Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ (Blog Favorites + Giveaway)

Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ (Blog Favorites + Giveaway)

First I'd like to thank my co-bloggers and reviewers, Mari, Jaymie, Heather and Rita. I can't believe Mari and I have been doing this for more than 2 years now. I remember when we first started the blog, we had to scrounge for posts, then Will at Pride Promotions contacted us and we were off and running. We became so busy that we needed help. It took some trial and error, but we added Jaymie, Heather and Rita this year. Thank you, ladies, so much for helping us make Bayou Book Junkie what it is!

These are some of our blog favorites. Books that more than one of us read and absolutely loved! So here are some of Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Reads of 2016!!

Special thank you to Jaymie for not only all the beautiful graphics but the painstaking time she gave up to put this post together. All I had to do was add my intro. And, of course, Mari, who proofreads every review, so none of us look like a fool, especially me since I have no clue where to put a comma to save my life!! Thanks so much, Jay and Mari!! ~ Tracy 💗

Bayou Book Junkie's 2016 Favorites ~ Mari's Favorites (Exclusive Giveaway)

Bayou Book Junkie's 2016 Favorites ~ Mari's Favorites

I've been reading romances ever since I learned to read. My mom used to buy and collect Buenhogar, Vanidades and Cosmopolitan magazines and I would devour them, including the condensed novels that could be found in them, then I moved on to the books in our library (encyclopedias, novels, etc.). Later, when I entered high school, we were requested to read a certain number of books in English, and while I'd enjoyed reading in Spanish up until that point, well, it opened a whole new world for me. I got some romances, historical mostly, which I read and re-read. Then they started selling Harlequin books at the supermarket, in Spanish of course, but beggars can't be choosers, and I got addicted to the damn things, despite rolling my eyes repeatedly at the obviously not so good translations. I nearly cried when they stopped selling them here, but I had a good collection by then and then my mom threw it all away. *cries* Still, I had my favorite bookshop to rely on to provide me with books in English, most of which I still have. *hides them from mom's eyes* Until they closed it, as well. By then, though, I had found the fabulous world that is the Spuffy fandom in the BtVS universe and had a whole lot of fanfiction to go through there. Then, I moved on to the Tokio Hotel fandom and discovered the beauty that is MM or slash fiction, and from then I moved on to MM books in Amazon, which was like heaven to me, considering that my country is very conservative, and while I might find some books in English here, they won't be MM. 

I read just about anything if the blurb or the cover are appealing to me. My favorite genres are historical, contemporary, paranormal and fantasy, but I've read and enjoyed the occasional BDSM book so long as it's nothing too extreme. I still read MF sometimes, too, but mostly from authors I know already, but MM remains my favorite.  

I've read a lot of great books this year, so narrowing my 2016 top reads to the agreed 15 was so not going to happen, although I got close enough settling on a nice Top 18 (kind of cheated with a couple of series) and an MF Top 3. #SorryNotSorry #BookJunkieProblems 

So, without further ado, these are my lists, in alphabetical order:

MM Top 18 

Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ Heather's Top 13 Favorites + Giveaway

Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ Heather's Top 13 Favorites + Giveaway

I have been a reader all my life.  My mom told me many stories of me sitting in front of all my stuffed animals reading them stories.  I enjoyed many different books as a child, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory being a particular favorite.  As a teenager, I was a big fan of Dean R. Koontz and Stephen King (anyone who knows me would be shocked by them because I hate horror now and am a big chicken!), making sure to get up at 5 am every day before school so I would have time to read.  Funny story, one morning I was the only one in my house up and reading my Stephen King book, sitting in a kitchen chair with it leaned back on two legs, my feet propped on my desk.  Get the picture.  Something scary happened in the book, at the same time my mom knocked on my bedroom door.  And backwards I went!  There’s a reason your mom always says don’t lean that chair back on two legs :)  My taste gradually changed and I moved on to JD Robb, who became a favorite!  I discovered Shayla Black, Lorelei James, Maya Banks and continued to read in that genre.

But, in the summer of 2015, a book blog on Facebook made the recommendation of Crossroads by Riley Hart.  I had read plenty of MFM books, but never MM and immediately one clicked.  And that folks, completely changed my reading habits.  I begin reading everything I could by Riley, and then Felice Stevens.  And, I joined MM groups and started getting more recommendations!  Over a year later and there are still so many books and authors I haven’t gotten a chance to read, but thanks to BBJ, publishers and authors, I’ve been able to read a lot more! When I was asked to be a reviewer for BBJ, I was more nervous than excited.   I didn’t leave a lot of reviews for those early books I read.  Don’t get me wrong, I always gave them a star rating on Amazon and Goodreads, but I never wrote a review because I just didn’t know what to say.  And, though I feel that way a lot of times writing my reviews for BBJ still, it’s not quite as bad!

And then one day, someone said, hey we should do our top 10 favorite books for the year.  I always, always, always avoid picking favorites!  There are just too many options and too many favorites to ever choose from one.  So, I thought I would outsmart the system and only pick my top 10 from books reviewed for the blog, not the ones I read outside the blog.  And, yeah… they outsmarted me ;-)  So far in 2016 I’ve read 405 books and I thought, how could I ever narrow this list down to 10, seems like that’s cruel punishment.  So, I’ve decided to make my list from the books that were published in 2016 only.  I’ve also created two categories, one for the series I’ve read this year and one for individual books.  And just a warning to my fellow BBJ ladies, next year may have to have a list of top audible reads :)   Also, one additional note, I have two books that I’ve been working to get read this year because I was sure they were going to end up in my list but I’ve just started one today and I’m sure will be starting the other tonight, so a little late to make my list, I have two honorable mentions:  Switched by NR Walker and Too Close by R. Phoenix.

These lists are in order by author’s first name, because I’m not picking favorites among them!

Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ Tracy's Top 16 Favorites

Bayou Book Junkie's Favorite Books of 2016 ~ Tracy's Top 16 Favorites

Over the years, reading has always been one of my first loves. As a teenager, I loved "Sweet Valley High" (ironic that I grew up to have a set of twins. Mine are Megan and Amanda, not Jessica and Elizabeth, though). I also absolutely loved Christopher Pike's books, which I think paved the way to John Grisham, whom I'm a huge fan of. I also love YA urban fantasy, memoirs, and true crime books. Besides gay romance, these are just a few of the other genres I love to read, but the message here is: I was and am always reading something.

As a blogger/reviewer you read a lot of books and one of my co-bloggers decided that this year we should pick our top 10 (I wasn't gonna name names, but since she outed herself... yeah, it was Jaymie and I did want to strangle her when she'd ask, "have you made your list yet?"). Yeah, 10 books? That wasn't happening, so I've picked my top 16, and let me express, it wasn't even easy to just pick 16. Some really stellar books I've read this year were left off this list and I'm so sad about that. These 16 books are books that while not all of them are the best-written books I've ever read, they are books I loved, or that touched me in some way. Books that left me with a huge book hangover. Something that I have a love/hate relationship with. You want a book to be that good, but when you're on a tight reading schedule it can make it extremely difficult to try to move on to the next book. So, in no particular order, here are just some of my favorite books and a portion of their reviews for 2016!

Bayou Book Junkie's 2016 Favorites ~ Jaymie's Favorites

Bayou Book Junkie's 2016 Favorites ~ Jaymie's Favorites

Whether the theme was one of my favorites: contemporary, paranormal, humor or Motorcycle Club romance or something generally considered out of my comfort zone, 2016 has had some amazing books by a variety of excellent authors.  Some, however, have stood out and resonated with me even after I've moved on to the next read.  These stories have made me feel that "book hangover" that you hear people complaining about.   

When you spend so much time reading, whether for business or pleasure it is sometimes hard to sit and let a story completely digest. You have to move on to the next and immerse yourself in that one. It makes it difficult to focus completely on the current story if you are stuck back in the one you've finished. For me over the years, I've grown used to jumping from one book to the next and ingesting as much as possible (in college it was a bad thing because I read way too much horror and true crime *shudders* and that stuck with me way too much) but while some books are a bit easier to push to the back of my mind, others refuse not to stay in the forefront. 

Does this mean that this was an easy list to make? Absolutely not. I've read close to 300 books this year and let me tell you, there are a lot of really GREAT stories out there.  My co-bloggers wanted to strangle me when I asked had they composed their list of favorites yet. It became a bone of contention on how we can possibly pare down a list of favorites to only 10?  Honestly, it's hard, it was like Sophie's Choice at times.  So instead we agreed on 15. Now I am very happy to have the opportunity to share my list with all of you. 

Wolfsong by TJ Klune  
  Buy Link

5 Stars!

Amazing! This is hands down my new favorite shifter book. I absolutely loved it. I loved that it made me laugh out loud. I loved that it made me cry, more than once. I loved Ox and Joe, Carter and Kelly, Mark, Thomas, Elizabeth. I adored Gordo, Chris, Tanner and Rico. Most of all I loved TJ Klune's take on Shifters and the incredible story he told in the way only he can.   Full Review