Mindee Arnett

Mindee Arnett is the author of the critically acclaimed sci-fi thriller Avalon as well as the Arkwell Academy series and the newly released Onyx and Ivory. An avid eventer, she lives on a farm near Dayton, Ohio with her husband, two kids, and assorted animals. When not telling tales of magic, the supernatural, or outer space, she can be found on a horse, trying to jump anything that will stand still.

Recently I asked Arnett about what she was reading. Her reply:

As usual, my reading material has been all over the board in terms of genre and themes. I started the year off with young adult fantasies like An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. Then I switched to sci-fi for a little while, reading book 3 in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey (which the awesome TV show of the same title is based on), and then Obsidio, the third and final book in the stellar Illuminae Files by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, and now I’ve moved onto some middle grade.

But the book I want to talk about most, the book that has stayed with the most so far this season, is The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. This is a portal fantasy about a girl who’s spent her whole life on the run from people obsessed with a set of fairy tale stories her grandmother published years ago—and from the characters in those stories as well. This book is trippy, beautiful written, and utterly gripping. I read it far too fast, and I keep going back to it in my mind. I have a feeling it’ll be one of my seminal reads, a book I go back to again and again simply to re-experience them (other books on this list include the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater, The Daughter of Smoke and Bone series by Laini Taylor, and Harry Potter of course).

I think the reason why The Hazel Wood has made this list is because of the way it makes me feel—like magic is real, like the fantastical is waiting just around the corner, in the shadows beneath the bed, or in that faint movement out of the corner of my eye, the one I can’t quite catch no matter how fast I turn my head. Do you know the feeling I mean? The Hazel Wood made me feel like anything was possible while reading it, and that’s a feeling I’ll return to forever.

Visit Mindee Arnett's website.

The Page 69 Test: Avalon.

--Marshal Zeringue