19th October 2021

SURLY Blog Book Awards

Welcome, welcome, welcome! Please take your seats, the evening will begin very shortly. Tonight we come together to celebrate the triumphs of modern literature, the achievements of individuals big and small, good and evil. It has been a tremendous journey to reach this point but I am proud to present the inaugural… 

 

*checks card*

 

SURLY Blog Book Awards 🥳

 

Here at SURLY we realised everyone loves, or loves to hate, the award season but unfortunately there isn’t anything for all the books you and I manage to get through each year. So in our final blog post for the year we have asked you dear reader to nominate and vote for the best books and characters in a variety of fun categories. 

 

The results are in… 

 

May the best book win 🤩

 

SURLY Blog Book Awards

Throne of Glass

After serving out a year of hard labor in the salt mines of Endovier for her crimes, 18-year-old assassin Celaena Sardothien is dragged before the Crown Prince. Prince Dorian offers her her freedom on one condition: she must act as his champion in a competition to find a new royal assassin.

 

Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king’s council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she’ll serve the kingdom for four years and then be granted her freedom. Celaena finds her training sessions with the captain of the guard, Westfall, challenging and exhilarating. But she’s bored stiff by court life. Things get a little more interesting when the prince starts to show interest in her … but it’s the gruff Captain Westfall who seems to understand her best.

 

Then one of the other contestants turns up dead … quickly followed by another. Can Celaena figure out who the killer is before she becomes a victim? As the young assassin investigates, her search leads her to discover a greater destiny than she could possibly have imagined.

SURLY Blog Book Awards

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is the series of short stories that made the fortunes of the Strand magazine, in which they were first published, and won immense popularity for Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The detective is at the height of his powers and the volume is full of famous cases, including ‘The Red-Headed League’, ‘The Blue Carbuncle’, and ‘The Speckled Band’. Although Holmes gained a reputation for infallibility, Conan Doyle showed his own realism and feminism by having the great detective defeated by Irene Adler – the woman – in the very first story, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’.

SURLY Blog Book Awards

Harry Potter 

Harry Potter’s life is miserable. His parents are dead and he’s stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he’s a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

 

After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.

 

Though Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it’s his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

SURLY Blog Book Awards

Six of Crows 

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone. . . .

 

A convict with a thirst for revenge

 

A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager

 

A runaway with a privileged past

 

A spy known as the Wraith

 

A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums

 

A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

 

Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction—if they don’t kill each other first.

 

SURLY Blog Book Awards

The Fault in Our Stars 

Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her final chapter inscribed upon diagnosis. But when a gorgeous plot twist named Augustus Waters suddenly appears at Cancer Kid Support Group, Hazel’s story is about to be completely rewritten.

 

Insightful, bold, irreverent, and raw, The Fault in Our Stars is award-winning author John Green’s most ambitious and heartbreaking work yet, brilliantly exploring the funny, thrilling, and tragic business of being alive and in love. 

 

SURLY Blog Book Awards

We Were Liars 

A beautiful and distinguished family.

A private island.

A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.

A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.

A revolution. An accident. A secret.

Lies upon lies.

True love.

The truth.

 

We Were Liars is a modern, sophisticated suspense novel from New York Times bestselling author, National Book Award finalist, and Printz Award honoree E. Lockhart. 

 

Read it.

 

And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

SURLY Blog Book Awards

Skulduggery Pleasant 

Meet Skulduggery Pleasant

 

Ace Detective

Snappy Dresser

Razor–tongued Wit

Crackerjack Sorcerer

and

Walking, Talking, 

Fire-throwing Skeleton

 

—as well as ally, protector, and mentor of Stephanie Edgley, a very unusual and darkly talented twelve-year-old.

 

These two alone must defeat an all-consuming ancient evil.

 

The end of the world?

 

Over his dead body.

 

SURLY Blog Book Awards

House of Hollow 

Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats. 

 

Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind. 

 

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children. 

 

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.

 

Be sure to check out our Instagram highlights for the exact poll results and runner ups!

 

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