Top Ten Tuesday (86)

Top Ten Best Beginnings and Endings

GREAT topic, friends. HARD, though!  Every time I thought of some amazing, mind-blowing, gorgeous/intense/jaw-dropping thing in a book, I realized that it was pretty much somewhere in the middle. ALAS. But I think that these five beginnings and five endings are all pretty legit.

I love the beginning of this book because it sets such a great tone. In just a few pages, we learn that Lennie writes poems, her grandmother has an amazing garden with possibly magic flowers, her Uncle Big is an arborist and a pothead (not ironically), they’re kind of NoCal hippies, her mother is out of the picture, and her older sister Bailey died suddenly not long ago. Then, chapter one ends with this line, a tiny but wonderful indicator of the gorgeous words to come:

The very beginning of this book is so magical-sounding. I love the way it’s like the beginning of an epic tale–like this litany of awesome. Plus, it introduces us to Kote, who is as we soon find out, actually our boy Kvothe, the baddest ginger in the land. It’s basically a perfect frame for this book.

YO. The prologues in these books are always topics of much anticipation because they always, ALWAYS set the stage for what’s coming. There’s so much foreshadowing in them, but in terms of pure !!! factor, the prologue for book 1 slays all the others to bits. The stuff that goes down in the prologue to book one is still important and unfinished in book 5. SO LEGIT.

If you love fairy tale retellings and haven’t read THE GOOSE GIRL by Shannon Hale, correct yourself before you wreck yourself. It’s excellent. The writing is lovely throughout, but I love the way this opening line sounds:

It has that fairy tale vibe that just kills me.

Just a quote for you (trust me. It’s GORGEOUS, and so is the rest of this book):

Even though I was less than thrilled with the end of this series, the ending of DELIRIUM remains one of the most INSANE, emotional, gut-punch endings EVER. It was that kind of thing where the ending was gearing up to be SOMETHING crazy, so I was waiting to be thrown, but not like this.

More quotes! Listen, the last page and a half of TIGER LILY is flat-out stunning. Some of the prettiest, most emotional writing I’ve ever read. This is just the last little part of the ending, a letter that Peter Pan wrote to Tiger Lily:

Because DUH. One of the most perfect series endings ever. EVER. That epilogue just touched my heart and made me so happy.

This book is really quiet but lovely and dramatic and just a little dark. It’s MOODY, yo. And I LOVE IT. You know what else I love? SEAN KENDRICK. And I’m so very glad that the ending of this super book is such a great moment for him. I cried.

Friends, if you didn’t know before that I’m a HUUUUUGE fan of the Outlander series, consider this your notice: I’m a HUUUUUUGE fan, and I am dying with anticipation over the the fact that it’s going to be on TV soon. But before the show there were always the stories, and the end of book 2, DRAGONFLY IN AMBER is like the difference between JV and Varsity drama. It’s so good. SO GOOD.

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted byThe Broke and the Bookish. It’s awesome. Every week, the lovely ladies over there post a topic so that book lovers like you and me can pour over our shelves and MAKE A LIST. WORD.