Last night I announced the 2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs.
Now I’m going to feature the different categories I split the books into. I decided to start with Teen Fiction, because my favorite book of the year was Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein.
Usually I break Teen Fiction into Fantasy and non-Fantasy, but this year there simply weren’t enough of my favorites (except *the* favorite) in the non-fantasy category. The books at the top of this list are all books I know I will read again and treasure each time I do. I don’t use criteria for making this list, but I can tell you simply that all of these are books I loved.
You’ll see two books on the list, Palace of Stone and The Last Dragonslayer, that were under consideration for the Cybils Middle Grade Science Fiction and Fantasy shortlist. I tend to put books with teen protagonists, especially if they’re thinking about marriage, in the Teens category. But when the writing appeals to younger teens, they tend to be put in the Middle Grade category rather than Young Adult. You’ll find the rest of the books I read for the Cybils in the Children’s Fiction category.
Here’s my list of my 2012 Sonderbooks Stand-outs in Teen Fiction:
1. Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein
2. For Darkness Shows the Stars, by Diana Peterfreund
3. Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers
4. Cinder, by Marissa Meyer
5. Shadowfell, by Juliet Marillier
6. Palace of Stone, by Shannon Hale
7. Keeping the Castle, by Patrice Kindl
8. A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix
9. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
10. The Last Dragonslayer, by Jasper Fforde
Now, my next job will be to post the reviews of the Stand-outs I haven’t posted yet. I currently have 80 reviews I’ve written but haven’t posted, and 10 books I’ve read but haven’t reviewed. As well, I want to modify all the review pages of the Stand-outs to add the Sonderbooks Stand-outs seal. So I’m going to try for one category at a time, but may have to settle for one more review at a time.
But while I’m doing all that, you can read these books!
And what about you? What were your favorite Young Adult books that you read in 2012? Is there any overlap with my favorites? I’d love to see links to other people’s lists in the comments, or just lists themselves. What did I miss that I should try to catch? (And there were some that came out at the end of the year which I didn’t get to read because I was reading for the Cybils. I plan to make up for that very quickly!)