Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My TBR I Predict Will 4-Star Reads

This week’s topic is Books On My TBR I Predict Will Be 5-Star Reads but I had to change that to FOUR-star reads. My 5-star rating is something rare. My TBR is made up of best-sellers, backlist titles, forgotten authors, history, and a few fairly esoteric topics, so forewarned is forearmed!

“Novel in verse” has me a little on edge, but if anyone can pull it off, Elizabeth Acevedo is the one. Here are my reviews of her previous books, The Poet X and With the Fire On High. Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo will be released in early May 2020 and can already be pre-ordered on Amazon.

 

With such a beautiful cover, and covering Mussolini’s take-over of Ethiopia–a proving ground for weapons, tactics, and materials for World War II, I have very high hopes for this book.  The Shadow King: A Novel by Maaza Mengist.

 

Copy-cat cover alert!

 

Popular theme and colors.

 

 

 

While I’d honestly love a Boys in the Boat but with girls, this is a fictionalized account of America’s 1936 women’s Olympic track team is written by the author of The Other Alcott [on sale for Kindle here] to which I assigned four stars, so I hope it is great. Plus it has another superb cover. Fast Girls: A Novel by Elise Hooper releases in July, in time to read it before the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo–I’m anxious to read it.

 

You are going to start thinking I chose books solely by their beautiful covers! I’ve loved both of Chanel Cleeton’s previous books–Next Year in Havana and When We Left Cuba and thought the second better than the first so the third should be ….WOW! Or so I hope! The Last Train to Key West: A Novelby Chanel Cleeton.

 

One of the author’s previous novels, The Invisible Bridge, was so emotional that I wonder if I’ll cry reading this one? Flight Portfolio: A Novel.

From my old blog: The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

I may be forever haunted by the characters in this breath-taking novel of Nazi-era Hungary. Andras and Klara, Tibor, Tamas, and all the others filled my heart as well as my imagination. While Hungary put off deporting its Jews, that didn’t mean those years were necessarily peaceful or safe. Klara and Andras love and live throughout the turmoil of the pre-war years in Paris, then in Budapest after Andras’ forced return. Their feelings mature and deepen. Their family grows emotionally learns to cling to the threads of their former life. The end of the war, the memories of the old days, the starting again of life–it’s all very poignant and real. This is a novel that crosses the bounds of consciousness into a novel of faith and soul and otherworldly life at its fullest. Another JUST READ IT. The Invisible Bridge: A Novel by Julie Orringer.

 

As the most famous Peace Corps Volunteer to ever serve in my PC country, Malawi, I have a natural interest in Theroux’s writing. His earlier works, Riding the Iron Rooster and The Great Railway Bazaar are two of my all-time favorite works of travel literature. These are sadly off-set by The Lower River: A Novel and the awful movie version of the Mosquito Coast–-awful even with Sean Connery in it. I hope this book lives up to the two other travel books I loved. Given it will involve American politics of necessity, I’m anxious about my overall take on the book. On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux

 

That’s it for this week! I couldn’t come up with the full ten.

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