Happy New Year ’24, everyone! And at last, my favorite topic for the yearly wrap-up to Top 10 Tuesday: favorite books of 2023. We save the best for the end, and it is so much fun adding those best to Mount TBR. Here’s my list too.
Category: Books
All book reviews go here.
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December Wrap-Up
Three great December reads — all mysteries, all within this month, and all pretty good! I am already adding some of them to my Best of 2023 list.
Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin
Phenomenally well-written, terse suspense. Astronomer Vivvy Bouchet also has unsettling psychic insight and gets pulled into looking for a missing girl by cops. Is she a quack or is it real – nobody can make up their mind about it. As a narrator, Vivvy is unusually talkative but also just a bit unreliable, and this makes her a supremely interesting character. Equally interesting is her public fight with a cult-ish conspiracy podcaster Bubba Guns.
The tense pacing of the first half dwindles later, but Heaberlin still manages a very decent wrap-up at the end. I hear the book’s already up for TV adaptation. And with a title like that, how can you possibly ignore this book? Highly recommended!
Wherever She Goes by Kelley Armstrong
Another solid thriller from Armstrong. Recently divorced single mother Aubrey Finch believes she has spotted a kidnapping, but nobody wants to believe her. But Finch has other ghosts from her past, which compel her to pursue the case and in the process, reveal her own ghosts to the public eye. The pacing is excellent. If you can ignore the fact that most of Armstrong’s heroines seem very alike, you will like this one — not as much as the Rockton series, but still quite engrossing.
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Ten Deliciously Dark Reads
Happy Halloween! And right on cue, we have Top 10 Tuesday giving out a Halloween freebie treat. I’m by no means a horror fan, but I will try to wrap up the month with top 10 spooktastic and deliciously dark reads.
1 / The Shepherd King series by Rachel Gillig
Phenomenally gothic and creepy. This duology took me completely by surprise and got me out of my reader’s block. Absolutely mindblowing world-building, plot AND writing.
2 / The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe
In Udolpho, young Emily St. Aubere finds herself orphaned and in the clutches of her wicked uncle-in-law, Montoni. Montoni is up to no good, and more than one skeleton hides in his closet. This is Gothic suspense at its finest, and is highly recommended.
3 / Cry Baby Hollow by Aimee Love
I found this on Goodreads for lesser known Urban Fantasy reads. One of the reviewers said that the “Hollow” was for “holler” — and this is not about your friendly neighborhood wolf. It was such a change from the usual Urban Fantasy, recommended.
It’s time for Top 10 Tuesday again! This week we are looking at books that caught us by surprise – for better or for worse – and I’m sticking to the “plot twist”. Here are 10 books that went to a totally unexpected place for me.
1 | Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
All that obsession with the first Mrs. Maxim de Winter was bound to end some time.
2 | The Queen of Attolia/ The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner
A thief ends up marrying the lady who cut off his hand.
3 | One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
A brainiac, an athlete, a princess, a criminal and a “basket case” walk into detention.
4 | Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
No, Jane – Rochester is not the hero you thought him to be…
5 | Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
There are worlds within worlds, and nothing is as simple as it seems.
6 | Game of Thrones/ A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin
Anyone remember the infamous Red Wedding scene (from the show)? Phew!
7 | The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Epic and sensational – not a Biblical premise anyone could’ve guessed.
8 | In the Woods by Tana French
The reveal of the culprit was slow and right at the end – made me rant full time.
9 | The Inugami Curse by Seishi Yokomizo
Not the whodunnit, but the how-dunnit was the real plot twist here.
10 | We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Heart-wrenching tale full of strange experiments and the repercussions.
So, what’s your list looking like? Any jaw-dropping plot twists, unexpected endings, other things that caught you by surprise?
For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, we are looking at bookish wishes. I am taking it rather literally, about bad bargains, perilous wishes and the hazards of ambition. Here’s a quick list:
1 | Shakespeare’s Macbeth – Prophecies, anyone?
2 | Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine – This heroine has been given the gift of obedience!
3 | Half Magic by Edward Eager – Only half of what these kids wish for comes true
4 | Five Children and It by Edith Nesbit – These kids’ wishes will expire promptly at sunset.
5 | Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll – Tall or short, please can she make up her mind?
6 | The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde – He wished all of his aging on a portrait.
7 | Death Note by Tsugumi Ohba – Writing down criminals’ names in a magical death book is not so heroic.
8 | The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien – You get a ring of invisibility but just makes Sauron see you more clearly.
9 | Faust by Goethe – This guy though success on earth is worth selling his soul away.
10 | The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill by Rowenna Miller – Experimenting with fairy contracts? Oops!
What do you think? Do you have any books to add to this dangerous booklist on worst bookish wishes ever?
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday has us looking at top 10 books that we recommend often to fellow bloggers and friends. Since May is also the month for Wyrd & Wonder, I’m going to stick to some underrated books from fantasy fiction that I do like to clobber people with.
The wonderful Wyrd & Wonder has started off again, hosted by Annemieke (A Dance With Books), Ariane (The Book Nook), Jorie (Jorie Loves A Story), Lisa (Dear Geek Place) and Imyril (There’s Always Room For One More). Thanks so much to them for all the effort that goes into this!
This Sunday, the prompt is top 5 magical systems (or spells) that we have come across in books. Obviously, world-building plays a huge role, but my picks are based on certain really striking book scenes.
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10 Random Books from the Shelf
This week’s Top 10 Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) has an interesting theme and finally had me dropping the laziness and getting back to blog. We pick 10 random books from the shelf (whether from the read or TBR pile) — well actually: The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf.
Here are my picks. Most of these are still unread or only halfway through, so if you’ve read these before, share your reviews please!
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This week we have a genre freebie for Top 10 Tuesday, and I am going with Top 10 Mythological Fantasy Books. I really do like a plot where the gods get interested in mortal affairs, leading to much chaos — and great world-building.
1 / The Chalion Series / World of the Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold
2 / Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin
3 / Paternus Trilogy by Dyrk Ashton
4 / Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson
5 / Edda of Burdens trilogy by Elizabeth Bear
6 / The Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner
7 / Tales of the Magatama Series by Noriko Ogiwara
8 / Indulgence Series by Erin Kellison
9 / The Wicked + The Divine saga by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
10 / The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
Have you read or are you interested any of these mythological fantasy books? Please feel free to leave as many recs as possible too!