Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and now hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. For the rules see her blog.
The topic this week is Book Fitles Featuring Ordinal Numbers. These are all books I’ve read linked to my reviews. I had no idea I’d read so many books with the word ‘second’ in the title.
Penguin| 12 February 2026| 336 pages| e-book| Review copy|4*
This is Tracy Sierra’s second book and the first one I’ve read of hers, but it won’t be the last. After a slow and ominous start that made me worried about what was coming next, it then picked up pace. I couldn’t stop reading, totally gripped and fearful of what might happen next.
Description:
There’s something out there in the darkness. By morning, bones lie in the snow, picked clean.
Zach knows the moods of the mountains – his mother taught him before she was gone. His father and the other men on the ski weekend think they know better though.
Drinking and boasting, they laugh in the face of the icy conditions.
But Zach understands what danger looks like. Can he survive the wilderness, and all the monsters within it?
The book begins as Zach, Bonnie and their mother, Grace are in the Colorado mountains where she is teaching them how to recognise the danger signs of an avalanche. A year later, Zach, now aged twelve, is spending a ski weekend with his father, Bram as he entertains his business investors. Bram is one of the most obnoxious characters I have met in fiction, a cruel, manipulative and narcissistic monster and his relationship with Zach is really awful. Zach, who is desperate for his father’s approval, has to tread carefully to avoid Bram’s vile and explosive temper.
The story is told from Zach’s point of view, which had made me initially wary of reading it. But, it was successful, because it is told in the third person. Despite his lack of confidence due to his father’s behaviour towards him, he is a resourceful, courageous and sensible boy. His mother had instructed him well about the dangers of the mountains and how to survive the conditions. He is a fully rounded character, whereas the other characters are not described in such detail, but sufficiently well enough as a supporting cast.
The setting is just so beautiful, but also claustrophobic as snow continues to fall and the hut where they are staying becomes snowbound. The tension and suspense gradually rise, as they try to find a way to ski down the mountain. The danger increases with the threat of an avalanche and some stupid decisions that Bram and the other men make. They are supremely confident that they can cope with anything the conditions throw at them, unaware of the dangers. And to make matters worse Zack is constantly aware that something or someone is watching them. The discovery of a dead elk on their way up to the hut adds to his fears as he imagines it was killed by a monster. This is a terrifying story filled with horror as their fears of an avalanche become a reality.
My thanks to the publishers, Penguin and NetGalley for a review copy.
This is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate atBooks Are My Favourite and Best. On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.
Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge.
A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the ones next to them in the chain.
This month we are starting with Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. This was one of my favourite books when I was a teenager.
My first link was also a favourite book I read as a teenager, Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill, historical fiction based on the real-life Lancashire witch trials.
My second link is possibly the first historical fiction book I read, The Children of the New Forest by Captain Frederick Marryat, one of the first historical novels written specifically for children and published in 1847, set during the English Civil War.
My third link is The King’s General by Daphne du Maurier, also historical fiction that I read as a teenager. It’s a blend of fact and fiction set in Cornwall also during the Civil War. It was first published in 1946.
The fourth book in my chain was also first published in 1946. It’s Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey, set in a Physical Training College where was a’nasty accident‘. But this is not a conventional crime fiction novel. It’s a psychological study focusing on the characters.
My fifth link is to a biography of Tey – JosephineTey: a Life by Jennifer Morag Henderson, a book I have yet to read. Josephine Tey was the pen-name of Elizabeth MacKintosh, who was a Golden Age Crime Fiction writer.
My final link is to another biography, The Brontës by Juliet Barker, based on research among all the Brontë manuscripts. This is a biography of the Brontë family – which I should have read a long time ago.
My chain is mainly made up of historical fiction and crime fiction and two biographies. The links are some of my favourite books I read as a child and then a teenager, books published in 1946 and biographies of two of the authors.
My final book links the starting book by Emily Brontë to the last, a biography about her and her family.
Next month (April 4, 2026) we’ll start with Virginia Evans’s epistolary novel, The Correspondent, a book I’ve never heard of before.
BooksPlease 