Divider

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020

Posted May 5, 2020 by Kaity in Bookish Memes, Top Ten Tuesday / 9 Comments

Happy Tuesday!

Top Ten Tuesday is a Bookish Meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s theme is THINGS I’D HAVE AT MY BOOKISH PARTY!

So… I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this week’s theme. I decided to do MY FAVORITE READS OF 2020 (SO FAR!)! Which is… uh… not the theme at all, but whatever! We’ll have fun with it! Books this week are listed in order of publication date, because it turns out it was really hard to narrow it down to ten and I couldn’t pick favorites from there!

And now without any further ado, here’s this week’s Top Ten Tuesday!

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020The Shadow Cipher by Laura Ruby
Series: York #1
Published on May 16, 2017 by Walden Pond Press
Genres: Alternate History, Contemporary, Middle Grade, Mystery
Pages: 476
Add to Goodreads

It was 1798 when the Morningstarr twins arrived in New York with a vision for a magnificent city: towering skyscrapers, dazzling machines, and winding train lines, all running on technology no one had ever seen before. Fifty-seven years later, the enigmatic architects disappeared, leaving behind for the people of New York the Old York Cipher—a puzzle laid into the shining city they constructed, at the end of which was promised a treasure beyond all imagining. By the present day, however, the puzzle has never been solved, and the greatest mystery of the modern world is little more than a tourist attraction.
Tess and Theo Biedermann and their friend Jaime Cruz live in a Morningstarr apartment house—until a real estate developer announces that the city has agreed to sell him the five remaining Morningstarr buildings. Their likely destruction means the end of a dream long-held by the people of New York. And if Tess, Theo and Jaime want to save their home, they have to prove that the Old York Cipher is real. Which means they have to solve it.
From National Book Award Finalist Laura Ruby comes a visionary epic set in a New York City at once familiar and wholly unexpected.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020Belle Révolte by Linsey Miller
Published on February 4, 2020 by Sourcebooks Fire
Genres: Fantasy, YA, Aspec, Queer
Pages: 384
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Tumblr

Emilie des Marais is more at home holding scalpels than embroidery needles and is desperate to escape her noble roots to serve her country as a physician. But society dictates a noble lady cannot perform such gruesome wor.
Annette Boucher, overlooked and overworked by her family, wants more from life than her humble beginnings and is desperate to be trained in magic. So when a strange noble girl offers Annette the chance of a lifetime, she accepts.
Emilie and Annette swap lives—Annette attends finishing school as a noble lady to be trained in the ways of divination, while Emilie enrolls to be a physician’s assistant, using her natural magical talent to save lives.
But when their nation instigates a frivolous war, Emilie and Annette must work together to help the rebellion end a war that is based on lies.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Series: A Good Girl's Guide to Murder #1
Published on February 4, 2020 by Delacorte Press
Genres: Mystery, Thriller, YA
Pages: 400
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram

Everyone in Fairview knows the story.
Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.
But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?
Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.
This is the story of an investigation turned obsession, full of twists and turns and with an ending you'll never expect.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
Series: Dread Nation #2
Published on February 4, 2020 by Balzer + Bray
Genres: Alternate History, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, YA, Aspec, Queer
Pages: 560
Add to Goodreads

The sequel to Dread Nation is a journey of revenge and salvation across a divided America.
After the fall of Summerland, Jane McKeene hoped her life would get simpler: Get out of town, stay alive, and head west to California to find her mother.
But nothing is easy when you're a girl trained in putting down the restless dead, and a devastating loss on the road to a protected village called Nicodermus has Jane questioning everything she thought she knew about surviving in 1880's America.
What's more, this safe haven is not what it appears - as Jane discovers when she sees familiar faces from Summerland amid this new society. Caught between mysteries and lies, the undead, and her own inner demons, Jane soon finds herself on a dark path of blood and violence that threatens to consume her.
But she won't be in it alone.
Katherine Deveraux never expected to be allied with Jane McKeene. But after the hell she has endured, she knows friends are hard to come by - and that Jane needs her, too, whether Jane wants to admit it or not.
Watching Jane's back, however, is more than she bargained for, and when they both reach a breaking point, it's up to Katherine to keep hope alive - even as she begins to fear that there is no happily-ever-after for girls like her.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020Winterborne Home for Vengeance and Valor by Ally Carter
Published on March 3, 2020 by HMH Books for Young Readers
Genres: Middle Grade, Mystery
Pages: 336
Add to Goodreads

April didn’t mean to start the fire. She wasn’t even the one who broke the vase.
She had absolutely no intention of becoming the only person who knows that Gabriel Winterborne, the missing-and-presumed-dead billionaire, is neither missing nor dead and is actually living in the basement of Winterborne House, sharpening his swords and looking for vengeance. 
Now that April knows Gabriel Winterborne is alive, it’s up to her to keep him that way. But there’s only so much a twelve-year-old girl can do, so April must turn to the other orphans for help. Together, they’ll have to unravel the riddle of a missing heir and a creepy legend, and find a secret key, before the only home they’ve ever known is lost to them forever. 

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020Now, Then, and Everywhen by Rysa Walker
Series: CHRONOS Origins #1
Also in this series: Now, Then, and Everywhen
Published on April 1, 2020 by 47North
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction, Thriller, Time Travel
Pages: 503
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube

When two time-traveling historians cross paths during one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, history goes helter-skelter. But which one broke the timeline?
In 2136 Madison Grace uncovers a key to the origins of CHRONOS, a time-travel agency with ties to her family’s mysterious past. Just as she is starting to jump through history, she returns to her timeline to find millions of lives erased—and only the people inside her house realize anything has changed.
In 2304 CHRONOS historian Tyson Reyes is assigned to observe the crucial events that played out in America’s civil rights movement. But a massive time shift occurs while he’s in 1965, and suddenly the history he sees isn’t the history he knows.
As Madi’s and Tyson’s journeys collide, they must prevent the past from being erased forever. But strange forces are at work. Are Madi and Tyson in control or merely pawns in someone else’s game?

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020The Life and Medieval Times of Kit Sweetly by Jamie Pacton
Published on May 5, 2020 by Page Street Kids
Genres: YA
Pages: 384
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok

Moxie meets A Knight’s Tale as Kit Sweetly slays sexism, bad bosses, and bad luck to become a knight at a medieval-themed restaurant.

Working as a wench—i.e. waitress—at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood, so she can help her mom pay the mortgage and hold a spot at her dream college.
Company policy allows only guys to be knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. But the Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight. As other wenches join her quest, a protest forms. In a joust before Castle executives, they’ll prove that gender restrictions should stay medieval—if they don’t get fired first.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020The Mall by Megan McCafferty
Published on July 28, 2020 by Wednesday Books
Genres: Contemporary, Historical Fiction, YA
Pages: 320
Add to Goodreads

New York Times bestselling author Megan McCafferty returns to her roots with this YA coming of age story set in a New Jersey mall.
The year is 1991. Scrunchies, mixtapes and 90210 are, like, totally fresh. Cassie Worthy is psyched to spend the summer after graduation working at the Parkway Center Mall. In six weeks, she and her boyfriend head off to college in NYC to fulfill The Plan: higher education and happily ever after.
But you know what they say about the best laid plans...
Set entirely in a classic “monument to consumerism,” the novel follows Cassie as she finds friendship, love, and ultimately herself, in the most unexpected of places. Megan McCafferty, beloved New York Times bestselling author of the Jessica Darling series, takes readers on an epic trip back in time to The Mall.

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020The Camelot Betrayal by Kiersten White
Series: Camelot Rising #2
Also in this series: The Guinevere Deception, The Camelot Betrayal
Published on November 10, 2020 by Delacorte Press
Genres: Fantasy, Retellings, YA, Queer
Pages: 384
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Goodreads, Instagram

The second book in a new fantasy trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White, exploring the nature of self, the inevitable cost of progress, and, of course, magic and romance and betrayal so epic Queen Guinevere remains the most famous queen who never lived.
EVERYTHING IS AS IT SHOULD BE IN CAMELOT: King Arthur is expanding his kingdom’s influence with Queen Guinevere at his side. Yet every night, dreams of darkness and unknowable power plague her.
Guinevere might have accepted her role, but she still cannot find a place for herself in all of it. The closer she gets to Brangien, pining for her lost love Isolde, Lancelot, fighting to prove her worth as Queen’s knight, and Arthur, everything to everyone and thus never quite enough for Guinevere–the more she realizes how empty she is. She has no sense of who she truly was before she was Guinevere. The more she tries to claim herself as queen, the more she wonders if Mordred was right: she doesn’t belong. She never will.
When a rescue goes awry and results in the death of something precious, a devastated Guinevere returns to Camelot to find the greatest threat yet has arrived. Not in the form of the Dark Queen or an invading army, but in the form of the real Guinevere’s younger sister. Is her deception at an end? And who is she really deceiving–Camelot, or herself?

Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020This Is Not the Jess Show by Anna Carey
Series: This Is Not the Jess Show #1
Also in this series: This Is Not the Jess Show
Published on November 10, 2020 by Quirk Books
Genres: Contemporary, Thriller, YA
Pages: 304
Add to Goodreads
Author Links: Website, Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram

Like many teens, sometimes it feels as though everything in Jess Flynn's life has been engineered for maximum drama--from her performance at the school talent show, to the reappearance of her childhood best friend and perennial crush Jeremy, to her friends trying to set her up with one of the hottest guys in school. It's almost as if everything might finally be going her way...until one day a tiny black phone with an apple logo on its screen falls out of her best friend's backpack and lands at Jess's feet.
The problem is, it's 1998, and the first iPhone isn't due out for another nine years.
Jess's friends refuse to acknowledge the strange device. Her sister Sara, on hospice care with a terminal blood disease, for once can't tell Jess what she should do. It's almost as if everyone is hiding something from her. Even her beloved dog Fuller seems different...like, literally different, because he definitely didn't have that same pattern of spots on his stomach last week...
Nothing in Jess Flynn's world is as it seems, and as the cracks begin to show, Jess will discover her entire life is nothing more than someone else's entertainment. Except in this reality, the outside world is no place anyone would want to escape to.

What are your favorite reads of 2020 so far? Let me know in the comments and have a splendiferous week!

Tags: , , ,

9 responses to “Top Ten Tuesday | May 5, 2020

  1. All of these look and sound like great reads! I’m super keen to get my hands on Kit Sweetly–everything about it screams that I will love it 😍 I’d never heard of that York series before but that cover is gorgeous and that synopsis sounds so good! Will definitely be checking that one out. Great list 😀

Leave a Reply

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.