Top Ten Tuesday #208

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, I had a rather busy one, with a final dinner for Trampolining on Wednesday, Sports Ball on Friday and then a day out to the Edinburgh Dungeons for a friend’s birthday on Saturday. The Edinburgh dungeons were really awesome, but it took us over two hours to get home because all our trains kept being cancelled which was severely annoying.

Anyway, since it’s Tuesday, I have another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re talking the First Ten Books We Reviewed which should be a fun one, to look back at the early days of this blog, but I won’t be sharing links to any of the reviews because they were all pretty terrible (you can find them in the drop down menu if you really want to see them!). So here we go, the first ten books I reviewed:

1. Dangerous Girls-Abigail Haas

My first ever review, and it was a 4 star one, so a nice start to my blog. The review itself was pretty terrible, I hadn’t really got the art of reviewing down yet, but I really enjoyed the book, it was a fun and engrossing psychological thriller with an ending that has basically ruined all other thrillers for me, because it was so shocking that nothing else has ever lived up.

2. Skulduggery Pleasant: The Last Stand of Dead Men

Yes, I know, it seems strange for one of my first reviews to be the eighth book in a series, but I’d been reading Skulduggery Pleasant since long before I started the blog, I think I started them in 2008/2009? Anyway, this book is one of my favourites of the Skulduggery Pleasant series, it was such an exciting book and a great, what was then penultimate book to the series (it has since been extended).

3. Specials-Scott Westerfeld

The third book in the Uglies series, I’d got the first book as a birthday present from my friend Hannah and then got the others for myself because I enjoyed it. Sadly the rest of the series went downhill, and although my review of this book was quite glowing at the time, I’ve kind of changed my opinion in the five years since.

4. Son of Black Beauty-Phyllis Briggs

This book is kind of like a faux sequel to Black Beauty, but nowhere near as good, the story just wasn’t as interesting, and I didn’t really like the horse narrator, Stardust and it just wasn’t written as well as Black Beauty was.

5. Extras-Scott Westerfeld

This is one of those series that didn’t really need another book, and one was retconned in at the last minute because the trilogy did so well. I found Aya as the narrator kind of infuriating and honestly it barely tied into the main series at all.

6. Split Second-Sophie McKenzie

I really loved this book and I think it’s even more relevant now than when I read it because of everything that’s been happening with Brexit, it shows a very scary portrayal of what a corrupt government could look like, and it’s actually kind of horrifying seeing the parallels between the politicians in this book and our own.

7. The Maze Runner-James Dashner

I got this book from my friend Hannah as a Christmas present and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it at first, but I ended up really enjoying it, it was a fun, fast paced dystopia with a really different premise and going to see the film of this was the first thing that Hannah, Zoe and I did as a group, so in that respect, it’s an important book for me!

8. The Scorch Trials-James Dashner

I think I was a bit generous on this book when I reviewed it for the first time, because when I watched the film, I struggled to remember why I liked the book so much in the first place, Still, I gave it five stars at the time, so there must have been something that I really loved about it.

9. The Death Cure-James Dashner

The final book in the Maze Runner trilogy and again I feel like I might have been a little generous on this book, I’m not sure I’d give it a five star rating if I read it again now, but at the time, I thought it was a good conclusion to the trilogy and I was feeling incredibly emotionally gut punched because of page 250 (Maze Runner fans will KNOW).

10. Burn-Julianna Baggott

The final book in the Pure trilogy, I’d read the first two in the couple of years before I started blogging. It’s a really cool concept, the world has been destroyed by a nuclear apocalypse and the world is split into Wretches, those who have suffered fusings(objects or even people attached to them) and those who were saved, taken into a safe place called the Dome and are therefore known as Pure. I did like the final book in the series and thought it was a relatively satisfying ending, though there were some things I still want answers to.

So there we go, the first ten books I reviewed. It’s weird looking back on it, because it’s quite a strange mix of books, only the one fantasy and the rest being dystopia and then Son of Black Beauty which is kind of an outlier. It does reflect my reading tastes in 2014 quite well because I did read a LOT of dystopia back then, but it’s not so reflective of what I read now.

Next week’s topic is Inspirational/Thought Provoking Book Quotes, which should be a fun one as I love sharing book quotes. Meanwhile, I should have a review up for you this week, as I just finished A Girl Called Shameless, so keep an eye out for that.