Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Hope Santa Brings/Bookish Wishes

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

She assigns each Tuesday a topic and then posts her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.


1. Cinder by Marissa Meyer

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Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.

She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

I had a paperback copy of this book, read two chapters, and lost it….sigh.

2 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

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Orphaned as a child, Jane has felt an outcast her whole young life. Her courage is tested once again when she arrives at Thornfield Hall, where she has been hired by the brooding, proud Edward Rochester to care for his ward Adèle. Jane finds herself drawn to his troubled yet kind spirit. She falls in love. Hard.

But there is a terrifying secret inside the gloomy, forbidding Thornfield Hall. Is Rochester hiding from Jane? Will Jane be left heartbroken and exiled once again?

I have read almost everything by Charlotte Bronte except for Jane Eyre. This book has been on my reading bucket list for a while. Maybe I’ll get to it in 2022.

3. A Lick of Frost by Laurell K. Hamilton

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Commanded by her aunt, the dark Queen Andais, to conceive a child as heir to the throne, Meredith Gentry, a half-mortal, half-faerie princess, returns to Los Angeles, only to find herself and her lovers trapped between the dark and light faerie courts and human law.

I absolutely loved this series but stopped reading at book 5. So, I need to catch up.

4. Game Changer by Stacey Lynn

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Falling for your best friend is one thing, accidentally getting knocked up by him is another…

Hockey hottie Garrett Dubiak has been my best friend since college and the one constant in my life the past seven years. Through distance, career changes, and other relationships, we’ve always found our way back to each other.

Including one wild weekend this winter, when he finally told me he wanted more… wanted everything from me.

Too afraid to admit I felt the same, I told him I needed time.

Twelve weeks later, here I am, pregnant with his baby, alone, and terrified.

He’s my best friend. He deserves to know the truth.

So I swallow my fear, my pride, and I shoot my shot. I just hope he’s still willing to have me—and our baby.

I found this book on a blog that I follow and I knew I needed to read it. I love friends to lovers romances.

5. How to Be the Best Third Wheel by Loridee De Villa

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A clean teen romance comedy about figuring out where you belong when all the constants in your life begin to change.

It’s the last year of highschool, and everything has changed . . .

After spending summer vacation in the Philippines with family, Lara returns to school eager to catch up with her close knit group of girlfriends. But within minutes of reuniting with her friends, she learns that not one, not two, but all three of them are now in relationships that blossomed over the summer. And to make matters worse, Lara’s long time frenemy, James, won’t stop bugging her in class and eventually forces her into tutoring him everyday after school.


Surviving high school was never easy to begin with, but with occupied friends, a hectic Filipino family, and her annoying childhood enemy pestering her more than ever, Lara tries to juggle everything, while trying to figure out her own place in the chaos.

Another book that I found on a blog. I thought it sounded cute!!!

6. A Lullaby for Witches by Hester Fox

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Two women. A history of witchcraft. And a deep-rooted female power that sings across the centuries.

Once there was a young woman from a well-to-do New England family who never quite fit with the drawing rooms and parlors of her kin.

Called instead to the tangled woods and wild cliffs surrounding her family’s estate, Margaret Harlowe grew both stranger and more beautiful as she cultivated her uncanny power. Soon, whispers of “witch” dogged her footsteps, and Margaret’s power began to wind itself with the tendrils of something darker.

One hundred and fifty years later, Augusta Podos takes a dream job at Harlowe House, the historic home of a wealthy New England family that has been turned into a small museum in Tynemouth, Massachusetts. When Augusta stumbles across an oblique reference to a daughter of the Harlowes who has nearly been expunged from the historical record, the mystery is too intriguing to ignore.

But as she digs deeper, something sinister unfurls from its sleep, a dark power that binds one woman to the other across lines of blood and time. If Augusta can’t resist its allure, everything she knows and loves—including her very life—could be lost forever.

I keep seeing this book and I want to read it!!!

7. The Fixer Upper by Lauren Forsythe

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In this funny and sharp romantic comedy, a woman with a knack for turning her boyfriends’ lives around starts a professional service to help wrangle men, only to be unexpectedly matched with an old flame.

Ever since she can remember, Aly has been fixing everything around her: her parents’ marriage, her colleagues’ work problems, and her friends’ love lives. After a chance meeting with an ex who has gone from a living in his parents’ basement to a married project manager in three years, she realizes she’s been fixing her boyfriends, too…

So, Aly decides to put her talents to good use and, alongside two work friends, sets up The Fixer Upper, an exclusive, underground service for women who are tired of unpaid emotional labor. Using little tricks and tips, Aly and her friends get the men to do the work themselves – to get out of the job they hate, sign up for that growth seminar, to do more parenting. Before long, a high-profile Instagram star hires them to fix-up her app developer boyfriend. There’s just one catch – he’s also Aly’s childhood best friend and first love. As Aly tackles her biggest “fixer upper” yet, she’ll have to come to terms with their complicated history and figure out how much to change someone she’d always thought was perfect as he is…

Again, another book that I found on a blog. The blurb caught my interest.

8. Homicide and Halo-Halo by Mia P. Manansala

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Things are heating up for Lila Macapagal. Not in her love life, which she insists on keeping nonexistent despite the attention of two very eligible bachelors. Or her professional life, since she can’t bring herself to open her new caf� after the unpleasantness that occurred a few months ago at her aunt’s Filipino restaurant, Tita Rosie’s Kitchen. No, things are heating up quite literally, since summer, her least favorite season, has just started.

To add to her feelings of sticky unease, Lila’s little town of Shady Palms has resurrected the Miss Teen Shady Palms Beauty Pageant, which she won many years ago–a fact that serves as a wedge between Lila and her cousin slash rival, Bernadette. But when the head judge of the pageant is murdered and Bernadette becomes the main suspect, the two must put aside their differences and solve the case–because it looks like one of them might be next.

The cover caught my attention for this book. I have decided that I am going to read more cozy mysteries and this one seems like something I would like.

9. Secret Santa by Andrew Shaffer

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The Office meets Stephen King, dressed up in holiday tinsel, in this fun, festive, and frightening horror-comedy set during the horror publishing boom of the ’80s, by New York Times best-selling satirist Andrew Shaffer.

Out of work for months, Lussi Meyer is desperate to work anywhere in publishing. Prestigious Blackwood-Patterson isn’t the perfect fit, but a bizarre set of circumstances leads to her hire and a firm mandate: Lussi must find the next horror superstar to compete with Stephen King, Anne Rice, and Peter Straub. It’s the ’80s, after all, and horror is the hottest genre.

But as soon as she arrives, Lussi finds herself the target of her co-workers’ mean-spirited pranks. The hazing reaches its peak during the company’s annual Secret Santa gift exchange, when Lussi receives a demonic-looking object that she recognizes but doesn’t understand. Suddenly, her coworkers begin falling victim to a series of horrific accidents akin to a George Romero movie, and Lussi suspects that her gift is involved. With the help of her former author, the flamboyant Fabien Nightingale, Lussi must track down her anonymous Secret Santa and figure out the true meaning of the cursed object in her possession before it destroys the company—and her soul.

This was a book that I saw on another blog and I knew that I wanted to read it. The cover alone drew me in.

10 Sugar and Spice by Eli Wray

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Mason attempts to bake gluten-free cookies for their crush and college classmate, Natalie. When the baking goes very wrong, can Mason still win Natalie’s heart?

This low stakes story includes holiday baking, two people pining, rain-soaked admissions from hopeless romantics, some wholesome smut and a 100% nonbinary trans cast.

Another book that I saw on a blog. But with this one, it was a DNF and I want to know why.

Top Ten Tuesday: Last 10 Books I added to my TBR

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.

How it works:

She assigns each Tuesday a topic and then posts her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.


I decided to change today’s TTT. It was supposed to be Bookish Wishes. But since I really don’t have any bookish wishes, I decided to change it to the last ten books I added to my TBR.

So here they are. Let me know if you have read any of them!!


1. The Last Legacy by Adrienne Young

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When a letter from her uncle Henrik arrives on Bryn Roth’s eighteenth birthday, summoning her back to Bastian, Bryn is eager to prove herself and finally take her place in her long-lost family.

Henrik has plans for Bryn, but she must win everyone’s trust if she wants to hold any power in the delicate architecture of the family. It doesn’t take long for her to see that the Roths are entangled in shadows. Despite their growing influence in upscale Bastian, their hands are still in the kind of dirty business that got Bryn’s parents killed years ago. With a forbidden romance to contend with and dangerous work ahead, the cost of being accepted into the Roths may be more than Bryn can pay.

2. Bloody Vows by Lisa Renee Jones

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FBI agent Lilah Love leads a complicated life. She’s engaged to Kane Mendez, a man most call dangerous, but hey birds of a feather, do flock together. She’s dangerous, too, and in ways only Kane understands. As for their happily ever after, well that might have to wait. Right now, an old enemy who should be dead is still living, Junior, her mystery letter writer, is stirring up trouble, and her family is trying to prove they’re crazier than her. On top of that she has a new case: a dead woman in a bloody wedding dress. And since Lilah knows all too well there is no such thing as coincidence, clearly someone is sending her yet another message.

3. Bloody Love by Lisa Renee Jones

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One.
Two.
Three.
The cat is in the tree.

As far as Lilah’s concern, her note writing stalker just gets more stupid everyday. One, two, three, the cat is in the tree?

What is that? And what does it have to do with a wedding turned bloody?

4. Three Sisters by Heather Morris

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When they are girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father – that they will stay together, no matter what.

Years later, at just 15 years old, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister, or die with her.

In their hometown in Slovakia, 17-year-old Magda hides, desperate to evade the barbaric Nazi forces. But it is not long before she is captured and condemned to Auschwitz.


In the horror of the death camp, these three beautiful sisters are reunited. Though traumatised by their experiences, they are together.

They make another promise: that they will live. Their fight for survival takes them from the hell of Auschwitz, to a death march across war-torn Europe and eventually home to Slovakia, now under iron Communist rule. Determined to begin again, they embark on a voyage of renewal, to the new Jewish homeland, Israel.

Rich in vivid detail, and beautifully told, Three Sisters will break your heart, but leave you amazed and uplifted by the courage and fierce love of three sisters, whose promise to each other kept them alive. Two of the sisters are in Israel today, surrounded by family and friends. They have chosen Heather Morris to reimagine their story in her astonishing new novel, Three Sisters.

5. The Night She Disappeared by Lisa Jewell

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On a beautiful summer night in a charming English suburb, a young woman and her boyfriend disappear after partying at the massive country estate of a new college friend.

One year later, a writer moves into a cottage on the edge of the woods that border the same estate. Known locally as the Dark Place, the dense forest is the writer’s favorite area for long walks and it’s on one such walk that she stumbles upon a mysterious note that simply reads, “DIG HERE.”

Could this be a clue towards what has happened to the missing young couple? And what exactly is buried in this haunted ground?

With her signature “rich, dark, and intricately twisted” (Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author) prose, Lisa Jewell has crafted a dazzling work of suspense that will keep on the edge of your seat until the final page.

6. The Santa Suit by Mary Kay Andrews

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When newly-divorced Ivy Perkins buys an old farmhouse sight unseen, she is definitely looking for a change in her life. The Four Roses, as the farmhouse is called, is a labor of love—but Ivy didn’t bargain on just how much labor. The previous family left so much furniture and so much junk, that it’s a full-time job sorting through all of it.

At the top of a closet, Ivy finds an old Santa suit—beautifully made and decades old. In the pocket of a suit she finds a note written in a childish hand: it’s from a little girl who has one Christmas wish, and that is for her father to return home from the war. This discovery sets Ivy off on a mission. Who wrote the note? Did the man ever come home? What mysteries did the Rose family hold?

Ivy’s quest brings her into the community, at a time when all she wanted to do was be left alone and nurse her wounds. But the magic of Christmas makes miracles happen, and Ivy just might find more than she ever thought possible: a welcoming town, a family reunited, a mystery solved, and a second chance at love.

7. A Terrible Fall of Angels by Laurell K. Hamilton

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Meet Detective Zaniel Havelock, a man with the special ability to communicate directly with angels. A former trained Angel speaker, he devoted his life to serving both the celestial beings and his fellow humans with his gift, but a terrible betrayal compelled him to leave that life behind. Now he’s a cop who is still working on the side of angels. But where there are angels, there are also demons. There’s no question that there’s evil at work when he’s called in to examine the murder scene of a college student—but is it just the evil that one human being can do to another, or is it something more? When demonic possession is a possibility, even angelic protection can only go so far. The race is on to stop a killer before he finds his next victim, as Zaniel is forced to confront his own very personal demons, and the past he never truly left behind.

8. A Different Way to Die by Robert Lane

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Twenty years ago, Christopher Callaghan perished when his boat went up in flames on the West Coast of Florida. His death was ruled an accident.

Now, Christopher’s uncle, Yankee Conrad, a CIA operative, receives a medallion belonging to Christopher, along with a ransom note demanding payment in exchange for the truth of what really happened that night. Yankee asks Jake Travis to investigate.

Following a trail of clues and lines of questioning, Jake tracks down two women, both guarding deep secrets, and holding pledges born in the past, and honored in the present. The further he digs, the more he discovers chilling, twisted details about a group of CIA operatives overseeing Russian sleeper agents, known as The Network. Jake suspects that Yankee has motives beyond just discovering who sent the medallion.

As the secrets of The Network and the past collide, the shocking truth about Christopher Callaghan is exposed, and Jake and his partner Garrett are caught in a violent vortex, battling to save the lives of those who trust them—as well as their own.

9. A Queen’s Pride by N.D. Jones

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A Coming of Age Shifter Story
Lies. Murder. Vengeance.
For centuries, full-humans have descended on shifters’ lands, killing and claiming. Like sharks scenting blood in the water, they devoured all in their murderous path–gold, God, and glory their battle cries. From the flames of destruction, two nations emerged–the full-human territory of Vumaris and the feline nation of Shona. For eighteen-year-old Asha, traveling to Vumaris with her parents, lion alphas of the Kingdom of Shona, should’ve been a simple matter. Recommitting to an eighty-year-old peace treaty between their countries should’ve been easier still. Yet, greed and corruption know no boundaries of time and place, thus turning a family trip into the bloodiest night of Asha’s life.

Will Asha survive the night of terror? If so, will she forgive her enemies or seek divine retribution?
Ekon is a young bodyguard to the Shona princess. He also happens to be in love with Asha. When a group of mercenaries converges on Sanctum Hotel, hellbent on kidnapping Asha and slaughtering anyone who stands in their way, how can he save his beloved when the odds are stacked against him?
Safety. Protection. Love.
Asha and Ekon want all three, but none are guaranteed.

10. Say Yes by Kandi Steiner

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Two strangers.
Two words.
One unforgettable summer.


When you’re an artist, everything has to be perfect.

Or so I thought, until my professor told me my perfection was boring and unoriginal. Studying abroad in Florence has taught me one thing: I know nothing when it comes to what makes art truly beautiful.

So, with my professor’s words in my ear, I step outside one evening and decide to say yes to any and everything I’m faced with until the sun rises.

Of course, I didn’t expect him to show up.

Liam Benson, the broody, sexy, tortured artist from my class who I can’t stand. He’s got a sour outlook on the world and an ego so big no one could properly stroke it to his satisfaction.

When he finds out what I’m doing, he hijacks my “yes” night.
And after just twelve hours with him, I’m desperate for more.


But Liam is running from more than I could ever understand, and with his heart guarded and mind made up about life, I don’t stand a chance.

I convince myself that we can keep it casual.
But walking away from him at the end of the summer is as impossible as painting outside the lines.

I used to think when you’re an artist, everything has to be perfect.

Turns out everything has to be painful, and messy, and fleeting.

If only I’d known that before I fell under Liam Benson’s spell.