Five Fun Books to Read:

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

 The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab

 Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

 Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

 The settings of both The Bear and the Nightingale and The Snow Child will freeze your bones. The Snow Child takes place in Alaska, yet this lyrical fairy tale will warm your heart.

The Bear and the Nightingale is set in Russia, where the cold penetrates every part of Arden’s spellbinding first book in a new trilogy. Strong characters and imaginative story-telling made this difficult to put down at night. I’m still sad that I’ve finished it.

 V. E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue tells an old tale with a most unique twist. The title, however, is a lie. Addie LaRue is anything but invisible.

 I found Ninth House’s protagonist, Alex Stern, to be irresistible, as she navigates the dark underworld of magic set in an Ivory League school. She is no Harry Potter, not by a long shot.

 Rebecca Roanhorse set a very high bar for world-building in her first installment of a new trilogy. Black Sun breaks away from the conventional European template and instead relies on Mesoamerican traditions in structuring the backdrop for her epic fantasy.