Top 5 Tuesday #22: Surprising Reads of 2019

Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Shanah, the Bionic Book Worm.

This week’s topic:

Top 5 surprising reads of 2019

These five are all surprising reads either because I liked them or because I didn’t. They are in order of whichever one popped in my head first.

Evil Eye by Madhuri Shekar, narr. by Harsh Nayyar, Annapurna Sriram, Bernard White, Nick Choksi, Rita Wolf

This is the first Audible original story I’ve listened to, and I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. It’s a paranormal thriller about a young Indian woman who’s pressured by her mother to settle down and marry soon. But when she finds the “right guy,” her mother gets a bad feeling about him.

The entire story is relayed in phone conversations and the voice actors did a great job on the audiobook. I was immediately sucked in and entertained. The story starts out slow before picking up and is very funny. It’s one worth checking out.

The Lost Years of Merlin by T.A. Barron

This was a childhood favorite that I decided to reread as a buddy-read with Millie from Milliebot Reads. Unfortunately, we were both mightily bored by it. It was not a good read and it left me wondering what I liked about it as a kid. I hope the second book will shed some light on that. I’ll give up on the series if the second one is as boring.

This is the first novel in a middle-grade fantasy series about the wizard from Arthurian legend, Merlin. It’s about his boyhood and explores where he’s from.

The Stand by Stephen King

I was so surprised that I disliked this book because I liked watching the TV show adaptation as a kid although it kind of scared me. But the version I read didn’t appeal to me and actually turned me off because of the many tangents King goes off on, which is weird because I liked that about ‘Salem’s Lot. But The Stand just turned me off. I also hated how women are portrayed in it. It was so annoying.

The Stand is basically about people trying to survive in a postapocalypse world in which much of the population was wiped out by some sort of super flu.

Bad Blood by John Carreyrou

I didn’t expect this book to be as engrossing as it was. It’s a nonfiction book about a health startup created and ran by Elizabeth Holmes, who apparently jilted many out of millions of dollars for a product her company created that never worked. The many reveals in this book are shocking. It’s written like a thriller, the type of book that keeps you at the edge of your seat, so I sped through it while wondering if it’s all true. It is.

Dopesick by Beth Macy (narr.)

I’m always surprised by nonfiction I listen to on audio and actually like, especially since listening to it isn’t a reread. That’s what happened with Dopesick. I was surprised that I actually paid attention to what’s said and even remembered parts of it.

Dopesick is a nonfiction book about the rise in opioid addiction in the U.S. It’s a great read and an important one.

That’s it for me.
Let me know if you’ve read any of these

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