Top 5 Wednesdays: Books You Didn’t Get To in 2017 (But I Likely Will in 2018!)

I’ll admit when I first saw this topic on the list, I was a little disappointed because it seemed to be basically the same as the Top 10 Tuesday topic this week. Not that I can really blame them, since it’s a great topic choice. Just to differentiate the posts a little, I decided to interpret this one a little differently, and mention 5 books that were released in 2017 that I did not get a chance to read during that year. I do feel like I made a bit more of an effort to read more recent releases, if not from 2017 than at least for the past couple of years. In part, it was because I felt like I was starting to get stuck putting off newer books in favour of others that I’d been meaning to read for a while. On the other hand, the new releases can be a little tough to get a copy of sometimes. Honestly, I could easily list way more than 5 books from 2017 that I’m looking forward to reading this year, but I’ll try to limit myself (and also limit myself to books I haven’t discussed to death already).

Top 5 Wednesday is a meme created by Gingerreadslainey on Youtube, and is now hosted by Sam at ThoughtsOnTomes. The official GoodReads group with the weekly topics can be found here.

1) Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Honestly, I was not really looking forward to this book until very recently. I chose it for a prompt in my 2018 reading challenges requiring a book about feminism, and I picked this one because many people on the Goodreads board were raving about it. I’ve read Devoted by Jennifer Mathieu, and it really impressed me. I have all of her books on my TBR. This one specifically is about a girl named Vivian Carter whos is fed up with the sexist attitudes in her school, and creates a n anonymous feminist zine to distribute to her classmates. It sounds like such an interesting concept and if the writing is anything like Devoted, I’m sure I will love it. I’m slowly learning to buy into the hype sometimes when it comes to books, and with all the rave reviews I’ve seen, I’ve started to get really excited for this one.

2) Dear Martin by Nic Stone

This was another book that I wasn’t so sure about since it seemed quite similar to The Hate U Give, although after I read and enjoyed that book, I started to be more interested in this one too. This book is about a young African-American man named Justyce who is involved in a confrontation where shots are fired by a white off-duty cop. One of the things that really interested me about this book was the idea that Justyce starts writing a journal addressed to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to try to help himself work through the racism he faces. Martin Luther King is a historical figure who I’ve always been very interested in, and it seems to be a relatively unique angle on this story. It was another book that I was hesitant to try at first, but it’s starting to become really exciting!

3) The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee

I think this book has reached my limit on avoidance due to overhype. It always gets to a point where I finally start to look past the hype and think that maybe the book really might be as good as everyone suggests. I heard about this book literally everywhere all through 2017, and I wasn’t that interested at first because for some reason I assumed it was about pirates. I have no idea where I got that impression from at all. Once I started to see all the rave reviews come in about how funny this book is and how interesting the characters are, I started to change my mind. I think all but one or two of the reviewers I follow on Goodreads have given this at least 4 stars, so it seems like it might actually live up to all the hype. Plus it seems to fit very nicely into a challenge prompt requiring a book that involves at least one of the seven deadly sins.

4) Saints and Misfits by S.K. Ali

It almost feels like there were so many interesting books that I wanted to read in 2017, that I couldn’t possibly be excited for all of them at once. This was a book that I added to my TBR about halfway through the year, and then essentially forgot about until recently. This book is about a Muslim Indian-American teenage girl named Janna who is trying to figure out what kind of person she wants to be. The synopsis also hints at someone in her community who has done something wrong (I’m not sure what. No spoilers, please!) and Janna needs to decide if she wants to speak up about it. This was one of the last few books that I added to my reading challenge plans for this year. As I was browsing my TBR, it seemed to all of a sudden jump out at me as something I really wanted to read so I made sure to find a place for it.

5) Turtles All the Way Down by John Green

In a way, John Green has kind of become the new Nicholas Sparks for me. I always tend to read his books, although I’ve never really loved one enough to give it a full 5 stars either. I really liked The Fault in Our Stars, and I’ve read a couple of his other books which I liked but didn’t love. Yet every time John Green puts out a new book, something about it still interests me enough to want to read it. It seems to be the theme today, but this was a book that I was not necessarily super-excited for at first because the plot seemed a bit weird. The synopsis talks about 16-year-old Aza investigating a mysterious billionaire for the possibility of receiving a reward, and that plot didn’t really appeal to me much. However, I’ve since heard that the book has very good OCD and anxiety representation and I’d be interested in that aspect of it. Since I tend to usually like John Green’s books, I think I’d probably enjoy this one too.

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