Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, and now being hosted at Meeghan reads.
This Week’s Topic is:
Top 5 books I want to reread in 2025
I always want to re-read but do I have the time? Not really!
Check & Mate by. Ali Hazelwood
Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays. After the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious “Kingkiller” Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning bad boy of chess.
Nolan’s loss to an unknown rook-ie shocks everyone—especially Mallory. What’s even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory’s victory opens the door to sorely needed cash prizes and, despite everything, she can’t help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist….
As she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realizes that the games aren’t only on the board, the spotlight is hotter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce(-ly attractive. And intelligent…and infuriating…)
I read this one in 2023 and I really like it – I think because of all the chess stuff that takes place. I mean, I’m not a chess lover (my hubby likes to bust out his board and teach our kids) but I just find the story of chess competitions so interesting. Maybe because of that Netflix movie? The Queen’s Gambit!
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The Songbird & the Heart of Stone by. Carissa Broadbent
New York Times bestselling author and BookTok sensation Carissa Broadbent returns with a brand new novel in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, Songbird and the Heart of Stone, where A Court of Thorns and Roses meets Dante’s Inferno, in an epic fantasy romance of love and treachery between mortals and gods. Features beautiful case art and a detailed map.
In the descent to the underworld, a bride of the sun must choose between the light of her redemption… or a dark love that defies the gods themselves
Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire – her home, her humanity, and most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.
But when Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a past as brutal as his scars, she’s forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself.
Yet, Mische’s punishment may be the key to her salvation. In a secret meeting, her sun god commands her to help Asar in his mission, only to betray him… by killing the very death god she’ll help resurrect.
Mische and Asar must travel the treacherous path to the underworld, facing trials, beasts, and the vengeful ghosts of their pasts. Yet, most dangerous of all is the alluring call of the darkness – and her forbidden attraction to Asar, a burgeoning bond that risks invoking the wrath of gods.
As her betrayal looms, the underworld closes in and angry gods are growing restless. Mische will be forced to choose between the redemption of the sun or the damnation of the darkness.
The Fallen & the Kiss of Dusk is coming out in August so I’m thinking I should re-read this one before the book comes out. But we’ll see if I do it.
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Do not touch the sword. Do not turn the key. Do not open the gate.
In the land of the unforgiving desert, there isn’t much a girl wouldn’t do for a glass of water.
Twenty-four-year-old Saeris Fane is good at keeping secrets. No one knows about the strange powers she possesses, or the fact that she has been picking pockets and stealing from the Undying Queen’s reservoirs for as long as she can remember.
But a secret is like a knot. Sooner or later, it is bound to come undone.
When Saeris comes face-to-face with Death himself, she inadvertently re-opens a gateway between realms and is transported to a land of ice and snow. The Fae have always been the stuff of myth, of legend, of nightmares… but it turns out they’re real, and Saeris has landed herself in the middle of a centuries-long conflict that might just get her killed.
The first of her kind to tread the frozen mountains of Yvelia in over a thousand years, Saeris mistakenly binds herself to Kingfisher, a handsome Fae warrior, who has secrets and nefarious agendas of his own. He will use her Alchemist’s magic to protect his people, no matter what it costs him . . . or her.
Death has a name. It is Kingfisher of the Ajun Gate. His past is murky. His attitude stinks. And he’s the only way Saeris is going to make it home.
Book 2, Brimstone is supposedly releasing in November this year so I’ll have to re-read this one for sure.
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The Jasad Heir by. Sara Hashem
Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic outlawed; its royal family murdered down to the last child. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe.
The lost Heir of Jasad, Sylvia never wants to be found. She can’t think about how Nizahl’s armies laid waste to her kingdom and continue to hunt its people—not if she wants to stay alive. But when Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, staying one step ahead of death gets trickier.
In a moment of anger Sylvia’s magic is exposed, capturing Arin’s attention. Now, to save her life, Sylvia will have to make a deal with her greatest enemy. If she helps him lure the rebels, she’ll escape persecution.
A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity even as hatred shifts into something more. Soon, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she left behind. The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.
In this Egyptian-inspired debut fantasy, a fugitive queen strikes a deadly bargain with her greatest enemy and finds herself embroiled in a complex game that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever.
The second book, The Jasad Crown, is coming out in July and I’m excited! So I’ll have to re-read!
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The shadows have risen, and the line is law.
All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights—only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new: A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion. But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped.
Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected. When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But enemies are everywhere, Bree’s powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can’t escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death.
If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first—without losing herself in the process.
It’s almost been 3 years since this book came out?! That’s crazy…so I have to re-read this before Oathbound comes out.
Will I get to re-read these books? I don’t know, but I’m going to try!
📚 ~ Yolanda
Top 5 Tuesday topics: February 2025
4 February: Top 5 series I will start in 2025
11 February: Top 5 series I will finish in 2025
18 February: Top 5 books I want to reread in 2025
25 February: Top 5 books I want to buy in 2025
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Top 5 Tuesday topics: March 2025
4 March: Top 5 books with a pronoun in the title
11 March: Top 5 books with a place in the title
18 March: Top 5 books with an emotion in the title
25 March: *freebie*
Past Midnight Book Reviews & More 
I still have to read The Jasad Heir and Quicksilver for the first time, so no rereading plans for me!
I’m not a big rereader either, I prefer discovering new stories over revisiting old ones 🙂
I used to reread a lot when I had more time but not so anymore.
Rereading earlier books just before the sequel comes out is something that I do a lot of. I can remember The Jasad Heir quite well so I’m hopeful that I will manage OK with that one.
I need to be better at rereading before a sequel comes out! It would help me out a lot!
I’ll be reading Quicksilver for the first time this year and I also want to read The Jasad Heir! I don’t re-read nearly as much as I say I want to cos there are just too many books and never enough time to read them all, lol! I hope you enjoy these if you do re-read them 🙂
I don’t have time to re-read also but I should especially for the books that are in series because I will find myself confused at times lol. I do read my old review to try and remember what happened last in the series but sometimes my own reviews don’t tell me anything. 😂
I need to read Quicksilver!
Thank you so much for the post it was so enjoyable – definitely have some new books for my TBR now haha 🙂
Thanks for reading! Glad you could add books to your TBR lol.
I still need to read most of these for the first time! lol. I do think a re-read of Jasad Heir is a good idea, since it’s been so long since it’s release. I hope you get to all of these!
Thanks!