Top Ten Tuesday – My First Ten Reviews On SWB

This Top Ten Tuesday is a really interesting prompt! While these probably aren’t the first book reviews I’ve ever written, I vaguely recall writing something for my primary school newspaper, they are the first ten reviews I posted on SWB. I don’t look back on the blog as often as I could, or perhaps should so it was pretty interesting to look back and where things started.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

First Ten Books I Reviewed

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Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah

Closed Casket was the very first book I reviewed on SWB, reading it back I’m struck by how my views have changed. Not on the book as a whole, although I’ve not read it again since the beginning of 2017. At the time I said I had no problem with writers using well established characters to tell stories as long as the original author’s estate agreed. In a recent post I commented on the fact that these appeared to be becoming more common (or that I was noticing them more) and questioned if maybe it was the publishing industry becoming slightly lazy and relying on established characters, publishing is hardly the first media industry to rely on reboots and franchises, after all TV and Film are full of examples but I worry that amazing stories won’t get told, or get the notice they deserve because it’s easier to market a new James Bond or Secret Seven book…

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The Swedish Girl by Alex Gray

Review number two on SWB, this was a story I’d picked up in Waterstones quite a while before I got round to reading it. As I say in my review it wasn’t a book I ever set out to buy but I was sucked in by the Buy One, Get One Half Price offer and picked it up because it looked interesting. What I didn’t realise at the time was I had picked up a book ten stories into a series. I enjoyed it enough to go back to the start and start listening to the audiobooks.

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The One Plus One by JoJo Moyes

Review number three was another book that had been sitting on my shelf for some time. It was a book I wasn’t really expecting to enjoy, I’m not even sure how it ended up on my shelves to be honest, it was maybe a gift, I enjoyed it so much I ended up buying Me Before You, haven’t got around to reading it yet though.

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Two Days Gone by Randall Silvis

This was the first book I ever downloaded from NetGalley, I’m pretty sure it was a read now but I felt so much pressure to review it, thinking that having some reviews on the site would encourage publishers to grant me access to some eARCs I was really hoping to read. Unfortunately Two Days Gone really didn’t do it for me.

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Little Girl Lost by Carol Wyer

I’m fairly certain Little Girl Lost was the first book I actually requested from NetGalley and was approved for. It was the first thriller from Carol and I really loved it, I’ve fallen slightly behind in the series but I will always recommend them! Carol is also one of the loveliest people, even as a pretty new blogger she took the time out to write a guest post for me

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Sirens by Joseph Knox

I think this was a novel I picked up after reading about it online, a dark crime novel set in Manchester sounded right up my street, I spent a lot of time in Manchester as a child and as much as I have grown to really enjoy YA Fantasy I’ve always loved a novel set somewhere I know well, I find it really helps me bring it to life! I was a little surprised to see I’d broken the review down and headered the sections, it wasn’t something I’d done before and I’m not sure I have done since – certainly not in such an obvious way although I may still split things down into paragraphs

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The Edge Of Everything by Jeff Giles

This was me venturing outside of my comfort zone, dipping back into YA and venturing into Fantasy for the first time in a while. I really enjoyed it and I have to admit it’s one clear benefit to NetGalley, I’ve found myself more likely to take a chance and read outside my comfort zone, discovering new authors and genres to fall in love with when perhaps previously I wouldn’t as my budget would only go so far and I wanted to focus on books I knew I’d enjoy. This is why I’ll never take NetGalley for granted.

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Every Pretty Thing by Chris Mooney

This book showed me one of the perils of NetGalley, it’s not always obvious from the description that a book is the latest in a series and unless you’re familiar with the author you might not realise. Now this isn’t always a problem, sometimes you can jump in to a series midway through, especially in crime fiction where at least the case tends to standalone. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case with this story, I definitely felt like I was missing some backstory which detracted from my enjoyment a little, I had planned on reading the series from the beginning but I’ve not got around to it yet, and to be honest I’m not sure I will now.

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Blogger Girl by Meredith Schorr

I’m pretty sure this was another read now from NetGalley that I’d requested to up my ratio. It was definitely a grower and this has reminded me that I bought the sequel when it was on sale on Amazon and I still haven’t read it!

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Blink by K. L. Slater

Judging from my review I really enjoyed this, especially the twist at the end but for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what that was anymore!

They were the first ten books I reviewed on SWB! Looking back I certainly posted reviews far more frequently, I think maybe subconsciously as my blog has grown I’ve put more pressure on myself to write “better” or longer reviews and maybe I need to just relax a little bit and not get so in my head about what I think others will think of it!

What were some of your first reviews? Let me know in the comments!