100 books like Romanov

Storm Sneezer is targeted at a slightly younger demographic, perhaps more of an upper MG or lower YA read, but the world is so magical, the friendships so beautiful, and the voice so hilarious that I can’t imagine any fantasy-loving teen not laughing out loud and rooting for spunky protagonist Rose.

Thirteen-year-old Rose Skylar sneezed a magical storm cloud at birth, and it’s followed her around ever since. As a result, Rose is sent to Heartstone, an asylum for unstable magic located in a haunted forest whose trees have mysteriously turned to stone. Ghosts roaming the woods and a graveyard filled with empty graves hint at something darker. Guided by her future selves via time-traveling letters, Rose and her best friend Marek must solve the mystery of the specters and the stone trees before the ghosts unleash a legendary enemy that will destroy Heartstone Asylum.

Unbetrothed was released around the same time as Encanto and if you love the Disney movie you’ll love this book. In a vibrant Latin-inspired world where princesses are expected to be magically gifted, Princess Beatriz is not. With her kingdom, life, and betrothal to her best friend and love, Prince Lux, on the line, she’ll do whatever it takes to obtain magic, including making a deadly oath to go on a quest to Valle de Los Fantasmas, a valley where no one comes out alive.

Yamnitz tackles themes of love, family, and worth in a gorgeous world accompanied by a swoony love interest and plot twists galore, leaving the reader cheering on Princess Beatriz in both her quest across kingdoms and her inner journey to become the princess she's destined to be.

Between the high-stakes worldbuilding, Earth on the brink of war with Luna while battling a global pandemic, and Marissa Meyer’s fresh sci-fi take on magic, the story drew me in and wouldn’t let me go.

I’m not ashamed to say I devoured this in one sitting. I was fascinated by the lunar people’s ability to use their “gifts” to manipulate bioelectricity, casting glamours and bewitching their victim’s minds. It added yet another layer of tension to the story.

The seamless fusion of dystopia, sci-fi, and elements from classic fairytales creates a powerhouse narrative that centers around Cinder, a cyborg mechanic whose fate is inexplicably twined with the prince’s in a race to find a cure and prevent the impending war.

Keen is about a banshee, Caoine, currently living in the contemporary world, even though the fae realm is closer than many know. I’d never read about a banshee, but I understood Caoine’s feeling of not fitting in, of being weird or different. Caoine is a sympathetic heroine as she tries to learn how to use her ability, even though she’s certain her only purpose is to bring death to those around her.

This book made me a traveling companion of Lenin. Together with him we go on an incredible journey: from Switzerland across Europe via Finland to Petrograd. This journey changed the world, because it brought Lenin back to Russia, Russia the October coup, and the century of a Soviet regime. Merridale depicts the unique moment of the dawn of a new age as banally and grotesquely as if she had really been there. The best part: just before he left, Lenin called the American embassy because he would have preferred to be transported by the Americans rather than the Germans. But it was Easter Sunday and no one could be reached at the embassy, and so the story took its course....

Patenaude focuses just on the Mexican period, from January 1937 to August 1940, of Trotsky’s exile, although the previous stages of his exile — Kazakhstan in 1928, then Turkey for four years, France for another three, followed by interment in Norway — are dealt with in a series of flashbacks. In fact, the whole book is written as if Trotsky in Coyoacán were recalling his past, from his prosperous farmer’s boyhood to his underground militancy, his Civil War military brilliance, and his blundering incompetence as a Bolshevik power-broker. The danger that Patenaude flirts with is to let Trotsky’s charisma and undoubted genius charm him into overlooking his subject’s monstrous indifference to the suffering and deaths of others, sometimes even of those close to him, as well as his overweening conceit.

By dealing with the last phase of the tragedy, nemesis, Trotsky is seen to pay in fear, resignation, failure, and… show more.

Easily one of my favorite epic fantasies I’ve read in recent years. The complexity of Gillian’s world is a highlight, yet she still makes the story and those within it accessible for her readers. It felt deep, not cluttered. She writes distinctly and with heart from three different points of view. I couldn’t flip pages fast enough, anxious for the moment these three story threads would intersect. It was more than worth the wait. 

One of the most original books I have ever read, and as such impossible to classify by genre—a dizzying mix of memoir, history, and travel writing. As the separate stories of four apparently unrelated individuals unfold, Sebald exposes a common theme: the loss of identity through trauma and displacement. The stories are devastating and yet there is something hopeful in Sebald’s melancholic and vivid writing, the powerful case he makes for these stories being heard.

I studied with Jane Kamensky while I was working on a MA in American History. Little did I know that she had a wicked historical character hidden inside. Learning that inspired me to write good history inside a realistic and sexy historical plot. This is a story of hidden identity and unexpected love. 

The characters are a portrait artist and his apprentice. The apprentice appears to be a young man, as only young men would take such a position in 18th-century Boston, and the artist is surprised at his yearning for him. 

Being Palestinian is a collection of essays by Palestinians reflecting on their identity and experiences living outside of their homeland.

I’ve chosen it here because few works are so effective in conveying both the commonalities and the diversity of the Palestinian refugee experience. The contributors range from Ivy League professors to activists campaigning for justice in the Middle East today; they include figures who grew up in refugee camps and those raised in some of the wealthiest cities in the world.

In many ways Being Palestinian is the perfect introduction to learning more about the subject, because it is accessible and highly personal without being simplistic.