Recommendations to expand my wife’s reading
My wife reads a lot, and is basically the target audience for BookTok. She loves Sarah J Maas and books like that. But she is running out of books to read and has talked about wanting to expand her reading a bit.
I’m a big fan of fantasy and sci-fi and would love to find a couple of books or a series that we can both enjoy. But I know she wouldn’t be keen on something as heavy (or tbh as male-focused) as LoTRs or Wheel of Time, and I’ve tried SJM, but it really is not for me, so I’m looking for some recommendations.
As a guide, here are some of the things she looks for in a book:
The characters: it is really important for her to connect with the characters and for them to feel real and fleshed out, particularly with the lead. So she prefers books that are first person perspective and female-led.
Romance: she is a sucker for romance. Smut isn’t necessary, but if a relationship develops over the course of a book, it engages her a lot more than books where that is missing.
Escapsim/world building: my wife reads to relax and so wants to visit a world that is not like our own, at the minute that has mostly been fantasy, but something unfamiliar like another planet or time period would probably also work.
High stakes: or in her words, “I want something to actually happen”. Ideally some action or adventure. She isn’t very interested in reading Jane Austen for example because of the relatively sedate plots.
So far, she has enjoyed the Night Circus, but wasn’t wild about it. My next recommendation was going to be the Priory of the Orange Tree, as I think that will be familiar enough for her, whilst still being a little different to what she usually reads. I also think she might enjoy Legends and Lattes, although it might be a bit too cozy for her. I’ve also heard good things about A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, but I want to read it for myself first.
Any recommendations would be much appreciated!
by Ok-Charity4462
4 Comments
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. High-stakes, page-turning, dramatic, fantasy, dragons, sex, etc.
Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education fits the bill. Priory may be too dry.
The Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold. The primary protagonist is male but female POVs are featured prominently throughout (especially in the first 2 books, which really set the tone for the whole series), and Miles Vorkosigan is a rather atypical male protagonist. All the characters are humans who have populated different planets so there’s a range of cultures to be explored; somes books are heavy on the space opera while others are more grounded, so to speak. There is romance but it’s definitely not sedate, because Miles can’t help sowing chaos wherever he goes. Start with Shards of Honor and Barrayar, which deal with Miles’ parents meeting and the circumstances leading up to his traumatic birth as well as introducing the reader to the world and culture that will inform his character development.
Hunt the Stars , by Jessie Mihalik. Sci-fi romance. Story told from the female lead character’s perspective. A non-human general (the male main character) hires a bounty hunter (the female main character) to find and retrieve a stolen treasure. Despite them being enemies (they both fought a war between their two worlds), she accepts the job. He has telepathy skills but doesn’t use them on her without her consent. On the opposite, he’s respectful of her and of her crew.