#TopTenTuesday Books That Defied My Expectations #TuesdayBookBlog

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl.

The rules are simple:

• Each Tuesday, Jana assigns a new topic. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want.
• Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.
• Add your name to the Linky widget on that day’s post so that everyone can check out other bloggers’ lists.
• Or if you don’t have a blog, just post your answers as a comment.

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This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic is Books That Defied My Expectations. My list contains ten books in genres I don’t often read – children’s, YA, fantasy, science fiction and romance – but which I still enjoyed. 

Links from each title will take you to my review.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness – ‘The monster showed up after midnight. As they do.’ 
Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville – Eleven-year old Jane discovers the healing powers of nature and the joys of country life during her convalescence on her uncle’s farm.
They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera – ‘We never act’, Mateo says. ‘Only react once we realise the clock is ticking.’
The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey – ‘In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.’
Hell’s Gate by Laurent Gaudé, trans. by Emily Boyce and Jane Aitken – Neapolitan taxi driver Matteo descends in the underworld following the death of his son. 
The Things We Learn When We’re Dead by Charlie Laidlaw – On the way home from a dinner party, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in HVN, a lost, dysfunctional spaceship of which God is the aging hippy captain.
Fata Morgana by Steven R. Boyett & Ken Mitchroney – The crew of a WW2 B17 bomber is transported through some kind of vortex into a bleak, desolate landscape where two competing cities are all that remains after a global apocalypse.
Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar – A Czech astronaut is launched into space on what seems like a suicide mission to investigate a mysterious dust cloud covering Venus.
Under an Amber Sky by Rose Alexander – Set in Montenegro, an emotional story with an element of romance, a little sadness but tinged with hope.
Grace After Henry by Eithne Shortall – Grace sees her boyfriend Henry everywhere. In the supermarket, on the street, at the graveyard. Only Henry is dead.