Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Book Recommendations to Help Get You Out of A Book Slump

Top Ten Tuesday an original feature that was created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.  Essentially, for each week the list is a new topic and the feature is designed to share lists with other bookish folks!  I love reading these posts and it’s a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

This week, the theme was an open theme looking at book recommendations.  I decided to make a top ten list of books to head to if you are in a highly feared reading slump.   Those times where you cannot finish a book to save your life, all hope seems lost and doom is upon you.  This may be a little bit dramatic but that is legit how I feel when I find myself slumping.

The books I compiled are all books that I was able to binge read, kept me reading late into the night and help to drag me out of any reading slump.

Keep reading to see my top ten picks of books to help get you out of a reading slump!

If you like creepy and find yourself in a slump, then I would go to…

Brother by Ania Ahlborn

Brother is one of those books that I try and make everyone read against their free will. More often than not, people listen to me and I always get the same WTF am I am reading messages.   This one is fast paced, non-stop and incredibly creepy.  I could not put it down and it kicked my butt back into gear when I was slumping pretty hard.

SYNOPSIS:

Deep in the heart of Appalachia stands a crooked farmhouse miles from any road. The Morrows keep to themselves, and it’s served them well so far. When girls go missing off the side of the highway, the cops don’t knock on their door. Which is a good thing, seeing as to what’s buried in the Morrows’ backyard.

But nineteen-year-old Michael Morrow isn’t like the rest of his family. He doesn’t take pleasure in the screams that echo through the trees. Michael pines for normalcy, and he’s sure that someday he’ll see the world beyond West Virginia. When he meets Alice, a pretty girl working at a record shop in the small nearby town of Dahlia, he’s immediately smitten. For a moment, he nearly forgets about the monster he’s become. But his brother, Rebel, is all too eager to remind Michael of his place…

You can check out my review for Brother here. 

Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Super creepy and incredibly ominous, Bird Box is one of those books that give you the heebie jeebies.   One of my friends gave this one a read after I recommended it and her husband, who isn’t a reader at all, even picked it up and couldn’t put it down!

SYNOPSIS

Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.

Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it’s time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat–blindfolded–with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?

Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.

Read my Bird Box review here. 

The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone

I love this one because as you read, it feels like you are watching television.  Boone has a delicious way of weaving a tale and this one feels like the pages turn themselves.  Definitely helpful when a book slump is in full gear.

SYNOPSIS

Deep in the jungle of Peru, where so much remains unknown, a black, skittering mass devours an American tourist whole. Thousands of miles away, an FBI agent investigates a fatal plane crash in Minneapolis and makes a gruesome discovery. Unusual seismic patterns register in a Kanpur, India earthquake lab, confounding the scientists there. During the same week, the Chinese government “accidentally” drops a nuclear bomb in an isolated region of its own country. As these incidents begin to sweep the globe, a mysterious package from South America arrives at a Washington, D.C. laboratory. Something wants out.

The world is on the brink of an apocalyptic disaster. An ancient species, long dormant, is now very much awake. 

Read my The Hatching review here

If you like thrillers/suspense and find yourself in a slump- stop, drop and pick up….

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen

I am OBSESSED with this book and it helped me out of a slump big time.  It has a cult vibe and an unreliable narrator.  It is suspenseful and fast paced.  It will have you reading like a champ in no time!

SYNOPSIS

In this powerful psychological suspense debut, when a woman’s life is shattered, she is faced with a devastating question: What if everything she thought was normal and good and true . . . wasn’t?

Clara Lawson is torn from her life in an instant. Without warning, her home is invaded by armed men, and she finds herself separated from her beloved husband and daughters. The last thing her husband yells to her is to say nothing.

In chapters that alternate between past and present, the novel slowly unpeels the layers of Clara’s fractured life. We see her growing up, raised with her sisters by the stern Mama and Papa G, becoming a poised and educated young woman, falling desperately in love with the forbidden son of her adoptive parents. We see her now, sequestered in an institution, questioned by men and women who call her a different name—Diana—and who accuse her husband of unspeakable crimes. As recollections of her past collide with new revelations, Clara must question everything she thought she knew, to come to terms with the truth of her history and to summon the strength to navigate her future.

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

This one got me out of a book slump I had been in FOR YEARS!  This was one of the first books I read that got me back into the reading zone after I hadn’t been able to finish a book in a few years.  I couldn’t get enough.

SYNOPSIS

On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted Severson meets the stunning and mysterious Lily Kintner. Sharing one too many martinis, the strangers begin to play a game of truth, revealing very intimate details about themselves. Ted talks about his marriage that’s going stale and his wife, Miranda, who he’s sure is cheating on him. Ted and his wife were a mismatch from the start—he the rich businessman, she the artistic free spirit—a contrast that once inflamed their passion, but has now become a cliché.

But their game turns a little darker when Ted jokes that he could kill Miranda for what she’s done. Lily, without missing a beat, says calmly, “I’d like to help.” After all, some people are the kind worth killing, like a lying, stinking, cheating spouse. . . .

Back in Boston, Ted and Lily’s twisted bond grows stronger as they begin to plot Miranda’s demise. But there are a few things about Lily’s past that she hasn’t shared with Ted, namely her experience in the art and craft of murder, a journey that began in her very precocious youth.

Suddenly these co-conspirators are embroiled in a chilling game of cat-and-mouse, one they both cannot survive . . . with a shrewd and very determined detective on their tail.

Body Double by Tess Gerritsen

The first Tess Gerritsen book I read, this one got me hooked on the whole Rizzoli and Isles series and ended up making me Gerritsen obsessed.  I read this one in a couple of hours!

SYNOPSIS:
Dr. Maura Isles makes her living dealing with death. As a pathologist in a major metropolitan city, she has seen more than her share of corpses every day–many of them victims of violent murder. But never before has her blood run cold, and never has the grim expression “dead ringer” rung so terrifyingly true. Because never before has the lifeless body on the medical examiner’s table been her own.

Yet there can be no denying the mind-reeling evidence before her shocked eyes and those of her colleagues, including Detective Jane Rizzoli: the woman found shot to death outside Maura’s home is the mirror image of Maura, down to the most intimate physical nuances. Even more chilling is the discovery that they share the same birth date and blood type. For the stunned Maura, an only child, there can be just one explanation. And when a DNA test confirms that Maura’s mysterious doppelgänger is in fact her twin sister, an already bizarre murder investigation becomes a disturbing and dangerous excursion into a past full of dark secrets.

Searching for answers, Maura is drawn to a seaside town in Maine where other horrifying surprises await. But perhaps more frightening, an unknown murderer is at large on a cross-country killing spree. To stop the massacre and uncover the twisted truth about her own roots, Maura must probe her first living subject: the mother that she never knew . . . an icy and cunning woman who could be responsible for giving Maura life–and who just may have a plan to take it away.

If you like chick lit, I think these may help you over your slump…

Something Borrowed and Something Blue by Emily Giffin

These two are my all time favourite Emily Giffin books and I re-read them all the time; whenever I am struggling to find my reading groove, I usually pick these up and dive in.

SYNOPSIS:

Something Borrowed
A hard-working attorney at a large Manhattan firm, Rachel White has always played by the rules, quietly accepting the sidekick role to Darcy in their lopsided friendship. But that changes the night that Rachel confesses her feelings to Darcy’s fiancé, and is both horrified and thrilled to discover that he feels the same way. As the wedding date draws near, events spiral out of control, and Rachel knows she must make a choice between her heart and conscience. In doing so, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren’t always neat, and sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.

Something Blue
Darcy Rhone has always been able to rely on a few things: her beauty and charm. Her fiancé Dex. Her best friend Rachel. She never needed anything or anyone else. Or so she thought until she uncovered the ultimate betrayal. Blaming everyone but herself, Darcy flees to London and attempts to re-create her glamorous life on a new continent. But to her dismay, she discovers that her tried-and-true tricks no longer apply–and that her luck has finally expired. It is only then that she can begin her journey towards redemption, forgiveness, and the true meaning of happily ever after.

If you are in a reading slump and are open to sci-fi…

Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

This one is totally binge worthy; it is considered sci-fi but this one has so many moving peices, people who don’t like sci fi will enjoy this one too!  This one is begging to be made into a movie or mini-series.

SYNOPSIS:

“Are you happy with your life?” 

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious. 

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits. 

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.” 

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

From the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy, Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human—a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of.

If you like historical/ Holocaust fiction and are slumping, then you gotta read….

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

I read this one in a single evening and then thought about it for days.  It is emotional, fast paced and complex.   This one will combat any reading slump!

SYNOPSIS:

Sage Singer befriends an old man who’s particularly beloved in her community. Josef Weber is everyone’s favorite retired teacher and Little League coach. They strike up a friendship at the bakery where Sage works. One day he asks Sage for a favor: to kill him. Shocked, Sage refuses… and then he confesses his darkest secret—he deserves to die, because he was a Nazi SS guard. Complicating the matter? Sage’s grandmother is a Holocaust survivor.

What do you do when evil lives next door? Can someone who’s committed a truly heinous act ever atone for it with subsequent good behavior? Should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren’t the party who was wronged? And most of all—if Sage even considers his request—is it murder, or justice?

Nostalgia always helps my book slumps so I read…

The Harry Potter Series

This one speaks for itself.  I always pull out my “tried and true” reading methods when I am slumping and harry Potter always does it for me.  I love getting lost in this world and it always helps to get me back into the reading mentality.

If you happen to be a teacher and are slumping, you will love…

Teaching: It’s Harder Than It Looks by Gerry Dee

I am a teacher and this book had me in stitches.  There were moments where tears were streaming down my face.   This one can be read as a novel or can be read as small stories and short stories.  Either way, if you are slumping, this could get you out!

SYNOPSIS:

This book collects Gerry’s funniest anecdotes about teaching, about students and about their parents. As Gerry’s ode to school life, it’s sure to bring back a memory or two, whether you were the teacher’s pet or the class clown. Throughout, he offers tongue-in-cheek “Teacher Tips and Tricks,” uncomfortable notes to parents, awkward report cards and all manner of memorabilia of school days.

He’s extremely funny, on the page as well as in person, and he’s the kind of personality who will reach out beyond his own core comedy audience to a broad demographic of educators, parents and students who relate to his humour and experiences. 

 

That wraps up my Top Ten Books To Get You Out Of A Slump!

 Have you read any of these books?

Any sound interesting to you?

Let me know!