RTW: Best Book of May

Road Trip Wednesday is a 'Blog Carnival' where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question that begs to be answered. In the comments, you can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This week's topic:
What was the best book you read in May?

May was a pretty good month for reading for me. I read ten books in total, a handful of which were self-published, which was a first for me. It's really difficult to nail down just one book from this list, especially since they were impossible to compare (from all different genres), so here are my top four:

1.  To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Although completely embarrassing to admit, I hadn't read this classic before. I felt that it was high time I got around to reading it, and it was the first classic I chose from my Conquering the Classics From A to Z personal challenge. What a great book to get started with! I had seen the movie based off the book some years ago, so there were certain scenes that I was anticipating. Scout as a narrator was a great lens through which to view the events of the book. The subject matter of this book made it tough to read at times (in an "I can't believe human beings can be so ignorant and evil" kind of way), but this just makes it an even more important read.

2.  Grave Mercy - Robin LaFevers
Escaping an arranged marriage to become a handmaiden of Death? What? And even worse: Death placing a target upon the person she's grown to love? (None of this is spoiler material. It's on the back of the book.) I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this book, given the Death aspect of it, but I was pleasantly surprised. It takes place in 15th century Brittany, which I've never encountered in a book before, so that was pretty fantastic. And the whole notion of a seventeen-year-old girl becoming basically an assassin nun of sorts was pretty darn cool. You just had to know that this chosen life would present issues for Ismae. Also, how great is the name 'Ismae'?
  

3.  Insurgent - Veronica Roth
Was there any book people were eagerly anticipating as much as this sequel to Divergent? Doubtful. I fully expect that this book will be most people's RTW pick for May Book of the Month. It was a pretty fantastic book,—as if VRoth could write anything but—though, I do have to say that I liked Divergent a bit better. I wrote a fairly detailed post on my thoughts about Insurgent here, so I won't belabour the point here. Great book, but I wanted more Tris + Four (and not just smoochy scenes), more Dauntless HQ, and less bouncing around from faction HQ to faction HQ. But, it was very well-written, and the story was engaging from start to finish. 

4.  Wanderlove - Kirsten Hubbard
I'm a little late to the game on this one, but it was well worth the wait. I won a copy of Wanderlove in a YA Highway giveaway, so I was eagerly awaiting its arrival. It was the perfect book to kick off the (almost) summer season. It may still be spring, but it sure felt like summer around here. Wanderlove felt real to me in so many ways, mainly because Hubbard didn't glamorize the backpacking life. If a place was filthy and buggy, then that's how she described it. Bria was a believable character who you so badly want to see burst out of her shell. This is a story of growth and letting go of the things that hold us back—lessons that we can all learn no matter our age or where in life we find ourselves.

What was your favourite May read?