Earlier this year, Top 5 Wednesdays gave some room for a Freebie topic, which I used to discuss some of the books (found here) I’d recently bought in a Book Outlet haul. This month, Top 5 Wednesdays has opened up to a full month of free choice topics. Ideally, I was planning on picking from the backlog of topics that had been used before I started blogging, but there was an absolutely overwhelming amount to choose from! Instead, I decided that since I recently had a huge Book Outlet haul, it was a good time to mentioned a few of the books that I picked up. This was my third (and biggest yet!) order from Book Outlet and I was again impressed with the general quality of the books I received. There were one or two books that were a tiny bit more banged up than I would have liked, especially considering I purposely pick from the “Bargain Books” section, where damage is less likely. Despite some minor wear and tear, the books all arrived in great condition and I’m so excited to have my own copies of many of these! One small complaint — this is the second time in a row now that I’ve forgotten the same book from my order! Below are just 5 of the 20 or so books that I got.
Once again, I would like to give a disclaimer that this post is in no way sponsored by or associated with Book Outlet. I am merely commenting on my own experiences with them.
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) Confessions by Kanae Minato
I bought this one almost completely on a whim because it was only about $4. Although this book has been on my TBR since 2016, it was pretty low on my priority list. I noticed that while going through my wishlist to pick what I wanted to order, I kept coming back to this one and ended up deciding just to throw it in. This book is set in Japan, focusing on a middle school teacher whose 4-year-old was killed in an accident involving some of her students, causing her to take revenge. This is definitely a book that is outside my comfort zone. Although I love thrillers, this one seems to go a bit beyond the typical thriller, especially since the main character is targeting schoolchildren. This book has received excellent ratings on Goodreads so far, and it just sounds really creepy!
2) Want to Go Private? by Sarah Darer Littman
This was by far the most expensive of the books I picked this time, at almost $9! Normally, I try to spend no more than $5 per book on Book Outlet, but I made an exception for this one since I’d wanted to read it for a long time and it was hard to find otherwise. Plus, with the deal that was on, I essentially got this one for free. This book is about a high school student named Abby who has been chatting online with a guy named Luke, who is not what he says he is, and Abby goes missing after meeting up with him. I’m always a little wary with these kinds of storylines by now because I almost feel like we have generally moved past this to a much wider range of stories about online friendships. This book is from 2011 though, so it’s not too surprising that it is still part of the “online predator” trend. As I’ve mentioned before, I think online safety is absolutely essential and it is all too easy for people to fall into the trap of thinking they know someone when they really don’t. I read another book with a similar storyline earlier this year, and may fit this one into my reading challenges as well, so it will be interesting to see how the two compare.
3) The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza
I’m realizing now that this order seemed to be a bit thriller-heavy, or at least darker plots, but I did add in a couple of other genres to balance things out. The Knockoff is another book that is kind of outside my comfort zone since I have zero interest in fashion or the fashion industry, but this book just seemed like so much fun! It is about a woman named Imogen who works for a magazine called Glossy, who returns to work after 6 months away to find her younger former assistant now in charge, and eager to update the company for the digital age. This book has been compared to The Devil Wears Prada. I loved that movie but hated the book, so I’m hoping I have better luck with this one. It seems like this book will focus more on the generation gap and technology instead of fashion, so it sounds like something I would like better.
4) The Good Neighbour by Amy Sue Nathan
I only discovered this book at the end of 2017, although it has been out since 2015 already. This book is about a newly single mom named Izzy who moves back to her childhood neighbourhood with her 5-year-old son, and makes friends with the elderly Mrs. Feldman next door. When her ex shows up with his new girlfriend, Izzy decides to invent a boyfriend and blog about him, which becomes complicated when her blog suddenly becomes popular and she has the chance to become an online dating expert. Izzy soon realizes that telling the truth now can ruin everything, and Mrs. Feldman decides to step in and show her just how much of a problem lies can be. I’ve mentioned before how much I tend to love stories that focus on social media, but in my experience, most of these tend to be YA books. I think it would be really interesting to read this from an adult perspective, although I’m still a little confused about how Mrs. Feldman fits in. It sounds like another one that will be fun.
5) Violent Ends by multiple authors
This book is unique in the sense that it is co-written by 17 different YA authors, as an anthology of short stories that all work together to tell one story. The book is about a student named Kirby Matheson who perpetrated a school shooting, with each chapter by a different author giving the perspective of a different character. If I’m completely honest, I had no idea that this was how the book was set up when I added it to my TBR or when I bought it. I’m sure at some point in between I’d noticed the list of author names, but clearly it wasn’t memorable enough at the time to leave an impression. I’m not usually a fan of anthologies, but this one is very interesting because of how all of the stories should come together to show who the shooter was and how he got to that point. I’m a little worried that this book will be a case of “too many cooks in the kitchen” but it has received excellent reviews so far from most of the reviewers I follow and on Goodreads in general. It definitely seems like a unique approach to the story and I’m interested to see how it works.
Abyssal Librarian 