It’s time for another post in my “Try a Chapter” Challenge—where I’ll choose ONE book for next month’s TBR!

If you’re not familiar with the Try a Chapter tag, it’s a tag common on booktube (and sometimes blogs) where the participant reads the first chapter of five books and chooses one of those books to read, based on the results!

For this series, I do something a little different:

The five books I choose will be inspired by the following month’s “theme”—for example, since June is Pride Month, the 5 books I sample for June’s TBR would be own-voice queer books, and so on. You get the idea!

As usual, I’m basing my 5 picks on the Devour Your TBR group theme. For May, it’s “Moody May“, so I’m going to be reading the first chapter of 5 randomly chosen mood reads.

1. The Name of the Wind — Patrick Rothfuss
2. Red Sister — Mark Lawrence
3. The Death of Mrs. Westaway — Ruth Ware
4. Fortune Box — Madeleine Swann
5. You May Now Kill the Bride — R.L. Stine

My thoughts on the first chapter of…

THE NAME OF THE WIND:

1) I 100% understand already why everyone hypes this book/author up so much. The writing is so lovely and I’m immediately fascinated by the characters, the setting, the events — all of it.
2) With how long I’ve been meaning to read this, how much my spouse has been asking me to (it’s one of their all-time favorite novels), and how gorgeous this first chapter was, I’m not sure I can put it down!

RED SISTER:

I’ve been dying to read this series for what feels like for EVER now, but for whatever reason, it’s one of those things I decided not to start until all the books were released. I’ve been collecting them as they come out, so now that my copy of book 3 has arrived, I decided it was high time to give it a chance. I’ll be honest, I cheated; I didn’t even read chapter 1, just the prologue, and it alone was enough to completely captive me. I mean… DAMN, that prologue is good!

THE DEATH OF MRS. WESTAWAY:

I’ve never read anything by Ruth Ware before, but I knew she had to be popular for a reason, so I’ve been meaning to pick up one of her works for way too long. Immediately, I noticed the writing is incredibly atmospheric and moves quickly, plus she seems to have a knack for very rapidly developing back story for a character without info-dumping. I enjoyed the writing so much that I definitely want to read this ASAP.

FORTUNE BOX:

This bizarro horror collection of related short stories sounded so weird and fun that I’ve been wanting to pick it up for the last couple of months, and kept saving it for a later time. I read the first chapter/story just now, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it! The plot is so weird and interesting. It’s a REALLY short book, so I might go ahead and finish it.

YOU MAY NOW KILL THE BRIDE:

I grew up on Goosebumps and Fear Street books, so I was pretty excited when Stine decided to revisit these in this new series, but the first chapter of this was pretty bland. Then again, it was just under ten pages, and it’s a physically small book, so there wasn’t much room for anything to happen. I’ll probably try to get to it fairly soon, but I can’t see myself prioritizing it for my Moody May reading when I have so many other, more exciting, options.

And the winner is…

The Death of Mrs. Westaway!

This is kind of funny, though, because it’s not the only winner… I’m going to go ahead and continue The Name of the Wind and Fortune Box. ? I also might try to get to Red Sister in May, but Mrs. Westaway is the one that will be going on my official May TBR!

Is this something you might want to try out for your own TBR? If it is, please let me know so I can read or watch your post, too! ♥

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