Books with Water on the Cover

 Hello! Welcome to this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Most people have heard the saying “April showers bring May flowers,” so the official topic is “April Showers,” and we are to make something of that. So running with that topic, I’ve decided to go with “Books with Water on the Cover” because I couldn’t find a lot of books set in rainy places. So here goes!

1. Isola—Allegra Goodman. This is a book that I tend to bring up a lot in conversations lately, and not particularly for a good reason. This book is about Marguerite de Roberval, whose cousin obtained guardianship of her after her parents died. Her cousin squandered all her money and then took her on a sea voyage, where she fell in love with one of the people on the ship. Her cousin had chosen not to let her marry, hoping instead that she would become his mistress. When he discovered her romantic relationship with his employee, he became enraged and dropped them off on a deserted island to die. Amazingly enough, she survived and returned to Europe. While some of this story is fictionalized, it’s based on a true story.

Whenever I hear people arguing that men should have control over the ladies in their lives and they have their best interests at heart (something that has been all-too common lately) I point out her story—that dropping off someone on a deserted island to die was once perfectly legal and yeah—I’m not really wanting that sort of thing to return.

2. Cruel Crown—Victoria Aveyard. This is a prequel to Victoria Aveyard’s Red Queen series. All the books in the series tend to have some sort of crown on the cover. This book has a crown made out of water on the cover.

3. The Demon of Unrest—Erik Larson. Erik Larson writes nonfiction that tends to read like fiction. This is the story of how the United States Civil War got its start. It was kind of a slow process, although when we learn about it in history books (at least in the US) it often reads like “Lincoln got elected and the Civil War started.” There was a little more to it than that. This book dramatizes the events, and has a picture of fort Sumter on the cover, which was a pivotal location for the beginning of the war.

4. Caribbean—James A. Michener. Where I live at least, this year has been pretty odd in that we didn’t get a lot of cold days. Colorado normally has this weird thing where it gets super cold and then it’ll be 80 the next day. As we’re approaching May, we’re starting to get at the point where we’re unlikely to see much more cold weather (although historically we tend to get one big snow at the beginning of May or so; I’ve even seen it snow in June). So normally this time of year I’m looking forward to the beautiful summer days like they have in the Caribbean. Which is what is pictured on the cover of this book.

5. The Summer Sisters—Lily Mirren. This book takes place at an inn located near the beach. The main characters’ last name is Summer, hence the name of the book. But there is also a lovely picture of a beach on the cover. It’s been a while since I’ve read this book, so I’m not sure if it’s strictly dual timeline or tells the second story through letters that the main character discovers, but it is a story that reveals a secret from a long ago past.

6. The Pioneers—David McCullough. After the United States of America won the Revolutionary War, we were left with a vast wilderness to our west that people could move into. This is the story of some of the settlers who moved into this land, which was inhabited by Native Americans but was still sparsely populated. The cover of this book features a boat on the Ohio River, where the main settlement that this book focuses on is situated.

7. Listen to Your Heart—Kasie West. This is a story of a girl who enjoys days out at the lake in solitude, but ends up hosting a relationship podcast, and ends up being pretty good at it. The cover features two people at a lake on what looks like a lovely spring day. This may have been the first Kasie West book I read, but I’ve read other books by her since.

8. Float Plan—Trish Doller. In this book, the main character goes on a voyage on a sailboat that she originally intended to take with her fiancé, who had died. She hires someone to help her take the voyage when she discovers she can’t do it alone. The cover of this book features a sailboat at sea. It’s been a while since I read this book, but I remember liking her stories.

Her other book, Start Here, is also a book that takes place on a sailboat and is fun to read.

9. The Wicked King—Holly Black. This book is the second book in the Folk of the Air trilogy, and features a crown falling into a pool of water. So there are ten books with water on the cover. It was actually kind of difficult, at least going for books that I’ve already read.

10. The Vanishing Deep—Astrid Scholte. This book takes place in a world mostly covered by water, so it makes sense that the cover has quite a lot of water on it. It’s a story where people can temporarily bring back their dead loved ones, in order to have one last goodbye with them. It sounds like such a nice idea.

How did you interpret the theme this week? Next week is a freebie week. I’m still not sure what I’ll be doing.