Best Book Ever: Debut Authors
Welcome to Best Book Ever here at Short and Sweet Reviews!
We skipped a week, thanks to travel and plagues in our houses, but we're back now and are talking about our favorite debut authors from 2011 and 2012. There have been a ton of excellent books by brand new authors, and these are some of our favorites.
Oh my gosh, there are some wonderful Debut Authors out there at the moment. I could have chosen so many. but my choice is ADA ADAMS, author of ReVamped. Let me tell you this now, I am in awe of Ada. She is so talented. She approached me about reviewing ReVamped and I near enough bit her arm off. Only the previous day I had been checking this book out. So to have Ada approach me, I was only too pleased to agree to review it. I am so glad I read this book. Ada created a wonderful world in which I would gladly get lost for days, weeks, months or even years of my life. I could pack up and move into Angel Creek. As long as I got to live with Sebastian *swoons*
Sorry, I got off-track there a little, Seb really is so dreamy! Seriously, this is an amazing start to the series and I cannot wait to read the next installment, ReAwakened. For me, Ada is one of the most talented debut authors out there. She managed to mix the right blend of action, romance and intensity together to create something marvellous. If you haven't already read ReVamped then I suggest you do. you don't want to miss out!
Keren @ Gothic Angel Book Reviews
It's so hard to choose just one debut to highlight, especially because so many of my friends are in this happy bunch of new authors, but one book that really wowed me recently was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. It is quite possibly the geekiest book ever written, a wonderful and surprising amalgamation of all the things people of a certain age might remember from their childhoods. If you have any love for video games, anime, movies, cartoons, and TV shows circa the 1980s, I highly recommend you pick this one up. Where else will you see one book that has such reverence for Family Ties, Back to the Future, Atari, the oeuvre of John Hughes, and more? Set in a near-future, multiplayer, fully-immersive internet where all of these things can co-exist in the most exciting ways, this book is not just about living out nostalgia, it's about learning to do the best you can and looking forward to a better future. This book not only impressed me, but it has spilled over into my real life in an interesting way: The author is running a contest right now that mirrors the central plot of the book, which begins with an easter egg that was hidden in the text itself and involves three video game challenges. It wraps up in August, and the winner will drive home a DeLorean, complete with flux capacitor. Jumping gigawatts!E.C. Myers, debut author of Fair Coin (2012 Prometheus Books)
There's no other way to describe this book than to say the writing is beautiful and the world-building is lush. It's a story where magic is forbidden, and the main character, Cate, can't help the fact that she was born a witch. Nor the fact that both her younger sisters are also witches, and that she is all that stands between them and the evil brotherhood who would kill or commit them if this fact were ever discovered. Cate doesn't have room for love or wondering about a future that doesn't revolve around protecting her sisters--but then again, her life rarely goes the way she planned... If you haven't read this yet, do yourself a favor and start IMMEDIATELY. I'll make some more room for you in the Cahill Sister fanclub.
Tiffany Schmidt, debut author of "Send Me a Sign" (2012, Walker - Bloomsbury)
I'm a fairy tale junkie, so my favorite debut of 2011 or 2012 is Awake by Jessica Grey. Awake is a modern take on "Sleeping Beauty", with more than one twist. Involving science, rocks, metals, magic flowers and one very out-of-place, newly-awakened Sleeping Beauty, Awake is a lot of fun to read. The characters are well-rounded and very human, and it's such a refreshing offering: blending all the great elements of a classic fairy tale with modern thinking and some awesome pop culture references. Definitely looking forward to Grey's next fairy tale offering(s)!Rebecca @ A Word's Worth
This is always a hard choice when you have to pick the One! Picking one book in a category is not the easiest task, there are so many amazing choices to choose from just in the last 2 years. So know that this choice took a lot of thinking and sorting but I will have to go with Best Book Ever:Debut Author as Veronica Roth. There is no other Dystopian book, series or author above her in my mental list as of now. Since Veronica Roth came out with Divergent last year and then Insurgent this year, its the dystopian I recommend to everyone. Veronica's action pack futuristic thriller is so complete in my idea of a outstanding book, it just stays with you and you always come back to it at some point in thought or conversation. So I choose Veronica Roth because its the Debut Author I talked, recommend and gushed about the most since 2011. Yara @ Once Upon a Twilight
And for us...
I've probably read or started to read more current books this year than I have in a very long time, thanks to blogging here, so I have a bit of a limited pool of completed reads to consider here. For right now, the debut author I think I'm going to go with is Sarah J. Maas, with Throne of Glass. I don't want to say too much about the book, so as to not spoil my review which will be posted in the near future, but Throne of Glass did for me what many other recent YA fantasies had not. It had characters I loved, plots which kept me guessing, and an ending which left me satisfied but which also clearly set the story up for more. Maas worked on this manuscript for a long time, and I'm very glad that it's finally been polished up and released into the world. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing what she comes up with next.Sarah
How about you? Who is your favorite debut author?
