What is your true "hidden-gem" book this year? Book/s that you stumbled upon (it could be your go-to genre or not) and randomly read, but surprisingly so good that it left a mark. And please tell me why 😆 (I'm going to use this discussion as a rec 🤭🤪)

What are some books and/or book series you are interested but can't get yourself to read? I've been meaning to read Les Misérables for years now, but it's so long. I did start, and loved what I read, but dropped it, and never had the courage to pick it up again. 🥲 Babel and Poppy War are very daunting for me. I keep seeing people talking about PW here, and so I get reminded that I'm curious about it. I also want to read Malazan, but I'm convincing myself that I'll wait a few years until starting it, but I definitely will! 🤣

I’m seeing loooaaadds people on TikTok doing a bunch of reading to “prepare” for this book… is that actually necessary or are they just excited? Because if it is I’ll never get round to it. I loved babel and managed to get through it going in blind? I just want to make sure

Do you annotate your books? If so how do you decide which book to annotate and why? My goal for this year was to get into and so far all I've managed to do is add colored tabs and occasionally highlighting lines. I really want to get into it more and hoping to have a system in place when I do a re-read of Fourth Wing before the next book comes out.. in like 500 years!

Y'all I'm currently reading two adult fantasy books and am struggling. I need some good fast-moderately paced YA fantasy recs😭