It’s Top Ten Tuesday time once again friends! This week the prompt is new releases from last year that I wish I had read. There are quite a few of them as I didn’t read pretty much anything last year but here at the 10 I wish I did get around to simply because of the hype and my FOMO.
This month I would like to focus on my physical TBR if I can. There are sooo many books I’ve picked up in the last 6 months that I want to read sooner rather than later!
January was quite busy for me.. I enjoyed everything I read this month but no new favorites yet unfortunately!
Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson – ⭐️4/5 stars
Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear by Seanan McGuire – ⭐️3/5 stars
I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones – ⭐️3/5 stars
Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison – ⭐️4/5 stars
Home Sweet Haunt by Sarah Pinsker
Following on from last week these are 5 book series that I am in the middle of the I want to fully complete this year.
Crescent City Series by Sarah J Maas
The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson
The Dreamland Billionaires Series by Lauren Asher
The Bone Witch Series by Rin Chupeco
The Inheritance Cycle Series by Christopher Paolini
*THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD*
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
Tolly as our main character was likeable but pretty pathetic in a way. I think it was the fact that he allowed people to do things to him that any other normal human being would take offense to which in a way I guess that parallels nicely with Justin’s storyline. Even the way he let Amber (his best friend) continually smash his head on her windscreen was a bit of a red flag for me. I was intrigued as we get straight into the book how he was going to ‘turn’ into a slasher and how he managed to evade capture all these years and I was quite happy with how the storyline played out albeit for the majority we aren’t shown exactly what happens.
I loved how Amber was just 100% on board with what was happening and actually believed Tolly. The fact that she even went as far as to call up her brother and then conduct those series of tests was very entertaining and makes the story a bit more believable in a way. I mean you definitely have to suspend disbelief for the most part as these events have only occurred because a teenage boy came back from the dead to enact revenge but it makes you more invested.
The only real flaw I found with this book was the amount of times Tolly would just go on these random long tangents in the middle of chapters. It was just very disjointed and made the story harder to understand, very chaotic. Which I suppose makes sense since he was infected and not in his right frame of mind at the time but made me have to slow down and focus on every word which took me out of the story.
⭐️3/5 very entertaining but confusing at times!
Amy Leigh Reads 