Top Ten Tuesdays

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This meme was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We’d love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

This week’s topic: Ten Hidden Gems in X Genre

I always enjoy these kinds of topics but I actually was stuck with a bit of writer’s block trying to think of a genre to focus on for this week’s TTT. In the end I decided to go with Canadian Literature/Books Written by Canadian Writers. Because there’s a ton of gems written by Canadians that need to be read and shared 😀

In no particular order:

1. Robert Rotenberg’s Detective Ari Greene series (see author tag) — If you love mysteries and courtroom drama, this is definitely a series worth picking up. The author does such a wonderful job in conveying how an investigation unfolds both from the police side and from the courtroom side, not to mention captures the atmosphere of Toronto perfectly.
2. Forty Words for Sorrow by Giles Blunt (review) — I didn’t know about this mystery series until it was adapted into a television series that aired earlier this year. Very moody, it’s set in northern Ontario, away from the major cities, where resources can be a bit of a crunch. The character dynamics were pretty interesting too. I haven’t read any of the other books in the series but I’d be keen to!
3. Stony River by Tricia Dower (review) — I was plugging this book quite a bit a few years ago, I thought it was a really interesting character drama set in the 1950s and the contrast between the perfect life and what really lies behind the facade.
4. Isabelle Lafleche’s J’Adore series (see author tag) — Love fashion and books featuring lawyer protagonists? Then look no further, this series was a lot of fun to read.
5. The Delusionist by Grant Buday (review) — I picked this book up during a book fair a few years ago and ended up really enjoying it. It’s a coming-of-age novel but it’s also quite a sombre look at what happens to a family that refuses to acknowledge a very difficult and hard past that they’re trying to look past (in this case, the Holodomor in Ukraine that happened the 1930s).
6. The Mystics of Mile End by Sigal Samuel (review) — Another family drama novel, this time focusing on a Jewish family fractured after the death of its matriarch and the family members’ views on religion and life. The POVs were especially memorable.
7. The Fledglings by David Homel (review) — This novel sort of stuck with me long after I had finished reading it and I do find myself recommending it time and again as I thought it was an interesting look at family and friendship in the early twentieth century.
8. The Emperor of Paris by C.S. Richardson (review) — I thought this was a beautifully written novel, short but jam-packed with story and a tour de force throughout twentieth century French history, or at least the first half.

…And actually I can only think up to eight books today, lol. What books and genre did you feature on your list this week? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you! 🙂

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Just a bit of a heads up as I never announced it in a previous TTT but my first poetry collection, Shall I Be a Poet Instead?, is available now online (Lulu/Amazon/The Book Depository/Barnes&Noble/etc.)! You can read more about my writing project and my journey towards its publication over at this blog post and check out some of my poetry over at Instagram 🙂 Cheers!