Top Ten Tuesday #62

Hi everyone! I’m back with a new Top Ten Tuesday post for you all this week, courtesy of the lovely ladies over at the Broke and The Bookish. This week’s prompt was meant to be Top Ten Favourite 2016 Releases This Year, but I’ve been focusing mainly on reading older books this year and I’ve only read 3 2016 releases, so instead of that topic, I’ve decided to do Top Ten Favourite Books That I’ve Read Outside my usual genre, so for me that would be fantasy or dystopia. I thought this would be a fun opportunity to get to rave about all of the non-fantasy/dystopia books that I love, since I feel like I don’t do that enough! So here we go, the books that I’ve enjoyed that are not in either of those genres:

1. Cross My Heart-Carmen Reid-Admittedly, I do read quite a bit of historical fiction, but not as much as fantasy, so I count it as outside my usual genre! I really loved this book, it was a really interesting WWII book about the Belgian resistance, which was something I had never read about before and I really enjoyed it.
2. The Book Thief-Markus Zusak-One of my absolute favourite books ever! Venturing outside of my fantasy bubble can be good for me every once in a while. This is hands down one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful books that I’ve ever read!
3. Thirteen Reasons Why-Jay Asher-I’m not the biggest contemporary reader, so I tend not to read books in that genre very often (mostly because they’re usually very romance centred!) but I really enjoyed both the story and the unique format of this one.
4. My Sister’s Keeper-Jodi Picoult-Definitely another of my all time favourite books ever and the one introduced me to her books and made me love her as an author. It’s a beautiful story (if slightly, okay, very tear inducing) and it’s one that has stuck with me, years after I’ve read it.
5. Blind Beauty-KM Peyton-I read a lot of horse books when I was younger, but this was one of my absolute favourites, it’s such a beautiful story and I reread it so many times, I loved it that much!
6. Dangerous Girls-Abigail Haas-This was such a twisty, mindfuck of a book, it was incredible! That ending…..I never saw that coming. Abigail Haas really played us all for fools!
7. The Storyteller-Jodi Picoult-This is one of my favourite of her books, it’s so different from her usual format of storytelling and it’s so beautiful and yet heartbreaking at the same time, and I felt so much for Minka, but I also admired her, she was so strong despite the hell that she went through. I just really loved this story and these characters so much!
8. Black Beauty-Anna Sewell-One of the only classic books that I really love, this was one of my favourite books as a kid, and still is, it’s such a timeless, gorgeous tale, sad, yes, but like most sad books, beautiful at the same time.
9. Ballet Shoes-Noel Streatfeild-I loved this book when I was a kid, it’s such a beautiful story and it’s not just about dancing, it’s about family and how families don’t necessarily have to be blood relations (the Fossil girls are sisters just as much as any other sisters are) and most of all about growing up. The books I’ve read of Noel Streatfeild’s were all great, but this one is definitely my favourite.
10. The Truth About Celia Frost-Celia Rawsthorne-This was a really enjoyable book, I loved the mystery and I was kept on my seat trying to figure out what was up with Celia.
11. Plain Truth-Jodi Picoult-I really loved this book because I learned so much about the Amish, a culture that I had never really known anything about before this book and I probably wouldn’t have known about if I hadn’t read this book!
12. The Pact-Jodi Picoult-This book is really sad, yes, but I loved the characters and the complex family dynamics and the intricate way that the story was told, it made the book really engrossing.
13. Nineteen Minutes-Jodi Picoult-This book is one of my favourites of hers, I loved that it brought light to bullying as it’s something that a lot of teenagers (including me though nowhere near the same level as Peter) go through and it definitely needs to be talked about.
14. Between Shades of Grey-Ruta Sepetys-This is such a gorgeous book and taught me about a part of WWII that I never would have known about without reading it. We learn so much about the western side of WWII, but the eastern side of WWII is never taught over here and it really opened my eyes to something that I never knew before.

I know I went a little over ten, but there are so many great non-fantasy books that I’ve loved that I wanted to talk about! What books were on your list this week? Did you do the actual topic or did you choose something different like me? Have you read any of these books? Did you like them? Let me know in the comments! Next week’s topic is a freebie, so I’m going to do Top Ten Things I Love To Do Beside Reading/Blogging, since as this is a book blog, I don’t often talk about what I like to aside from reading and blogging and I think this will be a good opportunity for you guys to get to know me better! That’s next week, but in the meantime, I will definitely have more blog posts for you guys during the week, so stay tuned!