charlie2's 3 favorite reads in 2025

It's the perfect combination of genres. It's set in a future world where climate change has wiped out most of the population. The colony in question is structured like a beehive with two ruthless queens as the monarchs and a very hierarchical system below it (again with themes based on bees). So there's loads of great worldbuilding for the fantasy fans, but it's also a really good murder mystery.

The characters are AMAZING. Feldspar (the protagonist/narrator) is so brave and determined, and you really get to follow her journey as she breaks free of what she's been moulded into doing and begins to think for herself. And Niko (the secondary protagonist) is an awesome counterpart to her. There's a little hint of romance but nothing that gets in the way of the plot.

It makes you think about quite a lot of deep themes, like science denialism and brainwashing and the complexity of grieving for someone who wasn't all that nice to you, but they're woven into a fast-paced plot.

It draws inspiration from real-life events (the pandemic) and makes you think about them in a new and different way. There are some really interesting questions around forced happiness and whether that's a good thing, and whether it's morally right to force something on other people if it will change the world for the better, with different characters having different perspectives on it.

The plot works really well, with all the different threads gradually converging and building to the explosive climax. You get to understand all the characters' viewpoints even where they are in direct opposition to each other.

I am a huge fan of Neal Shusterman's writing style and this book doesn't disappoint.

Returning to Panem was a treat of the most devastating kind. This book says a lot about the manipulation of the media and people's perceptions of events - how everything is controlled by propaganda. And Haymitch is one of my favourite characters from the original Hunger Games trilogy, so spending more time with him was brilliant, even if it was incredibly depressing as well. I wasn't so keen on the inclusion of the entire Raven poem at the end, though.