For previous posts and future FFF topics check out my Friday Favorite Five page here.
Favorite Five Books Told in First Person POV
I really love First Person POV. As a reader who likes to get close to characters, this allows me to get really close to our main character. First Person does have its pitfalls, however. You only know what that character is thinking. Also, your main character could be a total liar and an unreliable narrator–they could be fooling you the entire book! First person can be limiting, but it also has some interesting things going for it. This will be a tough list because I’m going to try and stay away from my most frequently mentioned books…like Kushiel’s Dart by Carey (there, I mentioned it anyway!).
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Storm Front (The Dresden Files) by Jim Butcher
I really love The Dresden Files. After reading the entire series last year, Harry has earned a special place in my heart. A lot of Urban Fantasy is told in First Person. I think it works well for a genre that has a lot of focus on solving crimes and other puzzles, one person trying to put everything together.
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Flesh and Spirit (Lighthouse Duet) by Carol Berg
Over the last few years, Carol Berg has become one of my favorite fantasy authors. As much as I love Transformation and her Rai Kirah series, I was blown away by her Lighthouse Duet. Valen starts out an extremely selfish character and at first you want to hate him a little. He reminds me a bit of Prince Aleksander from Rai Kirah (one of my favorite characters) but here he’s the main character. I loved reading this book and seeing things being revealed over the course of it, it was like a fun puzzle speculating what was to come every few chapters and seeing whether or not I was right with my guesses.
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Red Rising (Red Rising) by Pierce Brown
Okay, I know I have mentioned this one a couple of times before, but I really love Red Rising! The new series has veered off with other POV’s, but for the first trilogy we’re following Darrow from his POV. I think for the scope of what the story was, FP was a good choice, it puts you in Darrow’s shoes and keeps you in the thick of the action. I am sort of glad that things have been expanded to other POV’s in the new trilogy though, because I think the scope of the story has become much bigger than Darrow (as much as I love him. Darrow!)
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Uprooted by Naomi Novik
This is such a great book. I loved it even if the ending disappointed me (personally–it worked really great for the story though!). I think I read this book in something like five hours, staying up late reading into the night. This is an example where we really get to explore things that are unfamiliar along side of our POV character. It’s great seeing things from the character’s perspectives for stories like this. It also makes this one a much more personal journey.
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The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
I love this book sooooo much. It just ticks so many boxes for me as far as things I love in a good story. Lovely and dream-like prose, a beautiful romance, and a fairy-tale like feel. There’s also great character arcs. This one was one of my favorite reads of 2017 for a reason, just saying. 😀
Those are my pics for this week! What are some of your favorite First Person POV reads? Thoughts on my picks? Leave a note in the comments, I’d love to chat!
Way Too Fantasy 
I still haven’t gotten to A Star-Touched Queen, but I’m glad you loved it. I’ll bump it up the ladder of my massive TBR 🙂
It was one of those books that just hit all the right spots for me. I hope you enjoy it if you get to it!
I should read A Star Touched Queen at some point. One day in the very far future where I actually catch up with all my reading, blogging and reviewing – or did I just drift off into my own fantasy world.
Lynn 😀
I think the only way I could catch up is if time stopped somehow 🤣. At least we know that we’ll never run out of things to read, lol!
I haven’t read Uprooted but Spinning Silver was amazing, and us in my top five for 2019. That book has multiple first person POVs that intersect very well together.
Really? I have Spinning Silver in my audio tbr pile. I’ll have to bump it up a bit.
Never heard of Carol Berg – is it very romance-y?
No, not romance-y at all. I think there is a (very very) slight romance at some point but it’s in no way shape or form a romance or romance heavy or even medium romance.
Cool! Will put it on my TBR then 😀 – thanks!
Hope you enjoy!
I love Uprooted ❤ Great choice!!
Thanks! It’s a great book. 🙂
Ha! I’ve been drafting a post on why I love first person PoVs so this is great timing. 😀 I love, love, love Carol Berg and I’ve been meaning to read the Lighthouse books by the end of the year. Her character work is just SO exquisitely good. *chefs kiss* And I actually really like the fact that first-person narrators could be lying through their teeth. 😀 Like with the Kingkiller books. I’m still not sure if Kvothe is outright lying or if he’s just concealing stuff, but there’s definitely *something* going on and I want to know so badly.
When I read Lighthouse it was part of a read along on r/fantasy and each week I had to take notes every few chapters and post my thoughts. Reading it that way made it so clear that Berg is not only a master of characters, but of misdirection through first person POV. Honestly, so glad I read them that way, even if it took longer. Otherwise there is so much set up I would have missed and speculation I would have missed out on. I LOVE BERG TOO. ❤ ❤ ❤ There is one moment in the books that is rather, hmmm, questionable, but I still really loved those books and the protag has become a favorite. Hope you enjoy them. 🙂
There is so much debate about Kingkiller and whether or not Kote/Kvothe is a reliable narrator. I also think a lot about it because Rothfuss is *also* a master of misdirection and has come right out and said 'the story you think I'm telling isn't the story I'm actually telling' and illustrated that with his Princess and Mr. Whiffle book. Have you read Jo Walton's readalong of Kingkiller on tor.com? It's fantastic. There's so many interesting theories, in the comments as well. I don't know where it's going to end up, but I'm hoping I'll be surprised. 🙂
WELL, GUESS WHO JUST ORDERED BOTH BOOKS? :DD Though apparently the paperback versions aren’t available in Canada anymore (you can imagine me clutching my chest and sobbing at the sky) so I’m getting used copies! Hopefully they’re in as good of a condition as the descriptions say. But god, you made me so excited for it!! Give me ALL the narrator misdirection and trickery!
And I went down a serious Kingkiller rabbit hole when I first read the books and boy, there are a lot of weird theories out there, and people make really good arguments for them lol. I haven’t seen the readalong posts, though, so I’ll need to check them out!
I really hope I didn’t oversell them and that you love them as much as I did, haha. I bought used copies too! I don’t even know if I looked for new copies at the time so not sure what’s even available here… lol
Yeah I’m glad the perspective in the new red rising boos have expanded (as much as I love Darrow too!) Great list!
Yeah, I really am looking forward to the new one too, as soon as I feel like sitting down for that 34 hour read I’ll get to it, lol. Thanks! 🙂