Top Ten Tuesday #137

Hi everyone! Can you believe it’s less than two weeks to Christmas now? I certainly can’t! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, I had my last two Uni Christmas dinners and spent the weekend binge-watching Season 2 of The Crown (so, so good!) so all in all it wasn’t a bad way to end the week. The rest of this week will be spent relaxing before my friends come up to join me for our annual Christmas meet up on Saturday.

Anyway, as it’s Tuesday, it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to the lovely ladies over at The Broke and The Bookish. This week we’re talking Best Books of 2017, as there is only a few weeks till it’s over. For some, it might be a bit early to this list, but as I will probably only read two or three more books before 2017 is over, it’s the perfect time for me! So here we go, my Top Ten (and I am going to try to stick to ten!) Books of 2017:

1. A Conjuring of Light-VE Schwab-5 stars

I had to start with this one, the book that set an impossibly high standard for all of my other reads of the year because it was just that brilliant. It was hard to say goodbye to Lila, Kell and Rhy (at least for the time being, Schwab has announced a spin off series to Shades of Magic which she has heavily hinted the three will be making an appearance in) but this was the perfect conclusion to their story.

2. The Song Rising-Samantha Shannon-5 stars

My only other 5 star read of the year, this was an action packed, tightly paced book full of amazing character development, the shorter book definitely worked a lot better for this story and am now anxious to see where Paige ends up in the next book. Whilst I may have started off having lukewarm feelings about this series, I can definitely now call it a favourite.

3. Six of Crows-Leigh Bardugo-4 stars

Yup, I’m jumping on the Six of Crows bandwagon, at last! The cast of characters that Bardugo created was wildly entertaining, and once you got into the action, it happened a breakneck speed and I could barely put the book down for even a second. I have four Bardugo books on my #RockMyTBR Challenge for 2018, so I think it’s safe to say that I am firmly on the bandwagon.

4. A Court of Mist and Fury-Sarah J Maas-4 stars

I was so wary of the hype on this one, but it definitely lived up to it, it was so much better than the first book of the series, we got new characters, new settings, new villains and Feyre’s character development was brilliant. I still have yet to read the third book of the series yet, but I’m actually excited to now!

5. Caraval-Stephanie Garber-4 stars

I loved the magical world building, the beautiful writing and the engaging characters in Stephanie Garber’s debut novel. I would love to get to be a spectator of Caraval, because it sounds like it would be incredible to watch.

6. Scythe-Neal Shusterman-3.5 stars

Whilst I didn’t love this offering of Neal Shusterman’s as much as I adored Unwind, I still enjoyed the interesting world that he created and thought that the concept of this book was absolutely amazing, so it still makes my favourites list for this year.

7. The Girl From Everywhere-Heidi Heilig-3.5 stars

I read this book after a couple of underwhelming ones and it was really nice to read something that I genuinely enjoyed again. I loved the setting for this one, I’ve never read anything set in Hawaii before, and it sounded beautiful. Plus a time travelling pirate ship? Pretty darn awesome. I thought the whole thing was very creative and beautifully written, the only shame was that I didn’t connect to the main character more.

8. The Crown’s Game-Evelyn Skye-3.5 stars

This book had an amazing setting, a really cool magical system, great characters, pretty writing and most importantly of all lots of food! I would have loved it even more if it had been paced just a little bit better, but overall it was really enjoyable (and there was a masquerade, so that would have saved the book even if I’d hated the rest of it)!

9. Under Rose Tainted Skies-Louise Gornall-3.5 stars

I’ve discovered over the years that when it comes to YA contemporaries, mental health focused ones are my favourites, perhaps because they are usually harder hitting than ones focusing on romance. This one is definitely one of my favourites that I’ve read, the fact that the author is #ownvoices for the conditions she writes about definitely comes through because Norah’s voice just feels so authentic.

10. Daughter of The Pirate King-Tricia Levenseller-3 stars

In terms of fun factor, this one would have got five stars, it was only my analytical reviewer brain that stopped me from giving it that, it was definitely the most fun that I had whilst reading this year, so for that alone it makes it on to my best of the year list. I loved Alosa and that was really what made the book for me, she was just such an amazing MC. I’m hoping in the next book there might be a little more pirating though!

So there we go, my favourite books of 2017! This list was a bit of a weird one for me, because obviously as you can see, most of what I’ve read this year has been 3.5 stars (in fact there’s only a few books on my GR Challenge this year that got either more or less than that) but I feel like people see 3 (even if it’s followed by .5) and think I didn’t enjoy a book and that’s just not true, I still really enjoyed a book that got 3.5 stars, it just didn’t quite make it to what I consider to be 4. What were your favourite books of 2017? Did any of mine make your list? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings, which I will still be doing even though I know it’s unlikely Santa will bring any books this year as Santa has spent the year complaining about how many books I have! Still I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a gift card to Waterstones, or just so money that I can spend on books.

I’ve been tagged in a Christmas book tag, so I will probably have that up very soon, I also have plans for a discussion post and am planning some stuff for my Writing Corner, so hopefully I should be able to end this blogging year with a bang!