Age: 18-19Job: Undergrad student, part-time booksellerTotal books read: 150Following up "Girl runs away from an arranged marriage and seeks asylum with a convent of nuns" with "who train her to be an assassin" always gets a reaction out of the person I am pitching Grave Mercy to.
This is the book that began my love of historical fantasy, combining court espionage and 15th-century Brittany with magical blessings from the God of Death, and tossing in a hearty dose of romance for good measure.
It's follow-ups — Dark Triumph and Mortal Heart — shifted the focus to different leads within the convent, but kept (and continue to keep) me equally invested.
Grave Mercy was the fourth book I read in 2013. I've reread Grave Mercy twice since: 169th in 2016 and 57th in 2022.Age: 19-20Job: Undergrad student, part-time booksellerBooks read: 161 I went to my first author conference in 2013, and aside from the part where two authors fake made out to recreate a romance novel cover, the main thing that sticks in my brain is meeting Alex London and thinking to myself, "I should read that book he talked about." Proxy is a dystopian YA set in a world where the rich take no punishments and instead have a proxy, someone in debt or poor, who takes their punishments for them.