The TIger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala is the first in a trilogy of YA fantasy novels based in ancient India and Hindu mythology. It's pretty safe to say that a book with those descriptions is like catnip for me, especially when it's being compared to The Wrath and the Dawn. This book had everything I could ever want– a non-western high fantasy, with two star crossed lovers destined to be enemies, and a whip smart protagonist.
I followed ALL the hype for this book. Though I couldn't afford to preorder, I followed the preorder campaign closely to get images of the beautiful character cards.
This book got so much hype, and I was thrilled. A diverse book with such an interesting, unique, promising premise deserved to be hyped up all over the book community.
As soon as my library had the book available, I snatched it up, and read the whole thing in two days.
It delivered on the hype, more than I could even imagine. I had been in a sort of reading slump at the time, but this book dragged me out of it, and onto a glorious rollercoaster of heartbreaking feelings, lush worldbuilding, and amazing characters. I thought it was perfect, honestly.
I'll link my goodreads review, which isn't as extensive as I wish it was, since I was planning to make a booktube video on the book at the time. Still, it shows how much I loved it.
But when I looked around book twitter and booktube for someone to yell about this book to, I found the field to be rather bare. Sure, there were some reviews and videos, one of my favorites being by Vicky Who Reads, a fellow teen reviewer. And the booktube videos were even more sparse.
The only people who were still talking about the book, it seemed, were the other desi readers and reviewers from the Reading Desi groupchat.
As disappointed as I was with this, it seems to be a sort of depressing pattern in online book communities. A diverse, amazing book is hyped up before its release, with people encouraging others to preorder, to reserve from the library, and to otherwise support the book.
Then, the book is released, and all of this hype fades away, leaving behind only a few excited people and a wonderful book that no one is talking about.
I'm as guilty of this as anyone. When books get pushed onto my backlist, the odds of my reading them get lower and lower. So how do I stop this from happening?
I'm planning on combing through my backlist of books, finding books I was so excited about but ultimately didn't get around to reading for whatever reason. It's a work in progress, but my list currently includes:
And so many other books. I want to get through my diverse backlist and hype them as much as they still deserve, just like I think The Tiger at Midnight deserves to be hyped.
I'm also eagerly waiting for The Archer at Dawn's release next year! I NEED to know what happens to Esha and Kunal.
Which other books do you guys think have been victim to this kind of pattern? And what are your favorite upcoming diverse books?