For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, I originally thought I was going to get caught up on my 2021 reviews (And I still might! Stay tuned for tomorrow!), since I’ve only finished 10 books to date. But since that would call for more words than I want to write, I’m taking a page from Jana of That Artsy Reader Girl and simply giving you my last ten 4+-star reads:

1. Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas: I will always recommend the Lady Sherlock series.
2. An Unexpected Peril by Deanna Raybourn: Another solid Victorian-era mystery series.
3. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez: An enjoyable middle-grade novel about a boy who (sometimes accidentally and sometimes not) creates rifts in the multiverse and his new friend who doesn’t think he’s crazy for it.
4. Recipe for Persuasion by Sonali Dev: The second novel in which this author takes inspiration from Jane Austen’s novels and applies it to a contemporary extended Indian-American family living in California. Warning: Don’t read while you’re hungry.
5. Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore: A suffragette tries to find a way to bring a member of the House of Lords around to her cause.
6. Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob: A memoir inspired by her son’s concern about growing up Brown in America.
7. The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune: It topped my best reads of 2020, and I continue to adore it.
8. Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why by Alexandra Petri: A book of Washington Post satire columns that could only have been published during the last administration.
9. How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse by K. Eason: I don’t know what to tell you: While this is the second book on this list with a similar title, it is not remotely like the other. Great if you always wondered what the Star Wars trilogy would have been like if told from Leia’s POV.
10. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert: A young, disabled Black British woman makes a bucket list (with the hopes of jumpstarting her life, rather than to do before it ends) and enlists the super of her new apartment complex to help her.

How about you? What have you read recently that you’d recommend fairly universally?