Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Of My Most Recent 5 Star Reads

Happy Tuesday!

It is time to revisit the weekly meme, Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  This week, we’ll be sharing 10 of our most recent 5-star reads.  Since I just started actively reading Goodreads about 6 months ago, and rarely sat down to give books a star rating before that, I’ll just be listing my very most recent 5-star reads (with one exception, but we’re getting there).  I’ll be starting with the most recent and moving backward in time.

1. Pretty Girl-13 (Liz Coley) – I really enjoyed this book; a review is coming so I don’t want to give too much detail right now.  Ultimately, this is about self-acceptance and the way we choose to confront our issues, and I thought it was really fantastic.
2. Asking For It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It (Kate Harding) – I have reviewed this book already on this blog (here), but again, I really appreciated that this book gave me some vocabulary to illustrate the points I’ve been trying to make over the years.
3. Steadfast [Spellcaster #2] (Claudia Gray) – As you can see, this is the 2nd book in a trilogy, so I won’t go too far into detail.  I loved the whole trilogy, but this book was such a great “book 2 of 3,” which can be difficult to do, and I really loved how the bonds between people were explored in this book in particular.  (The third was amazing in this regard too, but a very few points were shaven off for the ending, which wasn’t what I was expecting.)
4. Necessary Lies (Diane Chamberlain) – I have also reviewed this book (here), but I just loved the realistic way that the story was told, and the questions I had to ponder while reading.  I really enjoyed this one.
5. The Vault of Dreamers (Caragh M. O’Brien) – Sometimes I’m still surprised that I gave this book 5 stars.  It’s not that it isn’t good, but I am often still hard-pressed to explain WHY I love this book so much.  I think it caught me at the right time, and provoked me to think about concepts I never really had before.
6. The Wednesday Group (Sylvia True) – I really liked this book as well, and it is the first that I reviewed on my BookTube channel (here), meaning it was a long and somewhat awkward video, haha.  But I really enjoyed this; it is ultimately about addiction, love, lies, and self-discovery, and I thought it was really well done (but with a kind of open ending – fair warning if you aren’t into that kind of thing).
7. Sloth  [Sinful Secrets #1] (Ella James) –  I really enjoyed this.  It has its sex-heavy parts, but I thought the plot was also really engaging.  I liked it even if it was a bit unbelievable, and am really happy that I read it.  There is a lot to spoil, so I don’t want to say much about the plot, AND I just heard that this is the first in a series, so I need to see if the next book is out!
8. Red Rising Trilogy (Pierce Brown) – Technically, I read the last book in this trilogy pretty recently, but I decided to wrap all of these together toward the end since I’ve also reviewed this series in this blog (here), and I gave all 3 book a 5-star rating.
9. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (Brene Brown) – I really love this book; it put into words so many of my feelings, and helped me to see the power that lies in vulnerability.  I think back to this book in so many aspects of my life, and am so happy that I decided to pick it up when I did.
10. Fangirl (Rainbow Rowell) – This is a pretty popular book, so I won’t say too much, but I really related to the main character, and was invested in all of them (so much so that I wanted a little more from a few of them).  I really like the way the story unfolded, and all of the feelings I had while reading it.

Well y’all, those were my most recent 5-star reads!  Let me know if you’ve read any of these, or any of your thoughts.  I really enjoy the conversations I get to have on my TTT posts (and others’), so let me know what you think!  I will catch you all in the nest post!