Day 1: Best Book You Read Last Year

Is this in the past year OR in the past 12 months?  Like, 2012 only or can I include the few books I've read at the beginning of the year. 

I think the winner for this one goes, hands down, to this book. 

The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan.  I bought this book on the kindle so my husband could read it while he was gone during his training and I bought a hard copy for myself, so that I could read it that day.  And I am pretty sure that I ignored my kids most of the day that I read this book.

I am such a sucker for Percy Jackson and the books that he stars in.  I'll have you know, that Percy Jackson has to be one of my favorite characters.  He's such a believable character to me, especially with the smart aleck routine, cocky attitude and having the desire to be normal. 

And, I've always appreciated that Rick Riordan has the ability to make an upbeat and humorous book that could easily be overshadowed by darker events and tones of the plot.  Of course, that's not to say that Rick Riordan wraps everything up for all the characters nice and easy.  I appreciated that he was able to kill off characters in The Titan's Curse and The Last Olympian and not just fuddy duddy red shirts, but people that we had seen since the first book that Percy liked.  And the cliffhanger in this book... WOW.  I just really love that Riordan is able to create a book with believable characters and relationships with a mythological twist. Some people think that he is too repetitive with his plots, but I think they need to remember that the targeted age group for these books is upper elementary to middle school.  And a lot of adults enjoy them too.  I'll have a more in depth review of the book up on this blog probably after the fourth book in the series has come out, and I'll take a look at each of them.