Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Got On A Whim

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday but I’m back this week. Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week I’m featuring ten books that I got on a whim.

1. Exquisite Captive by Heather Demetrios

I don’t remember exactly why I bought this book. I think I saw the cover somewhere, somehow and just went on Book Depository and bought it. It ended up being a really great book about a jinni in Hollywood. I thought it was wonderful and cannot wait to read the sequel!

2. Love and Other Perishable Items by Laura Buzo

This is a book that I randomly picked up as I was browsing the Australian YA section of my bookstore. The interesting cover and spine caught my eye and I thought the blurb sounding really good. I ended up really enjoying this book too and it was a delight to read a book that was set in the area where I go to uni.

3. One Plus One by Jojo Moyes

I bought this one a couple of years ago before I even heard of Me Before You. I saw it when I was browsing the bookstore and the cover must have just enticed me to buy it. I have yet to read this one but I hope to get to it sometime this year.

4. This is Shyness by Leanne Hall

This is a relatively new purchase. It was one of the books that was featured at the magical realism-themed YABookmeet at Dymocks Sydney. The synopsis was really intriguing so I picked it up on the spot.

5. The Stars at Oktober Bend by Glenda Millard

This was one that I saw in Allen & Unwin’s catalogue earlier this year. I hadn’t heard anything about it but the synopsis sounded like it was right up my alley. I completely fell in love with the characters and the story and am so glad that I requested this one!

6. Sway by Kat Spears

This was another cover buy and it was a bit of a fail. It was one of my least favourite books of last year because of the way that the book portrayed women. I found it to be offensive and disrespectful and did not like it one bit.

7. The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan

I love David Levithan so when I saw this one on sale on Book Depository, I checked it out straight away. It has a really interesting format and I loved what David Levithan did with it.

8. A Little Something Different by Sandy Hall

This book was another cover buy – it has such a cute cover! But the contents were really boring and it felt like a super generic romance. There were 14 perspectives in the book and I hated the way that it was done. Not an enjoyable read at all.

9. One Hundred Days of Happiness by Fausto Brizzi

I bought this one last year because the cover is beautiful and the synopsis sounded heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time. I have yet to read this one but I’m hoping to get to it in the coming months.

10. YOLO Juliet by Brett Wright

I’d been interested in these Shakespeare emoji books for a while but I never intended to actually read any. But when I saw YOLO Juliet in store, I just had to get it. The cover was hilarious and the couple of pages that I read in store were super funny too.

Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Publisher: Michael Joseph (Penguin)
Release date: January 5, 2012
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0718157834
Pages: 480
Goodreads || Book Depository

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick.

What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane.

Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that.

What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

MY THOUGHTS

There is a trigger warning for suicide in this book. Also if your life is affected in any way by quadriplegia, you may or may not want to read this book. I’d suggest looking at some other reviews first before jumping into this book.

I was so deeply affected by this book. I laughed and I cried so hard… this book really caught me by surprise. It was completely different to what I had expected when I first picked it up. Based on the cover and a quick skim through the summary on the back, I thought it would be some fluffy contemporary romance, but it couldn’t have been more different. I don’t think I realised how much I loved this book and how moved I was by it until I’d reached the end and had tears pouring down my face.

There were definitely some parts of the novel that felt slow but each event that happened had a purpose. The writing was easy to read and without a lot of medical jargon, but still allowing us to feel the full impact of the story. I loved the use of first person perspective because it really allowed me to get into the head of Lou. There were some strange changes in perspective in the book. There were some characters who had a chapter written from their point of view. These chapters really threw me off and I didn’t like them at all. But aside from that, I have absolutely no complaints about the writing or the plot.

The characters in this book were really relatable (and mostly likeable). I loved Will and Lou as the main characters and I loved their relationship together. I liked how their relationship developed and grew into such a comfortable one. I also loved the character development in this novel. I thought that was one of the key successes of the book. But in addition to Will and Lou, we also get to see the struggles that the other characters go through, which made them and their lives so realistic to me.

I haven’t read very many books about physical disabilities, but Me Before You is definitely one that I will remember for a very long time. I’ve recently heard that a sequel to this book, After You, will be released in September 2015. I’m not completely sure that I’ll be picking that up (at least not straight away), just because Me Before You ended in such a hopeful and strangely liberating way.