It’s getting very very cold and dark outside, the Christmas tree is well decorated and you can’t stop listening to “All I Want for Christmas” and “Last Christmas”. Two joyful weeks of freedom, no school and no homework or studying. I’d say… time to read! Here are some yummy books to read, all in winter wonderland theme.
The Snow White trilogy by Salla Simukka
Oops, still haven’t written about meeting her and reading her books – sorry Salla, it’ll be online soon! – but I would definitely advice you to read her books. Salla is from Finland, so she knows all about the cold! “As Red as Blood” is translated to English, part 2 and 3 are soon to come!
“In the midst of the freezing Arctic winter, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson walks into her school’s dark room and finds a stash of wet, crimson-colored money. Thousands of Euros left to dry—splattered with someone’s blood.”
Genre: drama, thriller, mystery
The Iron Fey books and spin offs by Julie Kagawa
I’m like… in love with her books! These books will take you to another place, where you will stay long after you’ve closed the books. They’re not exactly about the cold or about Christmas, but in Nevernever, there are two courts: Winter and Summer. You’ll be taken to Winter the most in the second part of the series! And yum… the prince of the series is from the Winter Court!
“Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan’s life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school or at home. When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she’s known is about to change.”
Genre: Fantasy, romance, young adult
The Wolves of Mercy Falls trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater
I’ve read the first book 3 times, I’ve never finished the trilogy though, because I got stuck at the ending of the second book, but I’d definitely recommend the first book of the series! When the cold comes, the werewolves come too…
“For years, Grace has watched the wolves in the woods behind her house. One yellow-eyed wolf—her wolf—is a chilling presence she can’t seem to live without. Meanwhile, Sam has lived two lives: In winter, the frozen woods, the protection of the pack, and the silent company of a fearless girl. In summer, a few precious months of being human… until the cold makes him shift back again.”
Genre: Young adult, fantasy, romance
Let It Snow by John Green
Honestly, I haven’t read this book yet, but YOU definitily should! I mean… the title says it all! Plus, it’s John Green (& Maureen Johnson & Lauren Myracle). No need to convince you more, right? Right!?
“Sparkling white snowdrifts, beautiful presents wrapped in ribbons, and multicolored lights glittering in the night through the falling snow. A Christmas Eve snowstorm transforms one small town into a romantic haven, the kind you see only in movies. Well, kinda. After all, a cold and wet hike from a stranded train through the middle of nowhere would not normally end with a delicious kiss from a charming stranger. And no one would think that a trip to the Waffle House through four feet of snow would lead to love with an old friend. Or that the way back to true love begins with a painfully early morning shift at Starbucks.”
Genre: Young adult, romance, contemporary
Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams
Wow, wait, what? A friend of mine helped me thinking of a fifth book for this list, something less YA-ish and more grown-up-ish (I love YA, no offending intended). So here’s a more ‘literary’ book which I haven’t read but surely am planning on reading now!
“It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere.Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been.”
Genre: historical fiction, literature, classics
