
Top 5 books about orphans
Hello friends!! Welcome to Top 5 Tuesday!! This week’s topic is top 5 books about orphans!!
We’re on a bit of a family relationships theme this month. Last week we did top 5 books about family, and this week is about a lack of family — or of parents anyway. I’ve never really understood why, but there are a lot of books about kids with no parents in YA fiction. And in fantasy. And especially in YA fantasy. It’s this weird trope that authors seems to use to enable young characters to find a sage elder to learn from, or run wild before learning important lessons. Or sometimes it’s so they can see what they would have had, if they weren’t chosen for some higher purpose. Admittedly sometimes they aren’t entirely parent-free, sometimes they have neglectful or abusive parents. Honestly, I’m not sure what’s worse.
The July to September 2024 topics are out now!! Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, and is now being hosted here @ Meeghan reads.
Let’s go see my top 5 books about orphans.

top 5 books about orphans
The Scorpio Races — Maggie Stiefvater

It happens at the start of every November: the Scorpio Races. Riders attempt to keep hold of their water horses long enough to make it to the finish line.
Some riders live.
Others die.
At age nineteen, Sean Kendrick is the returning champion. He is a young man of few words, and if he has any fears, he keeps them buried deep, where no one else can see them.
Puck Connolly is different. She never meant to ride in the Scorpio Races. But fate hasn’t given her much of a chance. So she enters the competition — the first girl ever to do so. She is in no way prepared for what is going to happen.
Strange the Dreamer — Laini Taylor
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around — and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.
What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?
Welcome to Weep.

The Cruel Prince — Holly Black

Of course I want to be like them. They’re beautiful as blades forged in some divine fire. They will live forever.
And Cardan is even more beautiful than the rest. I hate him more than all the others. I hate him so much that sometimes when I look at him, I can hardly breathe.
Jude was seven when her parents were murdered and she and her two sisters were stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, Jude wants nothing more than to belong there, despite her mortality. But many of the fey despise humans. Especially Prince Cardan, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King.
To win a place at the Court, she must defy him–and face the consequences.
As Jude becomes more deeply embroiled in palace intrigues and deceptions, she discovers her own capacity for trickery and bloodshed. But as betrayal threatens to drown the Courts of Faerie in violence, Jude will need to risk her life in a dangerous alliance to save her sisters, and Faerie itself.
Pawn of Prophecy — David (and Leigh) Eddings
A battle is coming…
…And in that battle shall be decided
the fate of the world.
Myths tell of the ancient wars of Gods and men, and a powerful object — the Orb — that ended the bloodshed. As long as it was held by the line of Riva, it would assure the peace.
But a dark force has stolen the Orb, and the prophecies tell of war.
Young farm boy Garion knows nothing of myth or fate. But then the mysterious Old Storyteller visits his aunt, and they embark on a sudden journey. Pursued by evil forces, with only a small band of companions they can trust, Garion begins to doubt all he thought he knew…

Great Expectations — Charles Dickens

Great Expectations charts the progress of orphan Pip from childhood through often painful experiences to adulthood, as he moves from the Kent marshes to busy, commercial London. His terrifying encounter with an escaped convict Magwitch on the Kent marshes, and his mysterious summons to the house of Miss Havisham, locked up with her unhappy past and living with her ward, the arrogant, beautiful Estella, form the prelude to his “great expectations.”
How Pip comes into a fortune, what he does with it, and what he discovers through his secret benefactor are the ingredients of his struggle for moral redemption.
Pip must discover his true self, and his own set of values and priorities. Whether such values allow one to prosper in the complex world of early Victorian England is the major question posed by Great Expectations, one of Dickens’s most fascinating, and disturbing, novels.

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What are your top 5 books about orphans?


7 Comments
Janette
Garion and Pawn of Prophecy would have been my first choice for this week but then I decided to do female orphans 😀
meeghan
Female orphans are also good!! I will come check your page, but did you have Throne of Glass?
Janette
No I forgot all about that one.
meeghan
Honestly same until I messaged you 😂
Marianne @ Let's Read
I also found a Dickens orphan but had to go with my favourite book by him.
https://momobookblog.blogspot.com/2024/08/top-5-tuesday-orphans.html
meeghan
Dickens is so good though!! What a great choice!!
Marianne @ Let's Read
Yes, he is definitely great!