I really enjoyed it! I’m not sure I liked it as much as the first one, I think the pacing in that one for me was a little bit better, but am excited to see what Broadbent writes next in that world. I’m newer to the Romantacy genre (have only read the ACOTAR series and Fourth Wing) but have already had a lot of fun with the books I’ve read so far.

Hopped around a few different genres but really enjoyed all the books I read in June:

• The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King by Carissa Broadbent
• The Strange by Nathan Ballingrud
• On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
• Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

I literally just finished this book last night and wow what a ride.

Anything by Blake Crouch I've flown through (Dark Matter, Recursion, Upgrade). As others have mentioned, The Martian and Project Hail Mary are really great as well. A few others I couldn't put down over the past few years:

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

Brother by Ania Ahlborn

Mistborn 1 - 3 (The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, & The Hero of Ages) by Brandon Sanderson

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

Monk and Robot Series by Becky Chambers

The Fisherman by John Langan

I was so bummed to wake up to this, he was such an amazing novelist and even though I've only read The Road and Blood Meridian, both are up there as some of the best books I've ever read. I may need to pick up another of his books this month to read.

In 2015 a buddy of mine basically shoved Elantris, Way of Kings, and Words of Radiance at me and said "You gotta read some Sanderson, he's the next big guy in fantasy." I started with Elantris and really enjoyed it, but admit that I was intimidated by how chonky Stormlight was and so they gathered dust for the next 5 years.

When 2020 rolled around, I had a lot of free time and decided to finally give Sanderson another try and picked up Era 1 of Mistborn instead of Stormlight to ease into the Cosmere and instantly fell in love. That was pretty much the jumping off point because I then went right into Stormlight (which have since become my favorite books of all time) and after that I went and read everything else in the Cosmere. It even pushed me to read Wheel of Time which I finished at the end of last year and had a blast reading (I didn't think the infamous slog was that bad tbh). So here I am waiting for SP3 to come out so I can get my fix of more Sanderson...