Top Ten Tuesday #333

Hi all! I hope you’ve had a good week since I last did one of these, I had a lovely birthday on Sunday, lunch with my friend was so nice and I had my usual evening of musicals, my annual birthday watch of Moulin Rouge of course, and I also finally got around to watching In The Heights, which was a lot of fun (though I do slightly begrudge the whole new cinema releases being £15.99 to RENT on Amazon, if you’re going to charge me that much, I’d rather just buy the film!). I also binged the final series of Lucifer in 2 days and I HAVE FEELINGS. MANY MANY MANY FEELINGS, so if you’ve seen it and want to chat, then drop me a line in the comments!

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, so that means another Top Ten Tuesday courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re talking Books With Numbers In The Title, a topic we did two years ago, but it turns out there are quite a lot of books with numbers in the title, so I’m happily bringing it back for a part 2! Here we go, Books With Numbers In The Title:

1. Ninth House-Leigh Bardugo

This one just missed the cut off for my last list on this topic as it wasn’t out yet! I have to admit, Bardugo’s adult debut isn’t my favourite of her books, as it has a major pacing problem and I didn’t really connect to any of the characters. Still I did love seeing a fantasy with University as the setting, and I do think the series has potential, so I’m hoping when the next book comes out, I’ll enjoy that one more now that all of the dense world building has been set up!

2. The Second Summer of The Sisterhood-Ann Brashares

The sequel to the first Traveling Pants book is probably my favourite of the four sequels (though I never actually read the fifth book!) though that was probably largely due to Bridget’s story of connecting with her grandmother and learning more about her mother, and Tibby coming to terms with her grief over Bailey’s death, as I can’t really remember much about Lena and Carmen’s stories!

3. A Thousand Perfect Notes-CG Drews

CG Drews (aka Paper Fury)’s debut is not my usual kind of book, I’m not a big contemporary reader and I did have some of the same problems I always have with contemporaries: pacing and lacking in plot. However, I did really like the characters and I thought Drews did a good job of portraying the abuse that Beck suffered at the hands of his mother, and the friendship between the two main characters was lovely.

4. The One Dollar Horse-Lauren St John

I don’t read all that many horse books anymore because they tend to be aimed for a younger audience: where are all the horse books for the horse obsessed kids who grew up to be still horse obsessed adults? Anyway, I was probably slightly above the target age range for this book when I read it at 16/17, but it was still a lovely read, a little unrealistic that an inexperienced rider with no money and a horse in incredibly poor condition would be able to get up to Badminton level in two years, but since horse fiction is all about wish fulfilment, it doesn’t really matter and this book definitely gave me lots of nostalgia for my childhood horse reads!

5. Split Second-Sophie McKenzie

I was such a massive fan of Sophie McKenzie from about 16-18, and this was one of my favourites of her books. It’s a dystopia, but definitely feels different to the Divergents, Maze Runners and Hunger Games of the world, as it’s more of a near future type dystopia, so the London featured feels very similar to our London, and the setting being in the UK was also fairly unusual as I can’t think of many UK set dystopias (or at least I’d read very few when I read this book, I know of a few more now). It’s such an action packed, explosive read, with tons of twists and turns and I highly recommend it if you like dystopia.

6. Second Glance-Jodi Picoult

Second Glance has always struck me as the most unique of Picoult’s books because it combines a lot of different genres into one book: you have the paranormal aspects, a bit of a murder mystery, historical elements etc. It doesn’t seem like it should work, but I found this a really fascinating read, especially learning about the Vermont eugenics project from the 1930s, which I have to admit, I knew next to nothing about before reading this book. My Sister’s Keeper is still my favourite Picoult book, but this one is definitely up there too.

7. 13 Minutes-Sarah Pinborough

I’m notoriously picky about thrillers, because I find that so often they really don’t shock me! But this one definitely took me by surprise, there were so many twists and just when I thought I’d worked everything out (and was feeling really smug about doing so), another twist came along, and knocked all that out from under me. The way that this book explores toxic female friendships is also really well done. If you’re wanting an incredibly well crafted mystery with lots of surprises, I highly recommend this book!

8. The Book of Two Ways-Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult’s most recent book is definitely not my favourite of hers, I didn’t really connect to the characters, and there was a bit of an overload of technical information about Egyptology and Quantum physics. I felt like the book tried to do too much to be honest, and had Picoult just focused on one strand and built up the characters more, I might have connected more to it.

9. Six Crimson Cranes-Elizabeth Lim

I’ve not read this one yet, I meant to, I even had an e-ARC from Netgalley, but I’ve been in such a slump this year that I never got around to it! I definitely want to at some point though, I’m always looking for unique fairytale retellings, and this one is based on “The Wild Swans”, a Hans Christian Andersen story that I’d not actually heard of before, so I’d be interested to see how Lim tackles it and incorporates East Asian folklore into the story as well.

10. A Thousand Ships-Natalie Haynes

Apparently this year has been the year of Greek mythology, between The Song of Achilles, Lore and Ariadne, I’ve been reading quite a bit of Greek mythology inspired stories, and adding even more to my TBR! I’m definitely looking forward to trying this one, as it retells the Trojan War from the perspective of the women involved which I think will be really cool, I love stories that traditionally focus on men being retold to centre women’s perspectives!

So there we go, more books with numbers in the title! Have you read any of these? Do you want to? What books with numbers in them were on your list this week? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is our annual Autumn TBR list, and though I’ve been doing terribly on my TBRs this year, I still always enjoy doing these topics!