Hi all! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these. I’ve had a lovely relaxing week up in Scotland, mostly chilling and catching up on TV and it’s been really nice, I am not ready to head back home tomorrow and be back in work on Thursday (well I’m ready to go home but I’m not ready to go back to work!). It has on the whole been a very chill week but I did head out to Glasgow last night to see the UK tour cast of Hamilton, who were incredible. Hamilton is such a brilliant show and they were a really great cast so I’m glad I got the chance to see it, and for a much cheaper price than I’ve paid in London before (admittedly last minute discount rate).
Anyway it’s Tuesday and time for another Top Ten Tuesday, courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic is meant to be Modern Books That You Think Will Be Classics In The Future, but honestly I’m not really a big classics reader anyway, so I don’t think that this one is really for me. I think classics, I think the boring books I had to study in school and I don’t really want to think of any of my favourite books like that. Coming up with alternative ideas for these gets harder and harder though the more of them that I do. Since I’m currently up in Scotland, I thought that Books Set In Scotland would be a fun one to do-I don’t actually know how many of these I’ll have, it might be a short list but I thought I’d try anyway and as far as I’m aware, it’s not a topic I’ve done before. So here we go, Books Set In Scotland:
- Frozen Charlotte-Alex Bell
The Isle of Skye provides a suitably eerie backdrop for this horror story, and though it’s not somewhere I’ve ever been (I have been to some of the Scottish Isles before but not Skye), Bell created a very vivid and spooky picture of the island in her book: because why wouldn’t a creepy old schoolhouse on a craggy cliffside be home to some disturbing dolls? I’m not usually a horror reader but I really enjoyed this one and the setting was a big part of that.
2. City of Ghosts-VE Schwab
The first book in the Cassidy Blake series takes place in Edinburgh and it’s a great setting for a series all about ghosts. Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities in the world and it’s clear how much VE Schwab loves it too, she captures the feel of the city so well on the page and it was very fun seeing Cass and her family explore these places that I know so well in real life.
3. The Pearl Thief-Elizabeth Wein
This prequel to Code Name Verity follows a younger Julie and so naturally is set in Scotland as that is where her family is from-though I can’t actually remember where exactly her family estate is, I think somewhere in the Highlands, not somewhere I’ve ever been in real life so it wasn’t a setting that was familiar but it was great to see a beloved character on her home soil here.
4. Fire Storm-Andrew Lane (Young Sherlock Holmes #4)
I absolutely devoured this series when I was a teenager and was kind of sad that the author never finished the series-or at least as far as I’m aware he didn’t, I stopped reading after about the seventh book as I had kind of grown out of them. This one was a fun one, set in Edinburgh as Sherlock and his friend Matty hunt down his tutor and his daughter Virginia who have gone missing.
5. One Day-David Nicholls
Okay time to be upfront: I absolutely hated this book. I didn’t get along with it at all, Emma and Dex are characters that utterly infuriate me. However, Edinburgh does play a big role in the story with Emma and Dex meeting the night of their graduation from the university, and the story returns to the city at fairly significant moments throughout so it felt fitting to put here, even if I didn’t totally love the book.
6. The Song Rising-Samantha Shannon
It must seem like all the Scottish based books I read take place in Edinburgh and honestly….yeah, that does feel kind of accurate! This book moves around a fair bit, partly in London, partly in Manchester, but a decent chunk takes place in Edinburgh, including a very cool section in the Edinburgh Vaults. It’s fun to see how the Scottish voyants differ and to learn about a whole new different community of voyants. It would be cool if the series returned to Edinburgh at some point because I really loved the sections set there in this book.
7. The Enigma Game-Elizabeth Wein
Another Elizabeth Wein Scottish set book! Again, I don’t know exactly where this is set and I think the town itself may be fictional, it’s set in pub near an airfield in northeast Scotland, but it’s a lovely, cosy, atmospheric place and the sense of community Wein creates in the book is great. It’s a nice addition to the Code Name Verity world and I loved the characters.
And there we have it, Books Set In Scotland for you! I wish I had a few more honestly, but much as I love it as a setting, it’s not one I see in a ton of books I read-and no I never have read Outlander, despite my love for the TV series. If anyone has any recommendations of great Scottish set books, I would happily take them. Have you read any of these? Let me know in the comments!
I’ll be back next week with another Top Ten Tuesday, it’s the annual Thanksgiving freebie so this Brit will once again have to try and scrape the very bottom of the barrel for Thanksgiving/Thankful related topics that I haven’t done over the past ten years!
