Top Ten Tuesday #316

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all been having a good week since I last did one of these, it’s my last week of my holiday in Scotland and I’ve got some fun plans for this week, I’m going to see a friend tomorrow and I’m going riding with my dad on Saturday so it should be a nice week.

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so that means another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week was meant to be Book Titles That Are Complete Sentences, but I found it really hard to come up with titles for that, so I’ve tweaked it slightly and gone for Book Titles With Character Names. This seems to be a trend mainly for children’s/middle grade books but I did find a few YA and adult books that also had character names in the title. So here we go:

1. Mia Goes Fourth-Meg Cabot

The fourth book in the Princess Diaries series following reluctant Princess Mia Thermopolis and her adventures in learning to be a princess whilst still trying to be a normal teenager and her up and down relationship with Michael Moscovitz. I read this one a while back so I can’t really remember exactly what I thought about it, but I do remember that Book Mia annoyed me way more than Movie Mia did.

2. A Study in Charlotte-Brittany Cavallaro

Holmes’ and Watson’s descendants Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes are framed for murder and have to solve the case and find the real killer to clear their names. I wasn’t a fan of this, I’m usually a fan of mysteries but the character spoiled this one for me. The mystery was actually relatively engaging, but Charlotte and Jamie were merely carbon copies of Holmes and Watson without any real personalities of their own. Jamie also had some unaddressed anger issues that I wasn’t thrilled with. There are four books in this series, but I have no plans to read the rest.

3. Artemis Fowl and The Opal Deception-Eoin Colfer

All the books in the Artemis Fowl series have the main character’s name in them, but I chose the fourth one for my list because it was my favourite of the series. It marked the return of main series villain, pixie Opal Koboi and her renewed efforts at rebellion, that combined with the fallout of the events of The Eternity Code made this a very exciting book.

4. What Katy Did-Susan Coolidge

I read this one a while back, so I don’t remember everything about it, but I do remember enjoying reading about Katy’s hijinks.

5. Charlie and The Chocolate Factory-Roald Dahl

I’m sure most people are probably familiar with Roald Dahl’s story of a young boy who wins the chance to visit Willy Wonka’s amazing chocolate factory. Roald Dahl was a childhood staple for me and I remember really enjoying this book as a kid (though I am more aware of Dahl’s many issues now than I was when I was a kid).

6. The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina-Caroline Lawrence

One of my favourite series as a kid (though I never did actually finish it, I borrowed most of the books from the library and found them difficult to find after the 10th one). This sixth book follows heroine Flavia Gemina as she attempts to uncover the motives of a mysterious widow pursuing her father. This wasn’t my favourite book in the series because despite Flavia being the main character in the series, I always remember liking Jonathan and Nubia more than I did her.

7. Rose Under Fire-Elizabeth Wein

A companion novel of sorts to Code Name Verity, this story follows ATA pilot Rose Justice as she is captured by the Nazis and sent to Ravensbrück. I didn’t love this one as much as Code Name Verity, but it was still an incredibly emotional read (I actually cried whilst reading which is not something I ever do) and I found the main character very relatable. I also really loved how female focused this book was as one of my favourite aspects of Code Name Verity was its focus on female friendship and that’s true of this book too.

8. Magnus Chase and The Sword of Summer-Rick Riordan

The first book in Rick Riordan’s Norse mythology series. I know a lot of people didn’t like this series as much as Percy Jackson, but I really enjoyed it, especially this first book. Magnus does have some similarities with Percy but I didn’t think he was a carbon copy which seemed to be a complaint many people had. It was a super fun story and I love learning more about Norse mythology which I wasn’t massively familiar with before reading this book. I also really loved that this series has a platonic male/female friendship in it because they are still infuriatingly difficult to find in books!

9. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue-VE Schwab

I’m sure I probably don’t need to tell you guys what this one is about, given how big it has been since its release. Addie is definitely very different to the types of books I usually like, slower, more descriptive and more romance focused but I really enjoyed it. I loved the characters and was definitely drawn into the emotion of the story. The plot definitely could have been stronger, but the fact that I loved the characters, especially Henry made up for that.

10. Blue Lily, Lily Blue-Maggie Stiefvater

The third book of The Raven Cycle was actually my least favourite of the series because it felt fairly fillery, it felt more like it existed to be the bridge book before the final conclusion than having much plot of its own. The plot were it did exist also felt fairly muddled and was kind of hard to follow. Six years after reading this book I honestly couldn’t tell you much about it, and I think that tells you all you need to know.

So there we go, those are some books with character names in the title! Can you think of any books that have characters’ names in the title? Have you read any of these? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is Book Quotes on whichever theme we chose and since I am a History nerd, I’m going to share History themed book quotes.