Top 5 (books with keys) Tuesday

Oops, we’re back to books that I haven’t read yet. Well, they’re on my tbr so uhh yeah that’s about it. There’s a lot of keys on mystery/thriller novels, actually! Maybe because you have to… unlock the mystery in the books? Okay, enough, I’ll stop and get to the books.

Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads now hosts the Top 5 Tuesdays and here’s where you can see which books she’s unlocked or have yet to unlock (with all the keys on the covers). Okay, now I’ll stop!

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The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (GR/SG) – There’s keys on basically all of the covers (I hope 😄) so no matter which one I chose there’ll be one. But I’m picking the edition I read it in – where the key is on the back. – From the New York Times bestselling author of The Night Circus, a timeless love story set in a secret underground world–a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is a graduate student in Vermont when he discovers a mysterious book hidden in the stacks. As he turns the pages, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, key collectors, and nameless acolytes, he reads something strange: a story from his own childhood. Bewildered by this inexplicable book and desperate to make sense of how his own life came to be recorded, Zachary uncovers a series of clues – a bee, a key, and a sword – that lead him to a masquerade party in New York, to a secret club, and through a doorway to an ancient library, hidden far below the surface of the earth.

What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians – it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes under doors and across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. Zachary learns of those who have sacrificed much to protect this realm, relinquishing their sight and their tongues to preserve this archive, and also those who are intent on its destruction.

Together with Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired protector of the place, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances, Zachary travels the twisting tunnels, darkened stairwells, crowded ballrooms, and sweetly-soaked shores of this magical world, discovering his purpose – in both the mysterious book and in his own life.

Locke & Key, Vol 1: Welcome Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (GR/SG) – Okay, so, I’ve only watched the tv series and haven’t actually read any of the graphic novels. But I’m of a mind that you don’t always have to read the source material before you watch the adaptation (and also don’t force people to read the book first, maybe they don’t want to! Maybe they don’t have time!). Point is, I did enjoy the tv series so I do want to get to the books as well. Before the new season comes out? Not sure about that. – Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow (GR/SG) – I also want to read Harrow’s Fractured Fables as well as The Once and Future Witches. Maybe I’ll try to read all of her books in a week or something. 

I’m not sure if this is sort of a book inside a book? Or if the book that the main character finds (in the book) is just featured a lot. I suppose I’ll know whenever I get to the book. – In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place.

Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own.

The Archived by V.E. Schwab (GR/SG) – I don’t really know much of this duology (or technically trilogy as I believe Schwab is working on the third book), only that a lot of people love it. I mean I’m guessing that there’s magic in it but that’s about it! Tell me if it’s good? – Imagine a place where the dead rest on shelves like books.

Each body has a story to tell, a life seen in pictures only Librarians can read. The dead are called Histories, and the vast realm in which they rest is the Archive.

Da first brought Mackenzie Bishop here four years ago, when she was twelve years old, frightened but determined to prove herself. Now Da is dead, and Mac has grown into what he once was: a ruthless Keeper, tasked with stopping often violent Histories from waking up and getting out. Because of her job, she lies to the people she loves, and she knows fear for what it is: a useful tool for staying alive.

Being a Keeper isn’t just dangerous—it’s a constant reminder of those Mac has lost, Da’s death was hard enough, but now that her little brother is gone too, Mac starts to wonder about the boundary between living and dying, sleeping and waking. In the Archive, the dead must never be disturbed. And yet, someone is deliberately altering Histories, erasing essential chapters. Unless Mac can piece together what remains, the Archive itself may crumble and fall.

In this haunting, richly imagined novel, Victoria Schwab reveals the thin lines between past and present, love and pain, trust and deceit, unbearable loss and hard-won redemption.

The June Boys by Courtney C. Stevens (GR/SG) – I think I’m getting this confused with To Best the Boys, yet another book I really wanna read lol. But The June Boys does look like a good mystery. Hopefully it’ll be a good one too. – The Gemini Thief could be anyone. Your father, your mother, your best friend’s crazy uncle. Some country music star’s deranged sister. Anyone.

The Gemini Thief is a serial kidnapper, who takes three boys and holds them captive from June 1st to June 30th of the following year. The June Boys endure thirteen months of being stolen, hidden, observed, and fed before they are released, unharmed, by their masked captor. The Thief is a pro, having eluded authorities for nearly a decade and taken at least twelve boys.

Now Thea Delacroix has reason to believe the Gemini Thief took a thirteenth victim: her cousin, Aulus McClaghen.

But the game changes when one of the kidnapped boys turns up dead. Together with her boyfriend Nick and her best friends, Thea is determined to find the Gemini Thief and the remaining boys before it’s too late. Only she’s beginning to wonder something sinister, something repulsive, something unbelievable, and yet, not impossible:

What if her father is the Gemini Thief?

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And there you have it! One and a half (I’m counting Locke & Key, okay? Let me have it) books read on this list of books with keys on it! Have you read some books that have keys on the cover? Tell me down below!

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