BEST BOOKS I'VE EVER READ
From the way she was born everything is magical in Tita's life, a Cinderella story. Her selfish, egotistical and manipulator of a mother abuses, neglects her and treats her like a servant. She's raised by her family's ranch cook and became such a good cook her food magically transferred her emotions to the people who eat them. You can help but be captivated by all this magic, root for Tita and hope she finds freedom and happiness even if it is through forbidden love. You will fall in love too. In love with the cultural and family traditions, the family life in the ranch, the imagery of the open country, the recipes handed down by generations, and the methods of cooking without using modern appliances. There is so much delicious food in this book and fantastic home remedies for all kinda aliments from a rash to a heartbreak! 🙂 (read more)ADULT|HISTORICALFICTION | ROMANCE
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of family life in turn-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit. The number one bestseller in Mexico and America for almost two years, and subsequently a bestseller around the world, Like Water For Chocolate is a romantic, poignant tale, touched with moments of magic, graphic earthiness, bittersweet wit - and recipes. A sumptuous feast of a novel, it relates the bizarre history of the all-female De La Garza family. Tita, the youngest daughter of the house, has been forbidden to marry, condemned by Mexican tradition to look after her mother until she dies. But Tita falls in love with Pedro, and he is seduced by the magical food she cooks. In desperation, Pedro marries her sister Rosaura so that he can stay close to her, so that Tita and Pedro are forced to circle each other in unconsummated passion. Only a freakish chain of tragedies, bad luck and fate finally reunite them against all the odds.
Besides being totally unique and genre-bending, The Shadow of the Wind was a master class in character development! Each character is so realistic you cannot help but connect with them and then, each character becomes a main character. Then, it's the atmosphere and the storytelling. As I said, total immersion. I can't remember the last time I was so enthralled by a story. This plot moves slooooooooow. And I don't well at all with slooooow plots but I not only didn't care that the plot was slow, I was totally THRILLED that the plot was slow because I wanted to savor every fantastic page. (read more)ADULT | HISTORICAL FICTION | MAGICAL REALISM | MYSTERY
Barcelona, 1945: A city slowly heals from its war wounds, and Daniel, an antiquarian book dealer's son who mourns the loss of his mother, finds solace in a mysterious book entitled The Shadow of the Wind, by one Julian Carax. But when he sets out to find the author's other works, he makes a shocking discovery: someone has been systematically destroying every copy of every book Carax has written. In fact, Daniel may have the last of Carax's books in existence. Soon Daniel's seemingly innocent quest opens a door into one of Barcelona's darkest secrets--an epic story of murder, madness, and doomed love.
ADULT|HISTORICAL|FICTION
The Godfather—the epic tale of crime and betrayal that became a global phenomenon. Almost fifty years ago, a classic was born. A searing portrayal of the Mafia underworld, The Godfather introduced readers to the first family of American crime fiction, the Corleones, and their powerful legacy of tradition, blood, and honor. The seduction of power, the pitfalls of greed, and the allegiance to family—these are the themes that have resonated with millions of readers around the world and made The Godfather the definitive novel of the violent subculture that, steeped in intrigue and controversy, remains indelibly etched in our collective consciousness.
ADULT | SCI-FI | DYSTOPIAN/APOCALYPTIC | CLASSICS
A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece. A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other. The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.
This was an incredible hallucination! The ultimate liminal space experience! I’m 100% sure this book is on its merry way to become a classic! No matter what kind of books you read, what genre, what topics, you GOTTA read this book! Because, chances are, you’ve never read a book quite like Piranesi, and never will. So, you should treat yourself with this incredibly unique experience. This is one of those books that go deep into the reader’s psyche and mean a universe of entirely different things to everyone. There were moments I had to stop reading because I was feeling deeply moved: disturbed, uplifted, sad, happy; every paragraph a different emotion! (read more)ADULT | SCI-FI | MYSTERY | MAGICAL REALISM | LITERARY FICTION
Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.
![Hell Divers](https://bookiverse.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/hell-divers.png")
Hell Divers was a first impressions feast! “Hell Divers” How is that for a title, huh? The Cover: people in futuristic suits diving through a hellish sky to an even more hellish earth. How is that for a cover??? The opening line... "The average life expectancy for a Hell Diver was fifteen jumps" HOW IS THAT FOR AN OPENING LINE????? That got the gears of my imagination spinning wildly and screeching like exorcised hellions! Then, on page 1... "Ash turned a blind eye to the diver teams’ debauchery; after all, she was dropping them into the apocalypse to scavenge for parts on the poisoned surface of the Old World." How is that for a theme?? (read more)ADULT | SCI-FI | DYSTOPIAN/APOCALYPTIC
More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search of a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers—men and women who risk their lives by skydiving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need. When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there’s something down there far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past—something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.
I was fascinated by all the science behind this world: the cyborgs, the droids, the endemic virus, the ships, all the technology, the dystopian society rules... The world of the Lunar Chronicles is so splendorous that it develops the characters, the plot and the story arc as well: A futuristic society afflicted by an endemic virus where cyborgs [technology enhanced humans] are treated as slaves and don't have many rights. And then... Great characters and stories just pop everywhere! [POP!] There goes the perfect MC for this world, Cinder, a cyborg of course. But not ANY cyborg but a very, very, very smart mechanic. GIRL POWER! [POP!] There goes the perfect obstacles for the MC to overcome (prejudices, discrimination, sickness, death...). [POP!] Then there goes the perfect character arc as Cinder overcomes all those obstacles. [POP!] There goes the perfect love interest and secondary characters to support the MC's arc. [POP!]There goes the perfect villain to make it all very difficult. [POP!] There goes the perfect plot devices and twists, [POP!] the perfect actions scenes, [POP!], [POP!], [POP!], [POP!], [POP!]. Mini Big Bangs everywhere and the awesome Universe of The Lunar Chronicles is created! (read more}YOUNG ADULT | SCI-FI | DYSTOPIAN/APOCALYPTIC
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
No wonder “The Last Cuentista” won TWO American Library Association’s 2022 Youth Media Awards: The “John Newbery Medal” for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature and the “Pura Belpré Children’s Author Award”! “The Last Cuentista” is absolutely outstanding and, right now, THE BEST Sci-Fi book I’ve ever read! It is also THE BOOK that better embodies everything BOOKIVERSE is about: how we are all made of stardust and stories. This book is about how our identity is intimately related to our memories and the stories of our lives. If you had to explain to an alien civilization light-years away and centuries in the future what “Earth” and “Humankind” means, what would you say? The Collective, like many futuristic civilizations in Sci-Fi stories, doesn’t care for humankind’s imperfections. They want an “utopia” where everything is orderly, perfect and predictable. So, when the Collective erases everyone’s memories to erase their “imperfections”, but Petra’s, Petra is like the The Voyager Golden Records, carrying the only memories left to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth to others. It is up to Petra to show the Collective the value of humankind. (read more)YOUNG ADULT | SCI-FI
There lived a girl named Petra Peña, who wanted nothing more than to be a storyteller, like her abuelita. But Petra's world is ending. Earth has been destroyed by a comet, and only a few hundred scientists and their children – among them Petra and her family – have been chosen to journey to a new planet. They are the ones who must carry on the human race. Hundreds of years later, Petra wakes to this new planet – and the discovery that she is the only person who remembers Earth. A sinister Collective has taken over the ship during its journey, bent on erasing the sins of humanity's past. They have systematically purged the memories of all aboard – or purged them altogether. Petra alone now carries the stories of our past, and with them, any hope for our future. Can she make them live again?
BEST SCREEN ADAPTATIONS
YOUNG ADULT | HISTORICAL FANTASY | MAGICAL REALISM
Fans of dark fairy-tales like The Hazel Wood and The Cruel Prince will relish this atmospheric and absorbing book based on Guillermo del Toro’s critically acclaimed movie. Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro and New York Times bestselling author Cornelia Funke have come together to transform del Toro’s hit movie Pan’s Labyrinth into an epic and dark fantasy novel for readers of all ages, complete with haunting illustrations and enchanting short stories that flesh out the folklore of this fascinating world. This spellbinding tale takes readers to a sinister, magical, and war-torn world filled with richly drawn characters like trickster fauns, murderous soldiers, child-eating monsters, courageous rebels, and a long-lost princess hoping to be reunited with her family.
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