Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! While I read mostly books set in the country in which I was born and live (which I imagine many of us do), my reading goes all over the world! And that’s something I love about reading, how I can travel anywhere I want from my chair/bed/reading locale of the moment. Here are ten mostly recent-ish reads that take place outside of the US that I really enjoyed!
The Bear and the Nightingale (Russia): I’ve written about this Slavic folklored-based young adult book before to tell you how much I loved it but I LOVED it! The first two books in this series are both great, honestly, and I can’t wait for the third to come this summer!
Stay With Me (Nigeria): You think you know where this book might be headed when a couple’s interfering, traditional in-laws get the husband a second wife because his first one hasn’t gotten pregnant yet…but you have no idea. And the plot continues to twist on and on in ways that are completely unexpected.
Rebecca (England): This Gothic suspense novel has lots of repression, largely takes place on a countryside estate, and features a head housekeeper as the main antagonist, so it’s very English indeed.
The Blind Assassin (Canada): Margaret Atwood is Canadian after all, so it’s only reasonable that she sets this incredible, rich story in her homeland.
The Book Thief (Germany): Bring all the tissues for this World War 2 story about a young orphaned girl who loves to read.
Big Little Lies (Australia): I still haven’t managed to sit down and watch the TV show (which was set in California), but the book was super entertaining and it just goes to show that rich lady competitive mommy-ing is not a uniquely American phenomenon.
The Queen of the Night (France): There’s a little bit at the beginning that’s in America, and another bit in Germany, but this is mostly in Napoleonic France and it has the best kind of truly insane plot and I love it so much.
The God of Small Things (India): This is one of my two “cheats”, because I first read this book quite some time ago, but it’s so good and basically anything I know about Kerala at all comes from this book.
In The Woods (Ireland): I don’t read a lot of mystery, because I find it gets formulaic and often is plot-over-character when I prefer the other way around. But this book has inspired me to collect the rest of the Dublin Murder Squad series because it was so well-told and I want to read mooooore.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Sweden): My second cheat, because I read these books during the summer of my first year in law school, but I did really love this trilogy, the first book especially. I’ve got no interest in the continuing series with a new author, though.