Top Ten Tuesday: 2024 Releases I Was Excited to Read but Still Haven’t Gotten To


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Photo of a white woman sitting on a bench on a cold wintry night after dark. She is wearing a winter hat and warm coat and staring up at a streetlamp next to the bench. The light from the lamp illuminates the surroundings just enough for the viewer to see some snow gently falling down to the ground. This is a cold scene due to the weather, but the woman looks contemplative as she gazes upon the street lamp. I’d sit by her. Those of you who have read my blog for a while might notice that I don’t post reviews for a lot of the books I put on my seasonal TBR posts, and part of that is due to how long it takes me to read them in some cases due to factors that are sometimes within and sometimes out of my control.

Since I rely on my local library for most of what I read, I can’t predict which books they will buy soon after the release date versus which ones might show up in the new book section a few months from now or maybe not at all.

If they happen to buy a specific title and i love it, I will almost certainly review it here! In the meantime, I wait patiently to see what shows up each week on the lists of new books and feel gratitude for all of the hard work librarians put into making sure we have lots of new titles to browse through.

Here are ten books published in 2024 that I have not actually read yet even though I was – and still am – excited for them. Maybe 2025 will be the year I read them?

 

Book cover for Escaping Mr. Rochester  by L.L. McKinney. Image on cover shows a drawing of Jane Eyre wearing a red, 1800s style dress and the first Mrs. Rochester wearing an off-white 1800s style dress. They are both young black woman who have determined expressions on their faces.

1. Escaping Mr. Rochester  by L.L. McKinney

 

 

Book cover for My Side of the River by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez. Image on cover is a drawing of wheat or some other type of grassy plant bending and swaying gently in the breeze.

2. My Side of the River: A Memoir by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

 

 

Book cover for Who's Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler. There is no image on the cover. Just black text against a cream background that has one yellow stripe on the left and one purple stripe on the right side of the cover.

3. Who’s Afraid of Gender? by Judith Butler

 

Book cover for The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon. There is no image on the cover really. It starts off as lime green at the top of the cover and gradually shift colour to a sea green at the bottom. The title and author are written in a white font whose style is reminiscent of chalk on a chalkboard.

4. The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church by Sarah McCammon

(My local library does have a few copies of this title now, though, so hopefully I’ll make it to the top of the waitlist soon!)

Book cover for The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez. Image on cover shows a series of seven images that look like stained glass windows. They show a skeleton doing things like dancing, singing, playing a trombone, and, at the top image, talking to someone who is still alive.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez

 

Book cover for querade by O.O. Sangoyomi. Image on cover is a comic-style drawing of a little orange cat who has a speech bubble above her head with the title written in it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair (Library Binding) by Lucy Knisley

 

 

Book cover for We Carry the Sea in Our Hands by Janie Kim. Image on cover shows a stylized, oceanic-themed drawing of a pair of blue hands attempting to clasp a liquid swirl of gold and blue matter as it drains and disappears from view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. We Carry the Sea in Our Hands by Janie Kim

 

 

Book cover for  Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch by Andrea Freeman. Image on cover shows a close-up photo of two ears of corn that have black kernels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8.  Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch by Andrea Freeman

 

 

Book cover for Sally's Lament (A Twisted Tale) by Mari Mancusi. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young girl standing in a forest. She is bathed in shadow and only a dim outline of her body can be seen. At the bottom of the image you can see a small drawing from The Nightmare Before Christmas where the ground slowly unfurled as the protagonist walked on it. It was an iconic scene in that film that happened during one of the songs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Sally’s Lament (A Twisted Tale) by Mari Mancusi

 

 

Book cover for The City in Glass by Nghi Vo. Image on cover is a drawing of a city on fire just after dusk. We are looking at the flames from far away while standing under two carved stone pillars that are still connected by a piece of stone placed on top of them. There are female figures carved into the pillars. They look a little like Greek goddesses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

 

 

Book cover for The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen. Image on cover shows a tabled filled with autumn fruits like apples, some of which are rotten, and a human skull placed on the side of the table. This is an unsettling scene that made me shiver.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11. The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen

 

 

Book cover for Masquerade by Mike Fu. Image on cover is a drawing of a chrysanthemum-like flower blooming under a full moon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12. Masquerade by Mike Fu

 

 

Book cover for We Are All Ghosts in the Forest by Lorraine Wilson. Image on cover is a drawing of two people, one adult and one child, walking together in a forest that has a thick layer of fog in it that obscures most other details about the scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

13. We Are All Ghosts in the Forest by Lorraine Wilson

 

 

Book cover for The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. Image on cover is a drwaing of three different clocks. One is a normal analogue clock like you’d see anywhere on Earth. The second one has far too many hours noted on it. Instead of 12, there are more like 24. The third clock has interesting symbols by each hour marked on it. They look like they might be Chinese symbols.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14. The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso

 

Yes, I know I went a little over the 10 book maximum today, but I couldn’t figure out which books to trim out. I want to read them all once I can.

22 Comments

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22 Responses to Top Ten Tuesday: 2024 Releases I Was Excited to Read but Still Haven’t Gotten To

  1. Interesting list. I haven’t heard of any of the books or the authors. Must look for some of them. My Side of the River and We Carry the Sea in Our Hands sound good to me.

    Thanks for visiting my blog:
    https://momobookblog.blogspot.com/2025/01/top-ten-tuesday-new-to-me-authors.html

  2. All of these look great! I have Sally’s Lament on my Goodreads TBR for 2024 releases and forgot about it (lol), but I’m keen to check it out. I’ve also heard so many great things about = Caruso’s book and though it wasn’t on my radar in 2024, after the many wrap-up posts where it’s mentioned, I’ve added it to my TBR watchlist! I hope you enjoy these whenever you can get your hands on them 🙂 Happy reading!

  3. I see the Twisted Tale books on Goodreads and other places quite a lot, but I’ve never read any of them. I think I did buy one once, but don’t remember which it was. 😉 Hope you enjoy all of these!! Thanks for visiting my list today.

  4. I haven’t heard of any of the books on your list, but some of them look really interesting and I’ve added them to my TBR. I hope you enjoy them when you read them!

  5. I know the feeling of waiting for library books! I’ve been on the hold list for a few of my most anticipated 2024 new releases since last fall. One finally came in, so I’m reading it now. I hope all of these turn up in your library this year, and you get a chance to read them! Escaping Mr. Rochester was on my radar, but somehow it missed making it onto my TRB list. I need to remedy that.

  6. We Are All Ghosts in the Forest and The Last Hour Between Worlds are books I could have added to this week’s TTT, too. I’m hoping to read them this year, but we’ll see! Oh, and Who’s Afraid of Gender has been on my TBR list too, but I didn’t realize it was a 2024 release.

    And I’ve also found several more from your list that are new-to-me but now I really want to read! The Afterlife of Mal Caldera and Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair are definitely making it onto my TBR list now. 😉

  7. I hope your library gets some more of these in stock soon and that they end up being worth the wait. I was curious about Escaping Mr Rochester too but somehow forgot all about it. I also really want to try something by Nghi Vo sometime but I don’t think my library stocks any of her works. I’m particularly intrigued by her Singing Hills books and hoping they’ll go on offer sometime as I don’t really want to pay RRP for novellas 🙈

    Have you read any of the Twisted Tales books before or are you just interested in that particular one? I was curious as Elizabeth Lim has written a few and I’ve loved her other books but never been sure how I’d get on with that particular series.

    I hope you enjoy all of these whenever they become avaliable for you

    • Thank you. Fingers crossed!

      I have not read any of the other Twisted Tales books yet. This would be my first.

      And, yeah, I totally understand not wanting to pay RRP for a novella.

  8. Poinsettia

    Woe: A Housecat’s Story of Despair looks fun! Here is our Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you!

  9. These all look good. I need to use the library more. I used to go every other week when my oldest son was born, now it’s more like once every 3 weeks.

    Fingers crossed these come in and you get to read them soon!

    Have a great week!

    Emily @ Budget Tales Book Blog
    My post:
    https://budgettalesblog.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/top-ten-tuesday-2024-releases-i-was-excited-to-read-but-still-havent-gotten-to/

  10. Sally’s Lament is one that I just got in December! I still need to read it though. haha. I hope you get to some of these!!

  11. I really want to read some more of those Disney Twisted Tales.

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