Top Ten Tuesday #314

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, I’m up in Stirling for the next three weeks on holiday with my family so it will be nice being somewhere other than at home for a while!

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so that means another Top Ten Tuesday courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s is a fairly straightforward one, Ten Most Recent Reads, though I have to admit, I’ve not read as many books this year as I would have liked to as I’ve been in an extended reading slump since January and haven’t actually finished an awful lot of books, so a few of these will be from the end of last year. But here we go, my Ten Most Recent Reads:

1. The Unbound-VE Schwab-Current read

I’d hoped to have finished this by the time I did this post but unfortunately I seem to have stalled at around Chapter 24. I don’t know how much of it is my reading slump and how much is the book but I’m not enjoying it as much as I would normally enjoy a Schwab book.

2. Olive, Mabel & Me-Andrew Cotter-Finished 14th April

One of my favourite reads of this year, I loved listening to Andrew Cotter talk about his adventures with his Labradors, a fun, short listen was exactly what I needed after finishing a lengthy audiobook.

3. Lore-Alexandra Bracken-Finished 31st March

I was really looking forward to this one and unfortunately felt quite let down by it. It was complicated and confusing with flat characters and far too much violent misogyny. Such a shame because I usually love Greek mythology based books so much and it sounded so promising.

4. The Silvered Serpents-Roshani Chokshi-Finished 9th March

The Gilded Wolves was one of my favourite books of last year, so I was a little disappointed that I didn’t love The Silvered Serpents quite as much. It was very slow paced, and the plot was fairly thin on the ground, the fact that I already loved the characters was the saving grace of this book. I’m still looking forward to The Bronzed Beasts and I hope it is better for me than this one was.

5. The Midnight Library-Matt Haig-Finished 31st January

The concept for The Midnight Library was great. The execution? Somewhat lacking. It was quite slow for such a short book and I found the characterisation of Nora fairly flat, plus the world building around The Midnight Library was more minimal than I would have liked. The ending also really annoyed me because it felt super predictable.

6. Seasons of War-Derek Landy-Finished 9th January

I was SO DISAPPOINTED. I love Skulduggery Pleasant so much, and this was such a let down. It was so slow, it had too many weird tangential subplots & the writing was weaker than it has been in other books. I did appreciate the focus on Val’s mental health journey because that isn’t featured enough in fantasy books, but that was one of the few good aspects in an otherwise very messy book.

7. Kingdom of The Wicked-Keri Mansicalco-Finished 31st December

In a running theme of this list apparently, I was a little disappointed with this book. It was a super hyped release and it ended up being fairly underwhelming for me? It was very slow paced, the world building was weak and I found Emilia kind of bland as a main character. I loved the concept for the book but I didn’t think the execution lived up to it.

8. Good Omens-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman-Finished 17th December

UGH I WAS SO SAD ABOUT THIS ONE. I loved the TV miniseries, I thought it was so fun and the book? Not so much. The plot was confusing and difficult to follow, it relied on a lot of racist, sexist and homophobic stereotypes for its humour and the pacing was super off. Definitely recommend the TV show more for this one.

9. The Book of Two Ways-Jodi Picoult-Finished 12th December

I love Jodi Picoult books but this one wasn’t her best. The premise was great, kind of like a Sliding Doors deal, but I felt overloaded with all the technical information and there were too many subplots to the story, so it felt like the plot lacked focus. I also found it difficult to like or connect to Dawn which made it hard to enjoy the book.

10. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin-Roseanne A. Brown-Finished 26th November

I feel like all I’ve done is complain about the books I’ve read in this list, so let’s end up on a happier note: I really enjoyed this one! There were a few pacing issues (unusually for me, fast pacing rather than slow!) and the magic system was slightly confusing but I really loved the characters and the plot was generally exciting and engaging, I’m looking forward to the sequel coming out later this year.

So there we go, those were my ten most recent reads. It’s been a pretty slow and underwhelming reading year so far for me, so I really hope that changes soon! How much have you read this year? Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments!

I’ll be back next Tuesday with another Top Ten Tuesday, this time we’ll be talking about Books With Nature on The Cover, so another cover topic for you all (hey you got a brief break from it this week!).