This five months went away in a blink as we were busy with reading, reviewing, talking and ultimately deciding which books to roll forward and which to cut. I think I can say all four of us – Jen, Belle, Nick and myself – found new books to love, authors to follow. It was overall a pleasant experience and I’m happy I got to lead my team so far. But Phase 1 is at its end, and we have the unpopular task of cutting 3 of the remaining 4 books and reveal Team RockStarlit BookAsylum’s finalist!
But before we jump to the exciting part, let’s take a look at our semi-finalists:
Jen’s pick
“I wasn’t sure about this one at first, some of the eating scenes at the beginning, hit my squick-o-meter hard, and I’ve never been much on interspecies relationships. Especially when the teeth are that sharp. But I have to admit I fell hard.”
Timy’s pick
“Despite its flaws, Books and Bone was undoubtedly one of my favourites in our group of 30 books. Although its setting not exactly cheery, there is something utterly charming in this book that just won me over.”
Nick’s pick
“This book was a joy to read and I devoured it in just about a week even though it’s just short of 400 pages in length. I simply loved the elements of witchcraft and the Victorian-esque setting that almost bordered on Steampunk at times.”
Belle’s pick
“The whole cast of characters were great. Leonel and Isaura’s relationship was a delight, as was Johan and Erla’s. The character development was well executed, and watching everyone learn and grow was wonderful, especially with the personal circumstances of both Leonel and Isaura.”
We clearly have a water theme this year… which shouldn’t surprise me, as I’m an Aquarius. Umm, anyway, where I was? Ah, yes, the semi-finalists. As you know, all four of us picked our favourite from our 30. There were two, which ended up on the top of our list, and which gave us some hard thinking. And so we were left with:
That being done, our decision just got harder, because clearly we each really liked both books. We were facing with the dilemma: to go with the overall more polished novel or the one with flaws but surrounded by a unique charm? In the end we went with the one which we thought was more polished regarding writing, editing, characters and plot. It was also the one we rated the highest overall. And that book is none other than…
*drumroll*
Congrats to Sonya M. Black for A Sea of Broken Glass being chosen as Team RockStarlit BookAsylum’s finalist in SPFBO5!
Thank you for the semi-finalists for the awesome books, and please keep on writing! We are sorry to let you go, but only one can survive…
You can find everything we’ve done in Phase 1 on my SPFBO page! There will be a new page up soon for the Finals 🙂
The hugest congrats to Sonya M Black! Well done on writing an excellent story which has been universally loved by the very different judges! A well-deserved victory. 😀
To Timy, Jen, Belle, and Nick, I just want to say thank you so much. I never thought I would make it this far in this competition but I’ve been having a blast anyway. I’ve also got 4 excellent book reviewers to follow now which has been making choosing my next read *so much easier*. You’ve all been thoughtful and encouraging judges and I feel lucky to have been in such a good group.
I guess now it’s on to the other 9 Finalists — looking forward to your thoughts!
Oh! Also it occurs to me that there were kind of 2 themes — the watery merfolky books and the spooky black magic books. XD
Thank you! I’m happy we got your book to read! Hopefully it’ll reach some more people in the future 🙂
Good luck with everything Victoria! I’m definitely glad that we were able to connect through this contest and look forward to reading more of your stuff in the future!