Top Ten Tuesday – Reads of 2018

Hello again everyone!

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

I’m here with today’s Top Ten Tuesday post! This week’s topic is top reads of 2018, and I had a difficult time narrowing my list down to ten. My list is in no particular order, and I also tried to include a few sentences as to why each book landed on my top ten.

1) Almost Midnight by Rainbow Rowell: I read this book in December, and I thought it was the perfect holiday read. It contains two short stories, one that takes place on New Year’s Eve and one that takes place in the line to see Star Wars. Even though the stories were fairly predictable, they were heartwarming and made me smile.

2) The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman: I also read this book in December, and it turned me into an emotional train wreck. The second story, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, was beautiful and it made me cry my eyes out. I decided to include this book in my top ten because any book that makes me have a strong emotional reaction deserves to be on a list like this.

3) Chaotic Good by Whitney Gardner: It’s hard to say for sure, but I think this was my favourite YA read of the year. I loved the characters and the storyline, and I cannot recommend it enough. It also inspired me to go to the comic book store, which introduced me to a whole new world of reading. If you’re interested, you can check out my full review here!

4) Love and Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch: I read this book in the summer, and it was super cute. This book takes place in Italy, and the descriptions of the food and the places made me want to drop everything and travel. It also helps that I liked the characters and the adventure that they went on to find the truth about Lina’s father.

5) How to Stop Time by Matt Haig: This book was a cover buy for me, and I’m incredibly happy that it caught my eye at Chapters. I loved how this book was a mix of contemporary and historical fiction, and I loved all of the flashbacks to important moments in history. If you’re interested, you can read my full review here!

6) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak: After putting off reading this book for so long, I picked it up at the beginning of 2018 and read it as a buddy read with one of my best friends. After reading it, and crying my eyes out, all I could think about is why I didn’t pick this book up sooner. It’s a heartbreaking book, but it’s an important book, and if you haven’t read it, I recommend that you add it to your 2019 TBR list.

7) Beartown by Fredrik Backman: This is the first book that I read in 2018, and it set the bar really high for the rest of the year. This book is different than Backman’s other books, but it’s an important and moving book that deals with a lot of relevant and important issues. Don’t let the setting of a hockey town fool you; this book is about so much more than hockey.

8) Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli: I read this book in anticipation for the movie, and I’m so glad that I did. I found this book to be funny and sweet, and it had me smiling the whole time I was reading it. It also contained a lot of quotable lines, which is always a fun bonus.

9) To All The Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han: I decided to read this book when I heard that they were turning it into a movie. I was originally hesitant to read this book because I thought it would be too YA, but I’m glad that I took the plunge because I adored Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky.

10) Calypso by David Sedaris: David Sedaris is one of my favourite authors, and when I heard that he had a new book coming out, I declared it a book emergency and requested that my boyfriend venture to the store to buy it for me while I was at work. I found a lot of the essays in this collection to be laugh-out-loud funny and, I especially loved the story about the Fitbit.