Top Ten Tuesday – Positive First Impressions From 2015

I read many novels by new-to-me authors in 2015. The following ten authors managed to impress me so much the first time that I immediately filled my TBR with other books by them (or their upcoming books).

 

Jonathan Tropper, author of This Is Where I Leave You

Contemporary fiction isn’t my go-to genre, but I was in quite the reading rut so decided to read something out of the norm. Surprise, surprise. I ended up loving this and proceeded to immediately add everything else by Tropper.

Karin Slaughter, author of Pretty Girls [Review] and Blindsighted [Review]

Slaughter had been on my TBR for ages, and when I was graciously gifted Blindsighted I was anxious to read it. It’s been a long time since I read such a horrifying and captivating mystery.

Amy E. Reichert, author of The Coincidence of Coconut Cake [Review]

I am an absolute sucker for foodie-fiction so this was a no-brainer. Absolutely lovely though with an adorable romance and some incredible descriptions of Milwaukee, Wisconsin that made me want to immediately hop on a plane to go visit. Can’t wait for her upcoming book, Luck, Love & Lemon Pie.

Lissa Evans, author of Crooked Heart [Review]

Like foodie fiction, I’m a sucker for WWII related novels which was the only reason I signed up for this blog tour. Not a war book exactly, but a darkly comedic story about the lengths people went to during the war to survive. A massively underrated gem.

Sarah J. Maas, author of the Throne of Glass series

I binge read this entire series at the beginning of the year when I had just been going through a mega-slump. This series fixed it quicker than I ever thought possible.

José Saramago, author of Blindness [Review]

Blindness was an incredible difficult read but so worth it. I actually DNF’d this book in print but decided to attempt it on audio. The lack of punctuation/quotation marks was no longer an issue on audio and I coasted through this horrifying yet impressive tale.

Steve Sheinkin, author of Most Dangerous [Review]

I have never been a big reader of Non-Fiction, however, I picked this one up after it was nominated for the National Book Award. I went into this book with a vastly limited knowledge of Vietnam and this was not only informative but extremely thrilling. I look forward to reading Sheinkin’s other Non-Fiction tales.

Brian Selznick, author of The Marvels [Review]

I had of course heard of The Invention of Hugo Cabret but I had yet to pick it up. The Marvels was a surprise gift and I adored the combination of words and artwork. Charming, simplistic, and full of heart.

Brian Panowich, author of Bull Mountain [Review]

This was a complete knockout of a story. Truly astounded that this is the authors debut. I’m becoming quite the dedicated fan of “Grit-Lit”, however, I would whole-heartedly recommend this one if you’re new to the genre.

Ken Grimwood, author of Replay [Review]

I enjoyed this intriguing tale of time travel so much and immediately went to see what else I could get from this author. His other 3 novels appear to be extremely hard to get a copy of, but my library has one of them at least (Into the Deep).