The Electricity of Every Living Thing by Katherine May
The Year I Met My Brain by Matilda Boseley
Meredith, Alone by Claire Alexander
These four surprised me mostly because of the wonderful discovery of neurodivergent and/or people with mental health issues being shown as three dimensional characters. Two are memoirs, so this wasn’t entirely surprising, but the execution was brilliant. The Electricity of Every Living Thing I listened to as an audio drama, and it was such an amazing and impactful way to experience a book about what it’s like to live with undiagnosed autism, handle the realization of needing an assessment, getting a diagnosis, and what that does to a family. The Year I Met My Brain was a memoir, but also hands down the best book about ADHD I’ve read to date. Boseley’s fantastic research and writing skills made this a succinct, easily understandable, interesting and comprehensive account of what it is like to be diagnosed with ADHD as an adult, the impact that has – both pre- and post-diagnosis – and all the information you’re then suddenly scrambling to synthesize and apply to your life. It’s so overwhelming, but I think if I’d had this book handed to me with my official diagnosis, it would have been easier. The Things We Cannot Say is a split narrative between a modern family with a son on the autism spectrum and a WWII family experiencing the German invasion and occupation of rural Poland. But it was so well done, the characters lifted right off the page as I read, and it was a gentle and insightful representation of everything these characters had to face, including neurodivergence. And Meredith, Alone is about a woman who suffers from agoraphobia, but who isn’t ignoring it or living in denial, but handling her life within the limits this places on it in a well-rounded way. She has friends, a job, a therapist, an exercise regime, a cat, hobbies, and even limits her screen time. She’s better balanced than me! She’s funny, interesting and very likeable. She’s not a figure of pathos or a stereotype. And it’s lovely seeing her develop through the book.
All Fours by Miranda July
The Postcard by Anne Berest
The Fortnight in September by R.C. Sherriff
Wrong Place Wrong Time surprised me with how fresh it felt. I’ve not read a thriller with this structure before, and it was so effective. I’d say more, but it’s better if you don’t know. All Fours… I’m still trying to figure this one out. On the one hand I loved a book about a peri-menopausal woman having feelings, making mistakes, getting messy, wanting a different kind of life. But even though all that was great to see, I disliked the main character so much that I didn’t enjoy spending time with her, and her decisions and proclivities were weird and often uncomfortable, but not in a good way. I didn’t like reading it, but at the same time I’m glad it exists. So I’m conflicted. The Postcard, on the other hand, was another fascinating book with a structure I’ve not seen before, but it was excellent. It’s a “roman vrai,” French for “true novel.” The characters are based on and have the same names as the author and her family, and a lot of the events follow her family history. But she storifies it to flesh out the parts there’s no record of – notably the stories and experiences of those who were tortured and murdered in concentration camps. In so doing, she makes a historical base into a riveting and deeply emotional read that broke my heart and had me completely invested. The Fortnight In September is similarly an unexpected format. It’s a very quiet novel that is pretty much just about a normal family in the inter-war years in England preparing for and going on a two week vacation to the same seaside town they’ve always gone to, and in the same guest house they always stay in. Nothing much really happens, and yet there was so much going on in this book. It was also made heartbreakingly poignant by the knowledge we, as modern readers, have of what the future holds for this family in the form of WWII, and that makes everything we see in their lives much more impactful. Gorgeous book.
Snapdragon by Kat Leyh
Somewhere Beyond the Sea by TJ Klune
Friends of Dorothy by Sandi Toksvig
All four of these are books I absolutely loved, that made me feel warm and fuzzy and that made me feel like the world and the people in it aren’t always so bad after all. I didn’t expect a fantasy novel like Legends & Lattes to make me feel so much or to bring me so much wholesome comfort, but it really did and I adored it. Snapdragon is a dark graphic novel, but it had beautiful relationships and great storylines and character development. I adored the representation and intergenerational friendship. Somewhere Beyond the Sea is the sequel to The House in the Cerulean Sea, and being a sequel, I was apprehensive about how it would hold up. But it was absolutely perfect as a follow up to a book I loved, and took me right back to the same vibes and feelings as the first one. Great surprise. And last but not least, Friends of Dorothy. I adore Sandi Toksvig, but hadn’t read one of her novels before. This is such a lovely story about found family, the importance of community and what can happen if you allow someone grace and help them rather than doing the “logical” thing. Just a lovely, warm-hearted read.
So those are some books that surprised me in one way or another, but mostly ended up making me grateful that I gave them a try. What about you guys? Did you have trouble with this week’s prompt? What type of surprise did you choose to focus on with your picks this week?
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.