Top Ten Tuesday #407

Hi everyone, I hope you’ve had a good week since I last did one of these! As I mentioned in my last TTT, I went to see Dirty Dancing on Friday with my family and it was a really fun night. Having only seen the show before in German, and it being a good ten years ago, it felt like a whole new experience because I really didn’t remember all that much from the last time I saw it, so I was definitely surprised by certain things! If you’re in London, I definitely recommend going to see the show before it closes in April and it’s actually going on tour this year as well, so check if it’s coming to a city near you. The only thing I would say is that the Friday evening show was a bit of a late one, it started at 8.30 as they do an early Friday evening show as well, so it didn’t finish until about 11.00, which is later than I’m usually used to getting out of the theatre!

It was also my blogaversary yesterday, nine years if you can believe it! I’ll be doing a special Jo Talks post to mark the occasion at some point this week.

Anyway, as ever, today’s Top Ten Tuesday is courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl and as you can probably tell by the custom banner (thanks again to Jana) today we’re doing a Love/Valentine’s Freebie in honour of Valentine’s Day. I have to admit, I always struggle with this freebie because I’m just not much into Valentine’s Day (and I’ve been doing these freebies for so long now that it’s hard to come up with something I haven’t done before!) but I’m going fairly simple today and sharing Books With Hearts On The Cover as it’s been a while since I’ve done a cover topic. So here we go:

1. Heartless-Marissa Meyer

This seemed like the most obvious choice for this cover topic, given that the book is an origin story of the Queen of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland, the title is Heartless and the cover is well….covered in hearts. This is the UK edition of the book, and my favourite details of the cover is the way the face is a heart shape, I thought that was so cool. The colours are also perfect for Valentine’s Day. Be warned though, there will be no happy ever afters here……

2. P.S. I Love You-Cecelia Ahern

With a title like that, this book was a natural fit for this cover topic. I’ll admit, it’s not really a favourite of mine, but I do love this cover, purple is my favourite colour and I love all the swirly hearts, I think they’re so pretty. If I’m being honest, this cover is probably a little misleading as you would probably think from the cover you’re getting a really happy, romantic story, and this book is well….not that so much.

3. Seventh Heaven (Princess Diaries #7)-Meg Cabot

I love how colourful this cover is, it really stands out and I love the mix of flowers and hearts on the cover. I enjoyed The Princess Diaries series, at least the first few books, but I have to admit the later ones weren’t as good (and I do prefer the movies. I know, sacrilege!).

4. The Dead Queens Club-Hannah Capin

I will admit the hearts on here are kind of subtle so it may be a bit of a stretch for this cover, but they are there! I love how they look hand drawn, like the ones you’d draw on your notepaper at school, I think that’s a really cool touch given the high school setting of this book. It was a really fun one too, I love how Capin adapted the story of Henry VIII’s wives to a high school setting.

5. Alex and Eliza-Melissa De La Cruz

I will admit upfront that I really disliked this book, and was a little too generous with my rating at the time, I think it was probably more a 2-2.5 star read than a 3 star. However, it does have a heart on the cover, so it fits today’s topic and I do like that the cover kind of looks like old fashioned wallpaper, very fitting of the 18th century setting.

6. Cupid Cakes (Lulu Baker #2)-Fiona Dunbar

A very fitting title and cover for Valentine’s Day, I think! The Lulu Baker trilogy was one I read when I was a kid, so quite a long time ago now, but I remember enjoying it at the time, it’s about this girl who inherits this magical recipe book from her mum and all the chaos that these magical recipes cause. There was also a really fun TV show based on the books on CBBC, called Jinx! This book was actually also very love themed, as it involves Lulu baking a recipe called Cupid Cakes to try and set her widowed dad up with someone she approves of…..and of course things don’t go to plan!

7. Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)-Amanda Foody

In one of my slightly more creative hearts cover finds, this book has hearts on the cover because casinos play a large part in this book and card games are a running thing throughout the series, so we have the Ace of Hearts on the cover and several hearts in the background as well. I highly recommend this series, it’s really fun, it’s such a cool world Amanda Foody has created in this series, with gangs and casinos and early motorcars in a early 20th century Atlantic City style setting (I’ve thought for years it was based of Vegas but it turns out I was wrong) and lots of really great female characters and friendships.

8. Under Rose Tainted Skies-Louise Gornall

Kind of a subtle one, but the heart is still there. Despite the bright pink cover and heart design, this book isn’t really predominantly a romance, there is one, but it’s far more about Norah’s journey with her mental health and the difficulties she faces with that than it is about the boy who becomes her love interest. It’s one of the most raw portrayals of mental illness I’ve ever read. Louise Gornall very sadly passed away a few years ago so this was to be her only book.

9. The Steel Prince Issue #4 (Shades of Magic comics #4)-VE Schwab

Okay I know this cover doesn’t exactly scream Valentine’s Day, and it’s an anatomical heart rather than the more traditional Valentine’s love heart, but a heart is a heart! This remains my favourite of the Shades of Magic comic covers, I just think the image is so striking and well done.

10. The Scorpio Races-Maggie Stiefvater

I’m not sure the cover quite portrays the savage, man-eating water horses that are portrayed in the book, but it certainly is pretty! I love how intricate the heart design is, probably the nicest of all the designs on this list. This was actually my first Maggie Stiefvater book and I did enjoy it, though I will still say that The Raven Cycle is my favourite.

So there we go, some Books With Hearts On The Cover for you, ironically for Valentine’s Day, most aren’t primarily romances but it’s me, did you really expect anything else? I like that I got a bit of a mix of genres in there, it’s not all contemporary love stories, there’s a bit of fantasy in there too. Which cover is your favourite? Have you read any of these books? Did you like them? What did you do for your Valentine’s Freebie this week? Let me know in the comments!

Next week’s topic is Favourite Heroines, which I have to admit was something I thought I’d done before, but it turns out I haven’t so this should be a fun one for me to do (and a hard one to narrow down as I have so many favourite female characters from books!).