top 5 books: unreliable narrators #booktag

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G’day friends!

How are you this fine morning/night? I hope you have been doing well and staying safe. I spent the weekend reading Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel and oh my gods, it is brilliant. As I’m writing this, I have just under one hundred pages to go and I so do not want to finish it!!!! I am definitely going to be having a book hangover!

Today, I wanted to begin getting through the backlog I have – in book tags! I haven’t done one of theses in ages and I feel so terrible because I get tagged but I keep on forgetting to actually do them!

I was tagged by Amanda at DevouringBooks for the ‘Unreliable Narrators’ tag!

𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓻𝓾𝓵𝓮𝓼

• 𝒮𝒽𝒶𝓇𝑒 𝓎𝑜𝓊𝓇 𝓉𝑜𝓅 𝟧 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝑜𝒻 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝒸𝓊𝓇𝓇𝑒𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝑜𝓅𝒾𝒸– 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓈𝑒 𝒸𝒶𝓃 𝒷𝑒 𝒷𝑜𝑜𝓀𝓈 𝓉𝒽𝒶𝓉 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉 𝓉𝑜 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹, 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓁𝑜𝓋𝑒𝒹, 𝒽𝒶𝓋𝑒 𝓇𝑒𝒶𝒹 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝓉𝑒𝒹, 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝒸𝒶𝓃 𝒹𝑜 𝒾𝓉 𝒶𝓃𝓎 𝓌𝒶𝓎 𝓎𝑜𝓊 𝓌𝒶𝓃𝓉.
• 𝒯𝒶𝑔 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝑜𝓇𝒾𝑔𝒾𝓃𝒶𝓁 𝓅𝑜𝓈𝓉 (𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓈 𝑜𝓃𝑒!)
• 𝒯𝒶𝑔 𝟧 𝓅𝑒𝑜𝓅𝓁𝑒

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With me, books with unreliable narrators are either absolutely adored or hated. I go to extremes with this particular trope! I don’t really know why, but it is what I have found when reading books with this trope/aspect. This post I am going to talk about the books that I loved or enjoyed ! Here we go!

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐛𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐭

If you’ve been here for a year or so, you know that The Secret History by Donna Tartt is one of my all time favourite books. The entire story is told through the eyes of Richard, a young college student of the classics and is an incredibly unreliable narrator in my opinion. The way Donna Tartt writes this book is absolutely brilliant as Richard is reconstructing the events from the future, looking back to the past. His memory is not perfect and he can only really attest to his own motivations and honestly lacks the information about well, literally everything that happens in the story. I have written a full length review for this book and honestly…it’s one of my best reviews in my humble opinion.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐤𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐛𝐨𝐬𝐤𝐲

Again, one of my all time favourite books of all time. It was such a bittersweet, emotional journey and I absolutely adored every single page of it. There isn’t much else to say other than how surprising it was to me that I connected to much to Charlie, our main character and unreliable narrator. He tells his story through letters (to who? it is not ever explicitly stated). We only catch glimpses of Charlie’s life through his letters and it was an incredibly impactful reading experience.

𝐬𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐧𝐞𝐲 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐬

Another one of my all time favourite books of all time!  Sadie was/is a phenomenal book and absolutely breathtaking. Courtney Summers writes with no care to sugar-coat, no pretence; only the rawness of reality. For me, this book had such a punch to it because of the fact that it was not a story about some magical, fantastical evil beast that needed to be conquered. The villain/s were human, entirely human, who were the evil, the dregs, of our society. Men who kill, who prey on little girls, who abuse women, who are evil incarnate in a mortal, human, body. I just have no words. Read my goodreads review here.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐝𝐬 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐛𝐲 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐭 𝐚𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝

I quite enjoyed this book – it made me angry, horrified and various other emotions. There were some aspects to the story that annoyed me/were problematic as it was written in practically a different era in comparison to 2020. I thoroughly LOVED the way it was written and narrated by Offred ‘reconstructing’ her experiences of her time as a Handmaiden in the Gilead. It was something I never have read before, in the way it was written. It took me some time to get fully into the story (and I have to admit I had to put it down a few times to take a breather) but when I did, I couldn’t stop. Not one of my favourites, but definitely one that stuck with me.

𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐬𝐛𝐲 𝐛𝐲 𝐟. 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐭𝐭 𝐟𝐢𝐭𝐳𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐝

honestly, the only book on this list that I’m more meh about. I enjoyed this book. I can enjoy how it was written, the beautiful writing – but I just couldn’t get into the story as much as I was hoping I would. Definitely need a re-read in the future, but I just couldn’t stomach Daisy as a character at all! I think the characters’ unlikeability is supposed to be the point, but I just did not care for these characters much.

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This was super fun to write! I won’t tag anyone as it’s been so so long since I was originally tagged (whoops), but if you are interested in participating in this tag, take this as your permission to do it.

Until next time, happy reading!

All the love,

allie

xx

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