Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the fantastic Bionic Bookworm.  This week’s topic:

DECEMBER 12TH – Top 5 (OR 10!) new to me authors in 2017

As I was going through this list I realized that this year I’ve discovered plenty (seriously, plenty) of new authors, and many debut authors in particular! But I didn’t want to stretch the list out to ten, so I’ve settled on the authors that have impressed me the most and whose body of work I will be following/exploring.  (Also I’m too lazy to go looking for author pictures; I’m sorry I’m like this.)

Daphne du Maurier. Granted, I’ve only read one single novel by her (Rebecca) but I loved it. I’ve always shied away from ~classics~ because I found them unnecessarily dense and hard to relate to, but du Maurier shattered that expectation.  I found her prose lovely and clear, definitely something to learn from, and her plot was quite thrilling, not at all what I was expecting!  That her work was so accessible opened me up to reading more classic literature in general, so I’m grateful for that.  I look forward to reading more of her work.

Alison Goodman. Her Lady Helen series floored me with how utterly amazing it was. The amount of historical detail she incorporates so naturally into her work single-handedly reignited my interest in historical fiction.  Her writing is superb and polished, which means I will certainly be checking out everything she writes from now on. She also wrote the popular Eon: Dragoneye Reborn which I had always shied away from based on the summary, but now I will certainly be giving it a go.

S.A. Chakraborty. Not only is she new to me, but Chakraborty is new on the writing scene.  Her debut City of Brass, released just two months ago, has received multitudes of well-deserved praise. It is a fantasy debut of astounding skill.  Also, I follow her on Twitter and she’s a devoted history buff, which is super fun! She’s always posting cool things about Middle Eastern history.  And seriously, City of Brass was so good! Well-written, intricately plotted, rich worldbuilding, amazing characters…it was one of the best books I read this year and I would literally sell part of my soul to have the sequel in my hands right now.

V.E./Victoria Schwab. Schwab has been on most people’s radars for a while now, and she had been vaguely in my line of sight as well, but I only started reading her work this year.  From there it was a quick descent into obsession; I even got to see her in-person this year at the Sirens Conference.  She is absolutely wonderful human being: sweet, authentic, and engaging. I love her social media presence and that she makes such an effort to keep her readership updated.  Her work is just objectively good even if it is not always mind-blowingly amazing (I do think some of it is a teensy bit overrated), and she is super creative! Plus the gal is gay and lives in Scotland. I mean. She’s truly #goals.

Mackenzi Lee. I absolutely loved Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue. It was engaging and cheerful and historical and included queer characters.  I also know Mackenzi Lee is a super history nerd in real life so I can be assured of reading historically accurate details when reading her work.  She has two new books coming out soon, one of which is a follow up to Gentleman’s Guide but stars Percy’s sister Felicity, and the other is a book about the Dutch Tulip Mania.  How cool is that? Like first of all I’m just so happy I met another human who is as fascinated by that time period in history as I am, but also it’s about queer ladies! Much of Lee’s work seems to focus on diversity and inclusion while remaining within a historical realm, and combo is one of my favorite things ever.

MAJOR props and shout-out to S.K. Ali, Katherine Arden, Kiersten White, Sandhya Menon, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Nina LaCour, Julie C. Dao, and Rhoda Belleza.