TTT: Top 10 books that surprised me; the good and the bad.

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a book tag hosted over at The Broke and The Bookish, there’s a new topic every tuesday and anyone can join in and linkup. I really liked this weeks topic.

Which is: ….Ten Books I Loved Less/More Than I Thought I Would

All title links go to the goodreads page. 

 The Good:

57 Lives of Alex Wayfare by M.G.Buehrlen

I bought this a couple of weeks ago on deal because its published by angry robots and out sounded interesting. I wasn’t ejecting much just a rollicking good time that I expect from any angry robot book I pick up. But it was very unexpectedly a five star read. I loved it, it handles time travel so well.

The Selection by Kiera Cass

So I don’t like romance books. The whole premise of this should have put me off and I honestly can’t remember why I read it, I think it was one of those ‘I’m bored and feel like reading some trash’ moods (anyone else get those?) but I actually did really enjoy it (why? I still have no idea) and I’ve actually gone back and reread it as well.

A Promise of Fire by Amanda Bouchet

This was a netgalley book I got for review and hadn’t heard of before. I was obviously expecting to like it or I wouldn’t have asked for it but it definitely surpassed my expectations. I couldn’t put it down and I think I read it in two days. It was so fast paced and it had magic and dragons and Greek gods. It was very good.

A Confusion of Princes by Garth Nix

I think this is the book I read the longest time ago on this list. But I remember enjoying it a lot. It sounds like a light scifi adventure and while I was expecting an enjoyable ride I wasn’t really expecting much more than that. It was a very good book. I can’t tell you much more than that but now i want to read it again.

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E Schwab

Short story from back when I bought my very first kindle; a couple of days after it arrived I saw this book in the kindle daily deals for 99p/ Even from the title it sounded like my kind of book. I’d never heard of it before though (this was a couple of years ago now) but I thought hey, for 99p as long as its alright then that’s still a bargain. Well holy crap was it like the best book ever! Seriously one of the best books I’ve read.

 

---

 

I actually meant to do this post on ten books that were positive surprises but it turns out it was actually a lot easier to think of negative surprises so welcome to the second half.

The Bad:

The Child Thief by Brom

I love Peter pan stories, the whole idea is so intriguing and I want something to go deeper and explore how not the hero he is and while this did that it just wasn’t a very enjoyable book to read.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

This is a Sci fi alternate reality adventure about books. Which sounds awesome. And maybe I just had too high expectations but it didn’t live up. It was okay, which is about as much praise as I can say about it. It’s not on the list because I thought it was rubbish, I just thought it should have been better and was disappointed.

The Final Empire (Mistborn) by Brandon Sanderson

I REALLY wanted to love this book. I’d heard so much about Sanderson, the blurb was really intriguing. The magic system might be one of my favourites ever, kelsier is a brilliant character, there were scenes in this book that ripped my heart out and I still feel it years later but…… Something was missing. I didn’t like the way the story was told with the extracts at the start of each chapter, I felt bored at points and it was a bit of a slog to get through. I’m still mad that this book wasn’t consistently at heart breaking level or maybe I’m mad that it reached heart breaking level and didn’t stay there? I haven’t picked up the rest of the series.

The 100 by Kass Morgan

I’m not sure what to say about this, this is a Sci fi dystopian but I just couldn’t get over the stupid decisions that the characters make. Like really, above and beyond teenage stupidity. If the person you love more than anything is all about helping and healing people then maybe doing something that risks literally everyone’s lives to win her back isn’t the smartest decision?

The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkien

Okay, don’t stone me. I really don’t like fantasy books that are based on traveling on a quest. We end up getting a lot of scenery and not a lot of character. Seriously where’s the character?! There’s no doubt Tolkien was brilliant and paved the way and blah blah but I found this boring to read. Personal opinion. I struggled to the end of it.

 

---

So how about you? Any of these books make your list of happy surprises/disappointments? Am I so completely wrong about some of them that you want to shout at me? What’s your best and worst surprise when it comes to the books you’ve read?

Bloglovin / Twitter / Etsy / Goodreads / Ravelry