Books With Character Names in the Title

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is books with character names in the title!

10 Books I read with a character’s name in the title are:

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Aurora’s End by Jay Kristoff & Amie Kaufman

Fable by Adrienne Young

Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Scwab

The Afterlife of Holly Chase by Cynthia Hand

Hollowpox: The Hunt for Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend

Anna K: A Love Story by Jenny Lee

Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Amal Unbound by Aisha Saeed

Quarterly Reading Recommendations

This is my final Quarterly Reading Recommendation post for 2021.  I will be listing my top 5 favourite books I read during the last 3 months before I start compiling my lists and picking out my top ten overall of 2021 which I will post in a few days! If you want to check out my third quarterly reading recommendations click HERE!

My recommendations for October – November – December are:

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

One by One by Ruth Ware

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Vespertine by Margaret Rogerson

5 Books I Want to Read Update

Back in January I posted about 5  books I really wanted to read in 2021 and now that we are at the end of the year I thought I would post a final  update and see how I did! At this stage I’ve completed 3 out of the 5 books and honestly I’m okay with that. This is has been my worst reading year in terms of quantity in a few years and I had a massive reading slump in the middle of it all so I’m quite proud with what I was able to complete. Obviously, I am going to be prioritising the other two books in 2022 and get this list completed! 

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

This was a wonderful introduction to this trilogy and I can see now why so many people love this book. The writing was descriptive and the world building was immaculate. All of the characters were distinctive and diverse and the way the storylines merged was masterful. I am kicking myself for putting off reading this book for so long and I am happy to have finally completed it. I have a feeling I am going to be continuing on very soon!

My Rating:  ⭐️4/5 stars

The 7 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Multiple timelines and POVs can get a tad confusing for me and it’s hard to keep track of all the characters and who is a host and who isn’t. I have to say as he switches from each host and the days start ticking down the level of urgency felt throughout the plot kept rising. I had no idea at any point in time what was actually going to happen, I had my suspicions but at every twist I was definitely surprised!

My Rating:  ⭐️3/5 stars

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty

I really enjoyed the format of the book with the countdown to the trivia night. Knowing that one of these characters is now dead and trying to figure out who did it and who died really built up the anticipation. The mystery behind who was the school bully was intriguing and it was entertaining to see these mothers going around gossiping about their lives. This was definitely better than what I was expecting and it was nice to read a book with the setting here in Australia, I don’t get many of those.

My Rating:  ⭐️4/5 stars

The other two books I still need to read are:

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The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

*Spoilers Ahead*

At a party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed – again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. The only way to break this cycle is to identify Evelyn’s killer. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is desperate to stop him ever escaping Blackheath…

This book was really hard for me to get into for some reason. I picked it up and put it down I think half a dozen times and I had never even gone past 20 pages. I finally decided to push through and it wasn’t until around the 100 page mark exactly that I started to become invested in Aiden and what was actually happening at Blackheath.

I was a bit indifferent to Aiden’s character a the start of the book. We definitely learn more about his as the book progresses and we figure out his motivations for why he is at Blackheath. We get no real sense of who he is though because he is continuously influenced by his hosts. Had we maybe got to see some flashbacks to before he entered and what he was feeling at that time and then come back to the present maybe I would of gained more of an insight into how much he’s changed.

I never really trusted Anna. Just the way she was always around right when Aiden needed her and how the plague doctor kept telling him that she is going to betray him. And then when we find out who she really is I can’t see why Aiden would be adamant that she has changed. I just feel like we aren’t shown enough of her character to make that distinction, but then again we didn’t know her before either. The same can be said for Daniel, I knew he was too good to be true right from when he exposes himself to himself. He was just that little too sure of himself and the decisions that Aiden was going to make even though he hasn’t made them yet.

Multiple timelines and POVs can get a tad confusing for me and it’s hard to keep track of all the characters and who is a host and who isn’t. I have to say as he switches from each host and the days start ticking down the level of urgency felt throughout the plot kept rising. I had no idea at any point in time what was actually going to happen, I had my suspicions but at every twist I was definitely surprised!

⭐️3/5 stars Unique, confusing and intricate!!

Tome Topple Round 15 TBR

Round 15 of the Tome Topple Readathon which is hosted by Thoughts on Tomes started yesterday and I didn’t realise but I figured this was the perfect time to try and tackle some of the longer books on my TBR in the next couple of weeks!

My Tome Topple TBR for round 15 is:

Tome with a movie adaptation – Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer

Tome in a genre you don’t usually read – The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

A sequel tome – The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks

Tome you started in another round – The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

Read 1 tome – The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie

Tome with the most pages – Heart of Flames by Nicki Pau Preto

Tome in a series you haven’t read in a while – Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson

Spooky tome – Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff

Tome by a BIPOC author – The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter