Five-Star Read Predictions | Update

A few months ago, I took part in the tag-like challenge started by Mercedes, in which you pick out five books from your TBR that you think will be five-star reads for you. Having since read the books I picked out, I thought it was time for an update. For each book I’ve linked to my Goodreads review so you can see my full thoughts.

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My five-star read predictions

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden –

What Belongs to You by Garth Greenwell –

The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill –

Trumpet by Jackie Kay –

Little Nothing by Marisa Silver –

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As you can see, in terms of actual five-star reads, I wasn’t all that successful in my predictions, with only one, The Lonely Hearts Hotel, fully living up to expectations, but I have to say that Trumpet also came very close, and it was more than worth it for these two books alone.

It was definitely interesting to properly track the difference between expectation and reality in some of my most anticipated reads of the year, though I have to say that for me personally, amping up the self-inflicted hype may have played a part in some of them proving to be a little disappointing. I’ve known for a while that I don’t do well with the strict nature of a set TBR, and I think this was perhaps a bit too close to that in my head, in that I felt like I had to get to these reads sooner rather than later and wanted to absolutely love them, rather than picking them up as and when I wanted and going in more casually and open-minded.

Then again, maybe I’m just rubbish at predicting five-star reads. This isn’t strictly a tag per se, but if anyone else wants to take up the challenge, I’d love to see how you get on.