Mercy from MercysBookishMusings did a video a few months ago where she picked out five books from her physical TBR shelf that she thought she would love for various reasons but hadn’t yet picked up. Her recap of what she thought when she finally read those books was really interesting, and made me want to put together my own list of five-star predictions.

Looking at my shelf (I have about 65 unread books — which is more than I realized!) made me realize that I buy and accumulate books for a lot of different reasons, but it’s not usually because I think I’ll love them! Which sounds super weird, but bear with me.

A large number of my unread books are biographies and nonfiction that I want to read the physical copy of because I know I’ll want it for my bookshelf. They won’t necessarily count among my favorites, but I know they’ll be worthwhile reads. I also have a big stack of romance novels that I suspect I’ll enjoy, but I’m not sure will necessarily be five-star reads. And then there are books that were gifted to me or that I picked up for free at BookCon, which I didn’t have a ton of choice in.

So I would say I expect to enjoy most of the books on my shelves (some of the gifted books or books I think I ought to read are a bit questionable), but I’m not sure that many of them will wind up being five-star books. Which is kind of making me rethink my purchasing habits, but that’s a story for another day.

That said, I do have a few! Here are five books I think I will give five-star ratings to:

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
This book has a lot of themes that I tend to enjoy: strong female characters, an interesting fantasy world, and assassins! Plus Piera Forde and Caz from Little Book Owl can’t seem to recommend this book highly enough, and they tend to have similar tastes in fantasy to me. I think this book is something I’m really going to enjoy and I want to preorder the sequel, Godsgrave, but I’m making myself wait until I finally pick up Nevernight! This is by far the most likely of the five books I picked to be a five-star book for me.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown
This is another book that comes highly recommended by Piera Forde. SciFi isn’t necessarily my genre of choice, but after I heard about it from Piera, I started noticing it everywhere, and it very much sounds like something I’ll like. I’m a huge fan of The Hunger Games, and my understanding is that there are some similarities in the first book, plus it has a bunch of Roman elements, which I’m also into, so I’m excited to read it. And the whole trilogy is out, so once I start, I suspect I’ll wind up binging the entire thing.

City of Thorns by Ben Rawlence
So I’m a bit hesitant to pick this up because I know it’s going to be difficult for me to read, but I suspect it’s going to turn out to be one of those books that I think is really important for people to read and that I’m going to widely recommend. It’s about life in a refugee camp in Somalia, which is something I know next to nothing about but think it’s important for me to better understand. James Orbinski’s An Imperfect Offering was really impactful for me, and I suspect City of Thorns will make a similar impression.

Vicious by V.E. Schwab
I really enjoyed V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy, and this book has an even more interesting premise. Like, the different Londons of ADSoM were interesting, but this one has super heroes and villains. Definitely something I’m interested in! So I think it’s going to be awesome, I just haven’t actually picked it up yet even though it’s been on my shelf for months…

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
So this one might be cheating a little bit because I don’t own a physical copy, I own the ebook (which I got for free — check out the Tor eBook of the Month Club). I’ve heard really good things about this one and it’s pitched as what happens when kids come back from places like Narnia, so it sounds awesome. I’m a huge Chronicles of Narnia fan, so this is right up my alley. Plus it’s really short, which is a nice change of pace sometimes. And how awesome is that title?

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There you have it! Five books on my shelves (and Kindle) right now that I predict I’m going to LOVE. Am I right? Can I accurately pick out five-star books for myself? I’ll let you know when I’ve made it through the five of these! In the meantime, tell me in the comments what five-star books you think are sitting on your TBR shelf right now.