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Monday, March 28, 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Of The Best Books I've Read Recently

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish.
To take part, just pick your top ten, and add the link here.
I rarely do 5-star reviews, and I only do the star review thing on Goodreads, here on my blog you may have noticed that I don't do any kind of number rating. I don't really feel like it's an adequate way to review a book. Which is probably why when people just do star ratings on Goodreads I get so annoyed. My rating, the way I use the star rating system on GR, is kind or maybe considered strange. For example, 3.5 is still a "high" rating for me. 5 stars do happen on occasion, and generally, mean high praise for the book on a level of enjoyment, more than how well it was written. Sometimes for me, a well-written book can still be boring enough that I give it a lower rating, and a book that might have some errors is enjoyable enough that I give it a higher rating than the well written boring book.
Anyways here's my list. The list is kind of in order of how much I enjoyed the book, rather than chronological order.


This series is kind of out of my normal genre I read. It's more of an "adult" book than YA. I tend to read mostly YA, for various reasons. This series is so good. 






This book was such a fantastic surprise. I am still in awe of it, from the story to how it was written, everything about this book makes it worth reading. I still am really curious if this is a stand alone or not, I need to know.






It took me forever to read this book. I started it in 2015 and finished it in 2016. The book was so good, but by the time I got around to starting it I was a little burnt out from reading a bunch of books during the year. I wish it hadn't taken me so long to read it because it made writing my review feel a little like a chore.





I have read a small handful of Beauty and the Beast retellings and, I'm not sure if this was the "best" (though it was up there at the top) but it certainly was one of the more interesting. This was the second book I've read by Stacy Jay, the other was also a fairy tale re-telling. After reading two of her books, I am really interested in reading more of her stuff. She is a really good author.





This book was one I wasn't sure I wanted to read. I knew I didn't want to buy it because it's really short and I have a really small book buying budget along with not a lot of space for more books, which was why I chose to borrow this from the Library. While I did really enjoy this book, I am also really glad that I did not buy it. This book didn't really add much to the story in whole, but it was really interesting to see things from the villain's perspective. And I was really shocked at how much sympathy I felt for her.



The first novella on my list. Maybe the only one, not sure at this point, as I am picking books as I go along through my GR read list. This story adds nothing at all to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, but it was so cute and sweet and I love Zuzana  and Mik so much as a couple and I really loved reading about their first date. It was so cute, even if you didn't like DoSaB, you should read this it's just so adorable.


After the first 5, enjoyment level kind of evens out a little. This series/book is strange for me. The author writes both paranormal romance and Contemporary romance books. I always enjoy her contemporary romance novels more. Her paranormal books aren't bad, I just don't really enjoy them as much, writing magic can be hard and she kind of wrote and created her own world/magic systems for the paranormal series. This book/series, however, is really interesting in many ways. And I really hate the MC's family. They are some really shitty people.


This book and the sequel (I read them back to back) is/are really strange. It is a very different kind of dystopian, in many ways is much darker than other books in this genre. Not sure how to explain it really.







I really love the world Hailey created with this series and the one that came before (Black Dog series). This is a sequel series to that one, and I am really interested in where it is going.






This series is interesting for me, in ways that might not make a lot of sense. And at this point, it's been long enough ago, and I am tired enough, that I don't remember the details of why I gave it 4 stars.





6 comments:

  1. Marie I also rarely do 5 star reads...it has to be something REALLY amazing for me to want to reread it - and I too LOOOOOOVED The Star-Touched Queen- which I reviewed here --> http://rachelwritesthings.blogspot.com/2016/03/book-review-star-touched-queen.html

    and my top 10 list this week can be found--> http://rachelwritesthings.blogspot.com/2016/03/top-ten-of-my-most-recent-5-star-reads.html

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  2. I'm really looking forward to reading The Star-Touched Queen, it sounds like it will have a The Wrath And the Dawn sort of vibe which I loved. As much as I loved the Daughter Of Smoke And Bone trilogy, I couldn't bring myself to read Night Of Cake and Puppets. I just found Zuzanna so irritating, the idea of reading a novella about her made me shudder!

    My TTT.

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  3. I absolutely love Queen of Shadows, it's my second favorite in the series after Crown of Midnight. Night of Cake and Puppets is absolutely adorable! I love Zu and Mik. Great list! :)

    -Jamie @TheRebelliousReader

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  4. I haven't heard of some of these so will need to check them out now! I can't wait for the Star-Touched Queen, there seem to be a pretty much universal love for this book so far. Totally agree on the Queen of Shadows, this book seems to have divided some of the fans but I personally really enjoyed it. I love the story of beauty and the beast and have seen Stacy Jay's re-telling around my Goodreads and amazon recommendations but have been hesitant because of some of the bad reviews it has got but I am going to have to look at it again if it's managed to get on your 'best books recently' list.

    -Hills of Books

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  5. Night of Cake and Puppets sounds very promising!

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  6. Great picks! I want to read the first two on your list v- they sound so cool.

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