Top Ten Tuesday: New-to-Me Authors I Read in 2020

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish,
Now, hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl 

To take part, just pick your top ten, and add the link here.

When I was going through the books I read in 2020, I actually had a lot of 'new to me' authors. This hasn't happened in a while. I'm glad that I read so many new authors last year. I kind of chose to talk more about the books than the authors, since I don't know them and it feels strange to me to research authors. 

Tracy Deonn - Legendborn

This was one of my last reads of the year and that book pulled me out of a 2-3 month long reading funk. This was one of the best Autharian retellings I have ever read. It didn't rehash anything. It was just so good. This might be a new auto-buy/read author.

H.M. Long - Hall of Smoke

This was my last read of the year. This book didn't come out until the 19th. It was a Viking inspired story about a young woman who gets caught in the middle of a war between the Gods, while she struggles with her faith after her Goddess abandoned her people to die. (The Gods are real and present in the world, and many of the side characters)

Chloe Gong - These Violent Delights

The retelling of Romeo and Juliette that we all needed. Both Roma and Juliette are fierce and headstrong and have a lot of agency. This story is ever so slightly more complex than the tale it's based on. Not to saying Shakespear's wasn't complex, but this one just has a lot going on.

Robin Hobb - Assassin's Apprentice

I loved Assassin's Apprentice, unfortunately I did not feel that way about the sequel. I actually DNF'd it. The first 45%  or so was fantastic, but for me, everything started to fall apart when Fitz spent more time worrying about Molly than he did about the threat inside the Castle along with the threat outside. I just did not care or believe in the romance between Fitz and Molly.

Amélie Wen Zhao - Blood Heir

I initially read this book because I wanted to know what made everybody so mad. I read her letter about taking it down and re-reading it to see if any of the complaints had merit, and apparently, she made only minor changes. Either way, I still have no idea what made everyone so mad. This book was great. I got an Arc of the second book and read that too, but I was still in my reading funk so I had a hard time enjoying it as I would have liked. I plan on revisiting it now that my overall stress levels are at a normal level.

Andrzej Sapkowski  - The Last Wish

I read this because of the show. I liked it, I think somethings got lost in translation. I read a few more in this series last year as well. The wait time at the library is about a thousand years, so I didn't finish the series.

Hannah Lee Kidder - Little Birds: A collection of short stories

Hannah is one of my favorite people I've never met. She does writing videos on YouTube (I shared the link to her channel) This is, I think, the first Short Story anthology I've read. And they are fantastic, I want to read her other short story collection (Starlight)

R.F. Kuang - The Poppy War

I read the whole trilogy in 2020. Almost back-to-back... that might have been a bad idea. The emotions were high after finishing the series. 

Rebecca Roanhorse - Black Sun

Now, this book I had a hard time with it. I think I mentioned this in my review, but in the first chapter a character has their eyes sewn shut while they are awake and conscious, and it was fairly detailed. I have a phobia relating to eye injuries and it creeped me out real bad. I wish I had known about it going in so I could have skimmed over it or something. The rest of the book didn't really have anything else like that, but the eye thing, I just had a hard time.

Clara O'Connor - Secrets of the Starcrossed

This is a surprise book. The first about 20% I wasn't feeling it that much. It was gearing up being a low 3-star for me. But something happened in the plot and I was hooked. I am very invested in this series, I actually have the sequel as an ARC from NetGalley, it's going to be my next read.