Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I'd Like Santa to Leave Under My Tree

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week has a different theme & you can find all the details about how to join in HERE.

Today's topic is Top Ten Books I'd Like Santa to Leave Under My Tree. I don't tend to get many books for Christmas, most people know I have a LOT of books already and are too afraid to get me more in case they buy ones I already have. My Dad shares my love of reading though and always likes to get books as a present so I have to send him a list of some different choices that he can pick from, that way I still get a sort of surprise but he knows he's buying something I want. So this is the list I've sent him & hopefully some of them will be waiting for me to open them on Christmas Day, otherwise I guess I'll just have to use some of my Christmas money to go shopping and hopefully find some of them in the January sales LOL.

1. Their Fractured Light by Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner: I love the first two books in this series so can't wait to see how everything ties up in this final instalment!
2. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renee Ahdieh: I keep hearing fantastic things about this book
3. Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill: I read this author's second book, Asking For It, recently and it blew me away. Her debut got fantastic reviews too so I definitely need to read this one.
4. Evernight & Soulbound by Kristen Callihan: I have the rest of the series already but it's a series I've been wanting to finish for a long time now. I need the US paperbacks to match the rest of my set though because I started buying them before a UK publisher had picked up the series.
5. Bronze Gods by A.A. Aguirre: I love steampunk and I've enjoyed everything else I've read by Ann Aguirre so I'm very curious to try this series that she writes with her husband.
6. Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs: I already own these books on kindle but it's one of my favourite series (I'm currently rereading it for the third time!) so I'd love to have print copies for my shelves.

So those are my choices! Which books are you hoping to find under your tree this Christmas?

Review: Asking For It - Louise O'Neill

It's the beginning of summer, and Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy and confident.

One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma.

The next day, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She doesn't know how she got there.

She doesn't know why she's in pain.

But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show - in great detail - exactly what happened to Emma that night.

But sometimes people don't want to believe what's right in front of them, especially if the truth concerns the town's heroes . . .

A brave, bold and important novel about sexual consent and betrayal, victim blaming and truth in the age of the smartphone.

Visit Louise O'Neill's website for more information

Review:
I honestly don't think I have the words to do this book justice, I've been trying to write this review for weeks now and I still can't seem to put all my thoughts in order but I'm going to give it my best shot and just hope that everyone will just ignore my rambling and read this book anyway. Asking For It isn't an easy read, in fact it's the kind of story that will make any sane person so mad that they want to start throwing things, but it's such an incredibly important book all the same. I honestly want to put this book into the hands of every single teenager I know. In fact I think it should be on the school curriculum because it raises so many important questions and it would be a fantastic starting point for classroom discussions on what is and, more importantly, what isn't acceptable behaviour.

I hate to say it but we live in a culture where victims are constantly being blamed for the actions of their attacker. Women are constantly judged by the way we look, the way we act and we're held accountable for the actions of people who should know better. We've all heard things like "look at that outfit, anyone who dresses like that must be up for it" or "she shouldn't have drunk so much if she didn't want something bad to happen" or "well she sleeps around anyway so why would she have said no this time". I will never understand how people can think like that ANYTHING a girl does makes it acceptable for a man to rape her but that victim blaming attitude is shared by a scary amount of people.

It's all very well to teach teenage girls to do whatever they can to protect themselves (and of course we need to continue to do that!) BUT we should equally be teaching teenage boys that it is NEVER acceptable to force themselves on a girl. It doesn't matter what she's wearing, it doesn't matter if she's drunk or has taken drugs and it doesn't matter if she's slept with 100 other boys - if she's not conscious enough to say yes then the answer is automatically NO. If she says no she means NO. No never, ever means yes and it is completely unacceptable to continue when someone asks you to stop. That should go without saying but unfortunately a lot of people out there fail to understand the basics so let's get a discussion started.

I feel like I've gone off on a tangent but victim blaming and the consequences of sexual assault are at the heart of Asking For It. Louise O'Neill shows us the gritty truth that most of us would rather not think about and she's done it incredibly well. Emma O'Donovan isn't a particularly nice character, in fact I spent the beginning of the book pretty much hating her, she's a typical mean girl - someone who is pretty and popular but who isn't very nice, she's mean to her friends, she judges everyone and she just has to be the centre of attention all the time. I was bullied by girls like her in school so it's no wonder I didn't take to her but in spite of that I still hated seeing what she went through and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I loved the way the author took such a nasty character yet still made my heart bleed for her.

Emma's whole life is turned upside down after she is gang raped at a party, she has no memories of the actual event but photographic evidence was posted all over Facebook and now everyone has seen horrifically intimate pictures of her. Everyone has formed an opinion of her based on what she was wearing, the way she was acting and her sexual history and now even her friends have turned against her. Louise O'Neill does a fantastic job of showing the effect of social media on girls in this kind of situation, both people Emma knows and complete strangers are utterly ruthless in the comments they make and the way they act towards her and that has an impact on Emma's entire family. I could understand how hard it was for her parents to accept what had happened but I absolutely hated the way they reacted to Emma and the complete lack of support she had in the aftermath. Only her brother seemed to be fully on her side but Emma found it impossible to face him or anyone else just knowing he'd seen the pictures of her.

Asking For It is a difficult story to get through but I'm so glad I read it. There were times when it made me feel physically sick and it definitely raised my blood pressure but it really made me think and that's what I loved most about it. Emma is an incredibly realistic teenager and her reactions to what happened to her were obviously well researched and very credible. I'm going to warn you now that this doesn't have a neatly tied up happily ever after ending but it wouldn't have been very realistic if it had. As much as there are things I would have liked to happen differently sadly I think what Louise O'Neill gives us is probably the much more likely outcome. This story is a must read book and I only hope my rambling review hasn't put anyone off reading it!

Source: Received from Amazon Vine in exchange for an honest review

Other Reviews:
If you have reviewed this book on your blog please leave a link to your review in the comments & I'll add the link here.

Hardback / Kindle:

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten New To Me Authors I Read for the First Time in 2015 (& yes I do know I'm 2 days late LOL)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week has a different theme & you can find all the details about how to join in HERE.

Today's topic is Top Ten New To Me Authors I Read for the First Time in 2015 and I've discovered some wonderful new authors this year so I have lots to talk about. This will include a mixture of debut authors and authors who have been around for a while but who I only discovered this year. I'm also including a selection of adult and YA author's so there hopefully should be something here that appeals to everyone.

I've been looking forward to this topic for ages but life got in the way & I'm only just getting around to actually writing it so I apologise for being 2 days late. Better late than never though so here we go :o)

I love discovering new authors (I've actually read books by over 50 new to me authors this year!) and you can see a list of all the author's I've discovered in 2015 HERE if you're interested. It's been very hard to narrow it down to just my top 10 but I've finally done it so here are my favourites:

Pippa Dacosta

Pippa Dacosta has quickly become one of my favourite authors, I fell in love with her writing when I picked up the first in her science fiction series Girl From Above: Betrayal but have since also devoured her urban fantasy series that starts with Beyond the Veil. In fact I've worked my way through her entire back list (11 books and novellas) since August so that should give you a hint about how much I LOVE her stories. You can read all of my reviews of her work HERE.

K.F. Breene

K.F. Breene is another author whose books I've been absolutely devouring, I've not managed to make my way through her entire back list but I did devour all of the books currently available in her Warrior Chronicles series and I'm now desperately waiting for the next book to be written! Read my reviews HERE.

Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

I can't believe it took me so long to discover these author's wonderful series, I absolutely devoured These Broken Stars and This Shattered World earlier this year and the final book in the trilogy, This Fractured Light, is right at the top of my Christmas wish list this year. Both Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner have been added to my list of auto-buy authors and I can also highly recommend Illuminae that Amie wrote with another fabulous (but not new to me) author Jay Kristoff. Read my reviews HERE.

V.E. Schwab

Another new autobuy author has to be V.E. Schwab, I absolutely adored both A Darker Shade of Magic and Vicious. Both books are very different but utterly brilliant and I'm glad we're going to get more stories set in each world. You can find my reviews HERE.

E.K. Johnston

A Thousand Nights was one of my favourite books of the year so of course I had to include debut author E.K. Johnston in my list. This story is incredibly atmospheric and was so, so beautiful to read, I completely devoured it and I can't wait to see more from this author in the future. Read my review HERE.

Becky Chambers

I've been really enjoying my science fiction this year and Becky Chamber's debut, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, was brilliant. It has such a varied cast of characters and I really hope that this is going to be the start of a new series. I'll definitely be watching out for whatever this author writes next though. Read my review HERE.

Pamela Clare

I don't tend to read a lot of romantic suspense but I've been hearing amazing things about Pamela Clare's writing from American bloggers for such a long time now so when I found out her books had been picked up by a UK publisher I couldn't resist giving them a try. I can definitely understand why everyone raves about her now because these books are amazing! You can find my reviews HERE.

Naomi Novik

I loved Uprooted so much that I've already read it twice this year, it's an absolutely wonderful fairytale type fantasy story that I don't really have the words to describe, hence the reason I STILL haven't written up my review for it! I will be getting caught up with my final reviews by the end of the year though so watch out for this one - it's put Naomi Novik on my list of must read authors and I'm really looking forward to working my way through her back list.

Juliet Marillier

Another fantastic fantasy story that I'm yet to write a review for. Dreamer's Pool was brilliant and I already have the next book in the series that I'm hoping to read very soon so Juliet Marillier is another recommended author.

Louise O'Neill

Louise O'Neill's Asking For It isn't an easy read, in fact there were times when it was incredibly painful and it made me so mad that I could have probably committed murder if I'd been able to climb into the story and confront some of the main characters! This is such an important book though and I really do feel like EVERYONE should read it, Louise shines a light on rape culture in today's society and I think it paves the way for some very important questions that we all need to ask ourselves. I really think this should be required reading in schools to get people openly talking about what constitutes rape and whether anyone is ever Asking For It (of course they're absolutely NOT but you'd be surprised at how many people don't agree with that!). I've heard great things about Louise O'Neill's debut novel Only Ever Yours too so I'm planning on reading that one as soon as I get a chance.

So those are my favourite newly discovered authors for 2015. Have you read any of the books or series I mentioned? Which ones are your favourites? Who are your top new authors? I'm always looking for recommendations :o)