Top Ten Tuesday #264

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all been doing well since I last did one of these, not much has changed here, we’re still largely in lockdown and I’m still pretty bored, though all the extra down time has allowed me to get a lot of reading done which is good and the weather has been nice so far this week, so you know…small silver linings.

Anyway, as it’s Tuesday, I’m back with another Top Ten Tuesday for you all, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re given largely free rein, as the topic was Reasons Why I Love….(insert topic here). I’ve decided to share the Reasons Why I Love VE Schwab’s books, as she has become one of my favourite authors in the last few years.

1. They remind me why I fell in love with reading in the first place

Not that I’ve ever fallen out of love with reading, but when I first read A Darker Shade of Magic, it reminded me exactly why reading became one of my favourite things. It takes a very special book to really transport you to another world and forget about the one you’re in for a while and A Darker Shade of Magic did that for me.

2. Her characters are brilliant

Nothing is ever black and white in a VE Schwab novel, all her characters live in various shades of morally grey. I mean she wrote two entire books about people who are objectively villains and yet we still fall in love with them because in a VE Schwab book nothing is ever as simple as villain/hero. I’ve fallen in love with so many of her characters over the four years I’ve been reading her books, and they are definitely one of the biggest draws for me.

3. She creates amazing worlds

World building is one of the biggest things to get right in any fantasy novel and VE Schwab nails it. She creates these brilliant worlds, detailed enough for you to get lost it but not so complicated that you find them confusing. I would love to get transported into the Londons and just explore!

4. No two of her books are the same, yet you can always feel that she wrote them

One of my favourite things about VE Schwab’s books is that though her books all have a very distinctive style and you can definitely tell that she is the author, no two of them are the same. She really does have something for everyone, whether you want to read about ghosts in haunted Edinburgh, or supervillains with ExtraOrdinary powers, she’s written so many books with different worlds and characters that there’s something for pretty much everyone if you look for it.

5. I love her writing style

Her writing is just brilliant and it really works for me as a reader? She never falls into the flowery prose trap, her writing is both beautiful and eminently quotable but it also always purposeful.

6. Reading her books inspired me to write again

When I picked up A Darker Shade of Magic in 2016, I hadn’t really written anything except fanfiction in a good four/five years and I’d kind of put my author dreams on the back burner. I fell so hard in love with A Darker Shade of Magic that it reminded me exactly why I’d started writing in the first place, and by the end of that year, I’d done my first NaNoWriMo.

7. She’s really open about the realities of publishing

This is more a general author life thing rather than specific to her books, but I appreciate how open she is about publishing and the difficulties she’s faced (as well as the great things that have happened to her) because it gives young writers like me a much clearer picture of the realities of the business.

8. She writes the best villains

This is kind of connected to #2, but villains are really hard to write well and VE Schwab does it with ease! Her villains are genuinely complex and scary (the Dane Twins anyone?) and she never falls into the trap of the cookie cutter, mustache twirling villain which I really appreciate.

9. She writes in different age categories so you could grow up with her books

Obviously this isn’t relevant to me, but it’s just something that I love, she writes middle grade, YA & Adult so if a kid started reading her books at 11 or 12, they could grow up through different age categories still reading her books.

10. Her books are generally paced really well

There have been some exceptions to this, as there always are but by and large, her books are brilliantly paced, which is something that always seems to be a massive issue for me with most books and I usually never have an issue with it in VE Schwab’s books: once I’ve started, I’m completely in it and carried along for the ride!

So there we go, those are the reasons I love VE Schwab’s books! Have you read any? Which one is your favourite? Are you planning on reading her books soon and want recommendations on where to start? Why do you love her books? Let me know in the comments!

I will be back next week with another Top Ten Tuesday, this time we’ll be talking about Opening Lines and I’ll be sharing my Top Ten Favourite Opening Lines of Books.