Flashback Friday #2- The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

Flashback Saturday in this case, since I missed posting this yesterday. Flashback Friday was inspired while talking to Sophie about trying to figure out away to help spread the word about books that aren't new releases. This is a weekly post we'll doing that will include a review of a book that's been out for awhile or one that's been sitting on our shelves begging us to read it. Today's Flashback Friday is: The Books of Bayern by Shannon Hale

Before there was Twilight, there was Shannon Hale's The Books of Bayern, The Goose Girl, Enna Burning, River Secrets and Forest Born, which was released a couple years after River Secrets. This is the series that made me fall in love with YA and made me realize that YA wasn't just for teens, but adults too. I started reading this series in 2007 and to this day it's still one of my all time favorite series! Shannon Hale's writing is beautiful, engaging and has this fairy tale feel to it that I can't get enough of. I love how she brings to life her richly detailed magical worlds, her sigh worthy romance, and the way she makes me fall in love with each of her characters.

Each book in this series focuses on one character and at the same time includes all the characters from the series, which are introduced in Goose Girl, the first book in the series. In doing this, Shannon allows her readers to see how each character continues to grow individually and together, as they're able to continue to fortify their friendships through love, heart break, danger, and adventure. I love the way Shannon ties all their stories together, and yet gives each character a unique journey in each book. There's never a dole moment as each story has it's own adventure, romance, and well written plot twists that keep me hooked, and leaving me wanting more.

Each of the books are clean cut, making this a great series that works well for mother/daughter book clubs, and is one parents, tweens and teens can read together. There's a lot of fantastic elements within each story that can be discussed in classroom settings as well. This series is one that I highly recommend picking up! It's a 5 stars series across the board for me.

One of my favorite things about this series are the covers! I purposely posted pictures of the books with these covers, as they're my favorite. Bloomsbury has since redone the covers, but the books I own have the covers shown above, and I fell the artist has done an amazing job at capturing the essence of the story in her illustrations. I AM SO EXCITED that Bloomsbury will be releasing Forest Born on OCTOBER 25th with the cover shown above! There's also going to be an LIMITED EDITION Forest Born book, which you pre-order from Amazon, Indie Bound and Barnes & Noble.