Schwab was born on July 7, 1987, in California and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. Schwab went to an all-girls Southern preparatory school. [3] She graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2009. She had originally planned to study Astrophysics, but changed directions after taking art and literature courses. She completed her first novel (unpublished) in her sophomore year, [4] and sold her debut novel, The Near Witch, to Disney before graduating. [5] Career [ edit ] Schwab at the 2017 Phoenix Comicon Schwab continues to delight with her newest novel. If you’ve never read her work before, Gallant is an excellent introduction to those sparks of Schwab’s genius. Her prose is smooth, painting a room or moment or emotion with vivid details and engaging insight. Her characters are complex, and even at their lowest or cruelest, you never lose sight of why you should be rooting for them. And her worlds continue to be places of wonder and danger in equal measures, firmly rooted in the boundary where myth and reality meet, wrestling for dominance. In this one especially, Schwab truly makes the reader feel as though they’re living in a fable that will be passed down as cautionary tale or victory. I will say though that it was very interesting to have a main character who couldnt speak! This is my first book seeing that and it was pretty interesting. I also saw some similarities between this book and Coraline so maybe some may love that a lot.

In all seriousness, if you asked me what happened in this book I couldn't tell you. It literally feels like nothing happened at all the first half. I almost fell ASLEEP reading it and that never happens to me?? Never in my life have I ever almost fallen asleep reading a book. Gallant is the first to ever do this to me. At first glance, Aria seems like your average twelve-year-old girl. But there’s much more to her than meets the eye. Aria is a guardian angel, sent here to earn her wings. But to do that she’ll have to help three different girls. . . . Gallant is dark, tragic, and heartbreaking, but also warm and moving. The basic desire to belong and be loved is so fundamental to human nature. That is all Olivia wants.My favorite part was the unique villain, whose power is rather terrifying and centers around the manipulation of shadow and his own bones. Speaking of, there will be a lot of body horror/blood descriptors in this book, so proceed with caution if you're squeamish. The mc is one of my favorite brands of characters: weird little girls with a slightly menacing aura. She's also mute, and I love that the effect this has on her life is explored respectfully (bonus points for the inclusion of sign language in the story). Nothing happened in the entire book. No major plot twists, no big interesting revelations, no jaw-dropping moments. Just nothing.

For a girl living in a quiet world, conversing with ghoul-like creatures through nods and gestures is a blessing and a curse. Olivia is drawn to the power of secrets and magic. What is real, what isn't? When she meets her cousin Mathew, she begins to learn more about the mystery, the hidden garden, and the wall beyond the path. She holds on to a journal written by her mother, trying to piece together the story of her family and her mother's past. The relationships among the characters were very surface-level. Hannah and Edgar only existed to help Olivia. Matthew changed as the book went along, but not in a way that felt organic. He switched from being hostile to treasuring Olivia more than anyone else, and did so across the span of a few days. They didn’t even spend that much time together. I get that he was distant because he wanted to protect her, but the change was so abrupt that it felt shallow. In 2020, Schwab joined the panel of Podcast Writing excuses [15] to discuss book themes and other topics. The audiobook narration was also pretty good, and this would be a great starting point if you are new to audiobooks. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was published by Tor Books on October 6, 2020. [16] It was heavily praised and nominated for the 2020 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel . [1]The car rumbles beneath her, the only sound as the city thins, the buildings sinking from three stories to two, two to one, before growing gaps, like bad teeth. And then something marvelous happens. They reach the end of all those buildings, all that smoke and soot and steam. The last houses give way to rolling hills, and the world transforms from gray to green. Kate Harker is a girl who isn’t afraid of the dark. She’s a girl who hunts monsters. And she’s good at it. August Flynn is a monster who can never be human. No matter how much he once yearned for it. He has a part to play. And he will play it, no matter the cost.