)

Newest favorite character

the entire cast of beartown by fredrik backman. i love ana, amat, benji, maya, and ramona so much, but i have to say peter and kira own my heart 🥹 a good third of the quotes i highlighted from the book are the ones where peter and kira are being their amazing, protective, loving selves while also being human and trying their utmost to do the best for their children despite their emotional vulnerability. here are just a few of my favorites—

Peter’s voice is shaking when he suddenly whispers:
“I love you so much.”
Kira laughs so he won’t hear her crying when she answers:
“Same here.”

beartown

maya sees the nameless fury in the eyes of one of her parents, the eternal emptiness in the other’s.

beartown

“It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not! It never will be! You must never, ever think it’s okay, that what he did… I’m scared, Maya, I’m so scared that you think I don’t want to kill him, that I don’t want to kill him every minute of every day, because I do.”
The father’s tears trickle down his daughter’s cheeks.
“I’m scared too, Dad. Of everything. Of the darkness and… everything.”
“What can I do?”
“Love me.”
“Always, Pumpkin.”

beartown

She is feeling everything all at the same time: rage, grief, impotence, a desire for vengeance, hatred, terror. Yet it still falls away from her in an instant when her phone vibrates and her daughter’s name illuminates the screen. Four little words. “Can you come home?” Never has a mother driven a car faster through that forest.

beartown

Book that made you cry

clockwork princess by cassandra clare. what more can i say about this book and its penchant for making me cry that i haven’t already said before? james carstairs and his accursed violin solo in the epilogue. william herondale and his accursed blue eyes. tessa gray and the two loves of her life 😭

Book that made you happy

a question of holmes by brittany cavallaro. i put off finishing this book for a solid six months partly because i was busy, yes, but mostly because i didn’t want this series to end. especially since this last installment is so fluffy with jamie and charlotte finally getting to do normal couple things without almost dying 🫶

and when you wish upon a lantern by gloria chao—also super fluffy!! this book scratched that part of my heart that was aching for a proper friends-to-lovers, boy-falls-first-and-harder, asian-community-joy rom-com 🥰

Favorite book-to-film adaptation

not much of a movie person, but i did watch several adaptations in english class for the texts we read this year! i think my favorite has to be the namesake (2006). it really captured the spirit of the novel and also incorporated some great moments of humor without sacrificing the deeper themes of the story. i also really enjoyed tabu and irfan khan’s performances as ashima and ashoke, respectively. (rated pg-13; check out this link for content warnings.)

Favorite post you have done this year

i haven’t been posting as much as i’d like to, but these three are probably the ones i spent the most time on! wrap-ups are always fun to write, but my rinkitay musings/character analyses and book-to-taylor swift song associations scratched a different part of my brain 💗

Books you need to read by the end of the year

les miserables by victor hugo. the last time i read the Brick™️, i was in elementary school and had infinitely more brainpower to expend on victor hugo’s spiels about the parisian sewer system (among other things). it’s my mission this summer to finish my reread of this old favorite of mine, because it truly is a masterpiece, overlong spiels and all.

pachinko by min jin lee. this is super embarrassing because i’m always so excited about putting books by korean authors on my tbr, but then i become hesitant when the time actually comes to read them 😅 i’ve heard pachinko is a slow read, which makes it more intimidating, but i’m determined to push through!

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow by gabrielle zevin. i have been hearing the most amazing things about this book, both online and in real life, so i definitely want to check it out asap. (unrelated, but am i the only hamilton fan whose brain immediately spits out “i trust you’ll understand the reference to another scottish tragedy…” whenever i read the titular shakespeare reference 😆)

and that’s it for today! would love to hear how your reading years are going so far—tell me all about your new favorites, hot takes, and priority tbr items in the comments below! 🫶

until next time, happy reading and stay safe everyone!!