7. Rusalka
I am a sucker for travelogues. Yes, I will pick up any book that catches my eye and will pretty much buy any book that has a decent first chapter and last page. But what really interests me is anything that takes me to a faraway land that I have actually heard of. Megan Richey Olsen's
Rusalka features a California girl on an actually plausible foreign exchange trip to the Czech Republic. That means that we get to play tourist along with Madelyn, the main character, and there is a good balance between Czech History Infodumps and general European culture. The book has a little bit of everything, with a tentative romance with a Czech violinist, a murder mystery and a little bit of background stalking that makes you think that Madelyn's classmates are actually Cullens for part of the book. It is a fantasy overall, since the titular creature is a spirit of a drowned person who can haunt the living, but the pacing allows the reader to remember that this story is about a semester abroad first and a bizarre bit of European folklore second. And that is what I primarily like about the style of writing. I had one friend recommend a book to me by saying that "It's about high school students who ACTUALLY DO HOMEWORK." An early scene finds Madelyn killing time on the plane to Europe by studying flashcards. One of the most intense scenes occurs as she's returning from a research trip to the Kafka Museum. I am a fan of contemporary fantasies for exactly this reason. It's all well and good to go on a quest after a mysterious wizard shows up or your parents are killed by a werewolf, but finding the extraordinary in an everyday setting is just fantastic.