Caroline's Book Club: Plot Lines You'll Love

    Hello, everybody!! It is my greatest pleasure to introduce you to this month's top five line-up. I found something to love about all of the following titles so I hope you do too!! Without further ado, the books you MUST pick up this month:

#1: The Grace Year by Kim Liggett
I had never heard of this book or author before being gifted it at Christmas. Thank goodness Alexis decided to veer away from the list I provided and get something that was the complete opposite of my requests. I couldn't put this book down! The plot was super engaging and the characters were so complex. The genre for this book is somewhere within dystopian fantasy and fiction. The author doesn't come out and tell you the timeframe so it could be before modern times or years afterward. What I really liked and appreciated was that the society within the book wasn't completely unbelievable. Some dystopian novels get very big with their stories and other parts of the development that you can't visualize any of it actually happening. But with the way that The Grace Year was written, I could buy that it was something based of real life but altered in some ways in order to fit with the author's overall ideas. 

#2: Virgin River by Robyn Carr
If  you have never heard of this series, you're missing out. It's a show on Netflix that takes its inspiration from the above book series. I watched the show before reading the books which I almost never do but in my defense, I didn't know the books existed until afterwards. I went in sort of knowing what to expect- or at least I thought I did. First of all, the books are so much more dramatic than the show. Granted, books have a little more autonomy than TV shows when it comes to drama and violence. However, they're still super easy to read! The plot just has a little more going on than your average romance novel.

#3: When The Stars Go Dark by Paula McLain
This book took me by surprise. It's actually based somewhat on events that really happened. The author uses the real-life events more as a device to further the plot than as the central focus. The whole book is spent trying to find a missing girl which then leads the investigators uncovering a whole slew of other missing girls. The reason? A serial killer, obviously. I find the way that the author wrote the story interesting. She managed to incorporate real events, people, and places while not letting it invade her story and allowing it to stand on its own. While it is a bit on the murder-y side, the journey of self-discovery that the main character goes through makes it worth all the not-so-nice details. 

#4: Caraval by Stephanie Gerber
Caraval is like The Hunger Games on steroids. There's so much focus on the settings and the little details that your mind is able to create an almost spot-on image. If this turned into a movie, I would love to see what the set designers came up with. The author even includes a reading playlist (songs that fit with the mood or events within the chapter) in the back of the book. Sometimes I will admit that it wasn't the easiest to follow along with because a lot of stuff is packed into every chapter. The characters also weren't very likable at times and there's one supporting character that just gets. under. my. skin. I will leave it to you to discover which one. But overall, it was a fantastic story and two more books follow this one.

​#5: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Ah, the classics. Full of tongue twisters and confusion. If I had to rank the ones I've read thus far for most confounding, Sense and Sensibility takes the cake. I really wanted to enjoy the story- and some parts I did- but overall, I had a hard time reading. It took me six months! The chapters may be short but the language makes it feel like you're trying to get molasses off your hands. As most Jane Austen novels are, this one is a romance but there were many times I wondered where exactly the romance was. And don't get me wrong, Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorites but I can't say the same for this one. I will say, the difficulty made me more determined to finish it. Even if I didn't completely understand the ending.

See you in March!