Not sure what to read this holiday season? Have a friend with a particular taste in books? No worries, Book*hug is back with more wonderful recommendations this year! Choose your own adventure with our Personalized Wishlist Series and find a book that suits your literary preferences.
For fans of the coming-of-age novel we recommend Big Shadow by Marta Balcewicz! This novel presents what it’s like to be in the thrall of a relationship that to onlookers is problematic yet to those involved still carries the hope of being something good. It examines the psychology of the subconscious self-deceit involved when we want to believe something to be true despite outward appearances increasingly indicating that is not the case.
For fable lovers we recommend Blood Fable by Oisin Curran! In this award-winning novel, a utopian community is on the verge of collapse. Taking refuge in his imagination, one of the community’s young adherents begins to speak of another time and place. His parents believe he is remembering his own life before birth. This memory, a story within the story of Blood Fable, is an epic tale about the search for a lost city refracted through the lens of the adventures the boy loves to read. But strangely, as the world around them falls apart, he and his parents find that his story seems to foretell the events unfolding in their present lives.
For those who read both we recommend The Faerie Devouring by Catherine Lalonde, translated by Oana Avasilichioaei! A modern-day fable and feminist bildungsroman, The Faerie Devouring tells the story of the sprite, her absent mother (who dies in childbirth), and a brood of fatherless boys all raised by Gramma, a stalwart matriarch and wicked faerie godmother.
Follow us on Instagram for more “Personalized Wishlist” installments in the upcoming weeks!