Best of 2014 – review, giveaway and blog hop

As usual, I’m doing a review of my books that I read in 2014, and highlighting the best of the best.  Unusually, I’m also doing a giveaway with your choice of my final selection as the prize.  This is a Giveaway hop, courtesy of BookHounds and I Am A Reader, Not A Writer, so make sure you go and see other people’s opinions of their best reads of 2014!

I started by looking at all those I’d given 5 stars to on Goodreads.  That gave me 27 contenders.  Am I easy to please?  Too soft in my assessment?  Too generous with my stars?  I don’t think so.  I choose to read these books, and they fight to the top of my TBR among some very stiff competition!  One of the criteria I usually apply to books I think worthy of five stars is, do I want to read more?  Am I itching to read more?

So I have gone through the list of the 27 and crossed out those I’m not actually straining at the leash to read the next in the series, or from the author.  And then I added back a couple of possible one-offs that surprised me.

Then I divided them into children/teen books …

• Halitor the Hero
• Few are Chosen
• Lily & Heirloom
• The Shadow of the Pyramid & of the Trojan Horse
• Frankie Dupont and the Mystery of Enderby Manor
• Fizz & Peppers at the Bottom of the World
• Four Fiends
• Zoe & Zak and the Tiger Temple

… and adult reads…

• 100 Year-Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared
• Water for Elephants
• A Thousand Perfect Things
• Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society
• The Crossing Places
• Death by Ice-Cream
• Bring Up the Bodies
• Scandal Takes a Holiday

… and by accident ended up with eight in each category – well there are two in the Children’s section with two from the same series, but who cares.

I find it interesting that only two of those came via a blog tour (Zoe and Zak and A Thousand Perfect Things).  Frankie Dupont was too, but I was already onto it.  One was from my (sadly rather abandoned, but look out for next year’s Local Heroes Reading Challenge) Norfolk list, three were from my bookclub and the rest came into my life via friends, other blogs and Goodreads reviews.  I’m grateful to them all.

From those two lists I’m going to pick two favourite reads of the year, based on my desire to re-read them over Christmas. Two I might – the other two I’m moving on to the next in their series.

And the winners are:

Congratulations, M T McGuire, S Smith, Kay Kenyon and Jonas Jonasson, you’ve won… absolutely nothing!

The Giveaway

I’m giving away one physical copy, anywhere in the world, of one of my five-star books listed in the ‘long lists’ above (provided Book Depository stocks them and ships to your country). Click on them for my reviews.

Entries close midnight GMT on 18th December (7 pm 18th December EST)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Go hopping!