We’re just two days away from February, believe it or not. I, for one, cannot believe how fast January has gone by. February is a month packed with new book releases but in all honesty, I was surprised by how few excited me. I find myself moving away from my old fallback reading trends lately and as a result, am getting bored with some of the newest hyped novels.
As is always the case, though, there were some novels that were standouts in my perusing.
Here are 10 February 2020 Reads on the Radar.
YA Fantasy
To preface these choices, I want to say I have been so disappointed in the YA fantasy novels I’ve read over the past two years or so. Most have been completely middle of the road, unexciting, unoriginal versions of the same tired plots, characters and tropes. I’ve had a difficult time finding any that are unique–even when the synopses seem unique, I can so easily see them going down the same path as every book before them. Because of that, there are only two YA fantasy novels I’m looking forward to this February.
The King of Crows (The Diviners Series #4)
by Libba Bray
Coming: February 4th
After the horrifying explosion that claimed one of their own, the Diviners find themselves wanted by the US government, and on the brink of war with the King of Crows. While Memphis and Isaiah run for their lives from the mysterious Shadow Men, Isaiah receives a startling vision of a girl, Sarah Beth Olson, who could shift the balance in their struggle for peace. Sarah Beth says she knows how to stop the King of Crows-but, she will need the Diviners’ help to do it. Elsewhere, Jericho has returned after his escape from Jake Marlowe’s estate, where he has learned the shocking truth behind the King of Crow’s plans. Now, the Diviners must travel to Bountiful, Nebraska, in hopes of joining forces with Sarah Beth and to stop the King of Crows and his army of the dead forever. But as rumors of towns becoming ghost towns and the dead developing unprecedented powers begin to surface, all hope seems to be lost. In this sweeping finale, The Diviners will be forced to confront their greatest fears and learn to rely on one another if they hope to save the nation, and world from catastrophe…
I am currently reading the third book in this series and thoroughly enjoying it. This series is a standout within the genre and has been for years. It’s a paranormal/fantasy series set in the 1920’s with ghosts and psychics and it doesn’t follow in any other book’s footprints. This series is a lot of fun and I look forward to finishing it.
The Shadows Between Us
by Tricia Levenseller
Coming: February 25th
Alessandra is tired of being overlooked, but she has a plan to gain power:
1) Woo the Shadow King.
2) Marry him.
3) Kill him and take his kingdom for herself.
No one knows the extent of the freshly crowned Shadow King’s power. Some say he can command the shadows that swirl around him to do his bidding. Others say they speak to him, whispering the thoughts of his enemies. Regardless, Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she’s going to do everything within her power to get it. But Alessandra’s not the only one trying to kill the king. As attempts on his life are made, she finds herself trying to keep him alive long enough for him to make her his queen—all while struggling not to lose her heart. After all, who better for a Shadow King than a cunning, villainous queen?
I can absolutely see this novel dissolving into something tropey and unexciting but even my pessimism can’t ignore the intrigue of this novel. I love this: “Alessandra knows what she deserves, and she’s going to do everything within her power to get it.” For some reason, I haven’t seen many YA fantasy novels with a premise focused on a girl’s ambitions–they’re always thrown into situations and try to make the best of them or try to get out of them, etc. There are aggressive MCs, but being aggressive is not the same as being an aggressor within the plot for her own ambitions. I can only hope she does take the kingdom for herself.
Adult Fantasy
The Unwilling
by Kelly Braffet
Coming: February 11th
The Unwilling is the story of Judah, a foundling born with a special gift and raised inside Highfall castle along with Gavin, the son and heir to Lord Elban’s vast empire. Judah and Gavin share an unnatural bond that is both the key to her survival… and possibly her undoing. As Gavin is groomed for his future role, Judah comes to realize that she has no real position within the kingdom, in fact, no hope at all of ever traveling beyond its castle walls. Elban – a lord as mighty as he is cruel – has his own plans for her, for all of them. She is a mere pawn to him, and he will stop at nothing to get what he wants. But outside the walls, in the starving, desperate city, a magus, a healer with his own secret power unlike anything Highfall has seen in years, is newly arrived from the provinces. He, too, has plans for the empire, and at the heart of those plans lies Judah… The girl who started life with no name and no history will soon uncover more to her story than she ever imagined. An epic tale of greed and ambition, cruelty and love, this deeply immersive novel is about bowing to traditions and burning them down.
Early reviews of this book seem pretty split. Some love it, some say it was too dark and gruesome. I’ve been looking for fantasy novels with darker themes (as opposed to front cover blurbs they don’t live up to), so perhaps I will enjoy this.
Master of Sorrows
by Justin Call
Coming: February 25th
You have heard the story before – of a young boy, orphaned through tragic circumstances, raised by a wise old man, who comes to a fuller knowledge of his magic and uses it to fight the great evil that threatens his world. But what if the boy hero and the malevolent, threatening taint were one and the same? What if the boy slowly came to realize he was the reincarnation of an evil god? Would he save the world . . . or destroy it? Among the Academy’s warrior-thieves, Annev de Breth is an outlier. Unlike his classmates who were stolen as infants from the capital city, Annev was born in the small village of Chaenbalu, was believed to be executed, and then unknowingly raised by his parents’ killers. Seventeen years later, Annev struggles with the burdens of a forbidden magic, a forgotten heritage, and a secret deformity. When he is subsequently caught between the warring ideologies of his priestly mentor and the Academy’s masters, he must choose between forfeiting his promising future at the Academy or betraying his closest friends. Each decision leads to a deeper dilemma, until Annev finds himself pressed into a quest he does not wish to fulfill. Will he finally embrace the doctrine of his tutors, murder a stranger, and abandon his mentor? Or will he accept the more difficult truth of who he is . . . and the darker truth of what he may become . . .
I am intrigued by the premise of this, flipping a common “chosen one” trope on its head so that the main character is destined for great evil. I love a good villain and am curious how this will be.
Historical Fiction
The Mercies
by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Coming: February 11th
Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of Vardø must fend for themselves. Three years later, a sinister figure arrives. Absalom Cornet comes from Scotland, where he burned witches in the northern isles. He brings with him his young Norwegian wife, Ursa, who is both heady with her husband’s authority and terrified by it. In Vardø, and in Maren, Ursa sees something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place untouched by God and flooded with a mighty evil. As Maren and Ursa are pushed together and are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them with Absalom’s iron rule threatening Vardø’s very existence.
The Mercies is inspired by the real Vardø storm of 1617 that killed forty men and the witch trials of 1620. I’m looking forward to reading this. A story of women’s discovery of their own strength and independence with the tone and setting of the witch trials sounds like it could be something amazing.
The King at the Edge of the World
by Arthur Phillips
Coming: February 11th
The year is 1601. Queen Elizabeth is dying, childless. The nervous kingdom has no heir. It is a capital crime even to think that Elizabeth will ever die. Potential successors secretly maneuver to be in position when the inevitable arrives. The leading candidate is King James VI of Scotland, but there is a problem. The queen’s spymasters–hardened veterans of a long war on terror and religious extremism–fear that James is not what he appears. He has every reason to claim he is a Protestant, but if he secretly shares his family’s Catholicism, then the last forty years of religious war will have been for nothing, and a bloodbath will ensue. With time running out, London confronts a seemingly impossible question: What does James truly believe? It falls to Geoffrey Belloc, a secret warrior from the hottest days of England’s religious battles, to devise a test to discover the true nature of King James’s soul. Belloc enlists Mahmoud Ezzedine, a Muslim physician left behind by the last diplomatic visit from the Ottoman Empire, as his undercover agent. The perfect man for the job, Ezzedine is the ultimate outsider, stranded on this cold, wet, and primitive island. He will do almost anything to return home to his wife and son.
The King at the Edge of the World is a historical fiction novel completely unique to any I’ve read about England before. Early reviews look mostly favorable, saying the novel is full of intrigue and mystery.
The Golden Key
by Marian Womack
Coming: February 18th
London, 1901. After the death of Queen Victoria the city heaves with the uncanny and the eerie. Séances are held and the dead are called upon from darker realms. Samuel Moncrieff, recovering from a recent tragedy of his own, meets Helena Walton-Cisneros, one of London’s most reputed mediums. But Helena is not what she seems and she’s enlisted by the elusive Lady Matthews to solve a twenty-year-old mystery: the disappearance of her three stepdaughters who vanished without a trace on the Norfolk Fens. But the Fens are a liminal land, where folk tales and dark magic still linger. With locals that speak of devilmen and catatonic children found on the Broads, Helena finds the answer to the mystery leads back to where it started: Samuel Moncrieff.
I love the focus on the Spiritualist movement of the early 20th century for this novel. My hopes are that it takes less of a penny dreadful approach and focuses on a darker toned mystery with serious stakes.
The Traitor
by V.S. Alexander
Coming: February 25th
In the summer of 1942, as war rages across Europe, a series of anonymous leaflets appears around the University of Munich, speaking out against escalating Nazi atrocities. The leaflets are hidden in public places, or mailed to addresses selected at random from the phone book. Natalya Petrovich, a student, knows who is behind the leaflets—a secret group called the White Rose, led by siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends. As a volunteer nurse on the Russian front, Natalya witnessed the horrors of war first-hand. She willingly enters the White Rose’s circle, where every hushed conversation, every small act of dissent could mean imprisonment or death at the hands of an infuriated Gestapo. Natalya risks everything alongside her friends, hoping the power of words will encourage others to resist. But even among those she trusts most, there is no guarantee of safety—and when danger strikes, she must take an extraordinary gamble in her own personal struggle to survive.
I am already looking forward to this WWII historical fiction novel. This is exactly my cup of tea and I can’t wait to read it.
Adult Fiction
The Snow Collectors
by Tina May Hall
Coming: February 12th
Haunted by the loss of her parents and twin sister at sea, Henna cloisters herself in a Northeastern village where the snow never stops. When she discovers the body of a young woman at the edge of the forest, she’s plunged into the mystery of a centuries-old letter regarding one of the most famous stories of Arctic exploration—the Franklin expedition, which disappeared into the ice in 1845. At the center of the mystery is Franklin’s wife, the indomitable Lady Jane. Henna’s investigation draws her into a gothic landscape of locked towers, dream-like nights of snow and ice, and a crumbling mansion rife with hidden passageways and carrion birds. But it soon becomes clear that someone is watching her—someone who is determined to prevent the truth from coming out.
The Snow Collectors sounds like an atmospheric, mysterious novel. And look at that cover!
Nonfiction
A Delayed Life: The True Story of the Librarian of Auschwitz
by Dita Kraus
Coming: February 11th
Born in Prague to a Jewish family in 1929, Dita Kraus has lived through the most turbulent decades of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Here, Dita writes with startling clarity on the horrors and joys of a life delayed by the Holocaust. From her earliest memories and childhood friendships in Prague before the war, to the Nazi-occupation that saw her and her family sent to the Jewish ghetto at Terezín, to the unimaginable fear and bravery of her imprisonment in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, and life after liberation. Dita writes unflinchingly about the harsh conditions of the camps and her role as librarian of the precious books that her fellow prisoners managed to smuggle past the guards. But she also looks beyond the Holocaust – to the life she rebuilt after the war: her marriage to fellow survivor Otto B Kraus, a new life in Israel and the happiness and heartbreaks of motherhood.
A Delayed Life might just be my most eagerly anticipated release of February. Personal accounts of the Holocaust are so heartbreaking and devastating and give such an important, firsthand look at what was done. I look forward to reading Dita Kraus’ story.
What February book releases are you looking forward to reading? Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading,
Madison
The only one on my TBR right now is The Traitor. Enjoy all your upcoming reads.