Top Ten Tuesday is a feature run by BrokeAndBookish each week – I’m thinking I might not take part every week but just see if a week takes my fancy. I read a lot more this year than I thought I would and a lot of what I read has been really good. So this weeks Top Ten Tuesday is the perfect time to look back at what I’ve read and pick out some highlights. I reviewed some of these books I’m going to mention, so if it you want to find out more about what I thought – just click the link and you’ll get to my review!

Young Avengers Vol 1: Style > Substance – Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie
Young Avengers really kicked off my comic book reading this year. I had read a few volumes towards the end of last year but this year I’ve read a lot. Young Avengers is a lot of fun and the story arc was very easy to get into even though I only knew one or two characters from the team before I started reading it. If you like teenage superheroes saving the world while having relationship dramas and having great banter – Young Avengers is for you.

Vicious – V.E. Schwab
I’m always intrigued about people with powers and I loved the take on that in Vicious. All the characters are interesting and no one is just a cardboard cut-out of a hero or villain.

The Losers Book One – Andy Diggle and Jock
I love the film The Losers so it was great to read the source material and find that I loved that Justas much – if not more so. I love the art in the book and the relationship between the characters is great. It’s also got a lot of humour and is action-packed.

The Strain – Chuck Hogan and Guillermo del Toro
Well this was probably the creepiest book I’ve read this year. I went into it expecting a thriller and it turned out to be more of a horror novel – and I’m a scaredy-cat and don’t read horror. Still, I found myself really liking The Strain, even when it gave me goosebumps. It had a great plot that slowly builds the tension and all the characters act very believably in the situation the find themselves in. I did start watching the TV show and thought it was a good adaptation but I’m useless at watching TV so have only seen about 4 episodes.

Gone Girl – Gillian Flynn
Gone Girl is one of those books you want to discuss with everyone – especially because of that ending! The characters are clever yet often vindictive and unlikable and the plot is definitely full of surprises.

The 5th Wave – Rick Yancey
This was probably my favourite YA book I read this year. It was great to see how people would (or wouldn’t) survive after an alien invasion. I loved how the aliens slowly killed off the world’s population and now it’s about the few survivors left. Cassie was a great character and I also loved some of the secondary characters like Ringer. Even though it was quite a decent sized book, it was still fast-paced and always interesting.

Runaways – Brian K. Vaughan, Adrian Alphona and Takeshi Miyazawa
This complete collection of the first story arc is brilliant. All the characters were believable teenagers, some were a bit reserved and awkward others were loud, cocky and annoying but they still managed to grow on me. The art was great, all the characters looked unique, my only negative was that it seemed the ending happened quite suddenly and everything got wrapped up very quickly. That being said, the actual ending of the arc was a surprise and I liked that.

Abhorsen – Garth Nix
Abhorsen was a reread for me but that doesn’t mean it can’t be one of my favourite books of 2014. It’s been years since I’ve read it and it was just as good as I remembered. An action-packed, tense, creepy and emotional end to an awesome trilogy.

Poe – J. Lincoln Fenn
Poe is the other creepy, horror novel I read this year totally by accident but still ending up really enjoying it. I think the reason Ii liked it so much was because the main character Dimitri is such a sarcastic guy and I loved being in his head and seeing how he described the people around him.

172 Hours on the Moon – Johan Harstad
This is another book I just want to talk to people about! I don’t want to say too much about it because it’s one of those that’s best to go in blind but it was another creepy book that gave me goosebumps. I liked the three teenagers that got chosen to go to the moon and I liked the tension and sense of foreboding throughout the novel.

 

So they were my top ten reads of 2014 – there’s still a couple of weeks left of December so there’s still time to find another great book *fingers crossed* that happens!