For this week’s Top 10 Tuesday prompt I decided to go with new authors I discovered in 2019. This list is all the authors that I read from for the first time and I loved them enough to want to continue to pick up either their back-list or any books they may publish in the future!
Now one of my all-time favourite fantasy authors!
The Seven Realms is now one of my all-time favourite fantasy series ever!
Chilling and atmospheric, I need to dip into more of her back-list titles!
for some reason all her books intimidated me but I definitely need to read them all!
I am in the middle of the Falling Kingdoms series and I am highly impressed
I binged the first two books in The Shadow Game trilogy!
her books are diverse, realistic and highly engaging!
I’ve been impressed with the representation of culture and mental health she includes in her romances!
I’ve only read one of her books and I need to rectify that situation very soon!
super fun romances full of diverse characters
The Wicked King by Holly Black – Jude is I think one of my least favourite female protagonists ever. She thinks she is untouchable and doesn’t need anyone’s help. There are certain instances like when she’s warned to have a guard with her at all times and then she will rides off by herself and gets ambushed. It’s just really pretentious and annoying and I just can’t warm to her at all. ⭐️2/5 stars
Circe by Madeline Miller – This I just found incredibly dry and boring. I was enjoying myself for about the first quarter of the book but then all of the excitement and action king of leaked out of the plot and I was left with Circe on an island by herself for most of the story. I found I didn’t really form a connection to any of the characters and by the end of it I really didn’t care. There wasn’t really any sort of build up of anticipation and the ending was a little too open ended for me. ⭐️2/5 stars
Geekerella by Ashley Poston – For the majority of the book Elle just got on my nerves. Letting Catherine and Chloe walk all over her and just bowing down to them and not doing anything about it. Just accepting all of the horrible things they do to her and not trying to fight back at all. Other than that the book wasn’t bad at all, it was a little tropey at times but overall pretty fast paced and entertaining. ⭐️3/5 stars
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood – If I had not seen TV show first I think I would have been very confused by this book. There isn’t quite a set structure to it. We read solely from Offred’s point of view however, it jumps quite a lot from past to present and their isn’t a whole lot of information given about what is happening. I was left feeling quite unfulfilled with this book. The ending was quite abrupt and didn’t really wrap anything up or answered any questions. ⭐️3/5 stars
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers – a good majority of the book bored me. All of the spacial/sciency talk didn’t do anything for me personally and kind stilted the pace of the book. It was only 400 pages but it felt like closer to 600 to me. I picked this book up and put it down several times during the month and really the only reason I managed to finish it was because it fit a challenge in the Reading Rush. There wasn’t really anything in the book that was driving me to pick it up and finish. ⭐️3/5 stars
The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang – Some of the decisions that Rin made kind of grated me. She was definitely right when she said that the Gods have no sway over her, she made all of the decisions that led her to that ultimate conclusion and most of those decisions didn’t sit well with me. When she chose to side with Altan over Master Jiang that’s really when I knew I wasn’t feeling her anymore. She wouldn’t heed the advice of those who have had years and even decades more experience than her. ⭐️3/5 stars
The Retribution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin – It was just kind of ok…. We definitely delved a lot deeper into the story and the reasoning’s behind the study of the defect, but I wasn’t really left with any overwhelming feelings after the ending. I started to question Mara and her decisions a lot in this book. Yes I know she was tortured and has had a lot of emotional and physical trauma happen to her in a short period of time, but I didn’t really like who she became after she escaped. ⭐️3/5 stars