From stunning and heartbreakingly good to disappointing and outraging: here are my top three best and worst series enders each …

There are not enough positive words in this world to do justice to Code Name Verity. It is utterly brilliant, intriguing, shocking – and it will rip out your heart. Thrice. Not that there was anything left after the first time … But isn’t that just the way we like our novels? Don’t we all adore magnificent writing, stunning plots, and believable characters? Unforgettable tales of loyalty and betrayal, of trust and fortitude even in the face of torment and fear? If you can’t answer these questions with a resounding YES, then you cannot be helped. This, my dear readingrats is the story of a friendship so strong and true, written so perfectly that it comes to life before the reader’s eyes . . .

Jaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Und ich freu mich schon so wahnsinnig! Im Jahr davor musste ich im Zuge meines Auslandssemesters in Irland aussetzen (was aber ein ziemlich fantastischer Ausgleich war) und weil ich es wegen der Schule davor nie geschafft hatte, war 2011 sowieso mein erstes Mal. Und selbst das wäre beinahe schief gelaufen, da ich meine Linguistik-Hausarbeit einfach nicht fertig bekommen hatte und es dann gerade mal für einen Tag nach Frankfurt geschafft habe. Das soll sich diesmal aber ändern …

Wie der Name schon impliziert sollen hier 12 Lieblingsbücher in 12 Monaten gelesen und rezensiert werden. Für mich als absolute Reread-Queen ist das natürlich perfekt – und kommt doch gerade richtig. Zwar bin ich mit meinem SuB äußerst gut befreundet und lasse mir von ihm kein schlechtes Gewissen einreden, wenn ich mal wieder zu einem schon gelesenen Buch greife während er wächst und wächst, doch wirklich viel Zeit für meine Lieblinge habe ich dann doch irgendwie nicht. Manche der Bücher, die ich ausgesucht habe, wollte ich schon ewig nochmal lesen. Jetzt werde ich also endlich dazu gezwungen …

Over the summer, many of my favourite fellow readingrats have mentioned that they have seasonal reading preferences. In most cases, summer seemed to be reserved for contemporary fiction while fantasy literature was banished from all reading lists. Apparently, summer’s way too hot to read those tomes. Well, to a certain degree I get the point: just holding up one of those heavy giants makes one break out in sweat. Besides that, I had a good laugh whenever I came across this kind of reasoning. Seasonal reading preferences? No way, not with me …

Yay, a new seasonal TBR list … ’cause that worked out perfectly for the last one – not! Of the ten books I chose in June for my summer TBR pile, I’ve read only two. Let’s call it an epic fail and move on, which means that I won’t recycle books from the last list but make up an entirely new pile. And it’s getting classy, historical, dark, and fantastic … and megalomaniac …

Well, well, one should think that it would be easy to find novels one would like to see as a movie or TV series. However, there are so many YA novels which are already in different stages of production that it was rather difficult to find favourites that aren’t already opted for an adaptation. Unsurprisingly, some of the following novels weren’t originally English or don’t even have an English translation and therefore don’t have an adaptation yet. If I’d live in a world in which book-to-movie adaptations were super faithful to the source material, these would be the ten novels I’d love to see on the big or the small screen …