Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Kimberly’s Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 Releases I Meant to Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is all about 2014 releases I meant to read...but then didn’t for one reason or another. This was actually a pretty easy topic for me because I always have such great intentions when it comes to reading new releases and ARCs. But I am very much an emotion-driven reader and sometimes I’m just not in the mood for a certain type of book. About halfway through last year, I suddenly found myself uninterested in reading YA, and reading only adult fiction. So when books I had been waiting to read for, in one case, two years, finally came out, I just couldn’t bring myself to pick them up. I really do want to read all of these novels, and probably will at some point, but it just didn’t happen in 2014.

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1) Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira - I love epistolary novels and, while this isn’t completely epistolary, it does have elements in it. I actually met Ava Dellaira at the TLA Annual Conference last April and she was so sweet. I think I just wasn’t in the mood for a potentially heartbreaking novel.

2) The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness - At 576 pages, this book is a tome. To be honest, I had so many problems with the first two books in this trilogy, that struggling through this one just didn’t appeal.

3) Open Road Summer by Emery Lord - After reading the synopsis and meeting the author at Teen Book Con last April, I was so excited to read this one. I really have no idea what my excuse is for not doing so.

4) Blood of My Blood by Barry Lyga - When Game came out in 2013, I didn’t read it because I had been told there were too many cliffhangers. So when this final book came out, and I still hadn’t read book two...

5) Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins - This is the book I mentioned above. I waited so long for this book and a big part of me was (and still is) afraid that it can’t possibly live up to my increasingly high expectations.

6) Bonfire Night by Deanna Raybourn - This is the last of the Lady Julia novellas and I didn’t even know it existed until a month after it was released. I’m actually ashamed to admit that. I think the reason why I haven’t read this one yet is because once I do, there will be no more Lady Julia stories. Sigh.

7) China Dolls by Lisa See - I read half of this book immediately after it was published, but I just wasn’t in the mood for the heaviness of it. I think I put it down in favor of something light-hearted and fluffy. Mood really does make a difference.

8) The Perilous Sea by Sherry Thomas - I loved The Burning Sky a lot more than I thought I would, but had to wait for the library’s copy of the sequel to come in. Which it just did last week. I can’t wait to read it!

9) Breakable by Tammara Webber - Easy was my first experience with New Adult and I loved it. But since this is basically a retelling of Easy from a different perspective, I wanted to wait awhile before revisiting the story again.

10) On the Fence by Kasie West - This is another contemporary YA novel I was really looking forward to, yet didn’t manage to read. I even had an ARC of it months before it came out! I have no excuse.

What 2014 releases did you miss out on reading?