September 2017: TBR

Currently Reading/ Completed

Rowan Wood Legends by Olivia Wildenstein

Book 2 in the Lost Clan Series

SOME LEGENDS ARE BETTER LEFT UNTOLD.

I wasn’t the sort of girl who believed in fairytales, let alone tales about faeries. But that changed the day Faeries came to my small town and Hunters rose from their graves.

On that fateful day, I received a book, a peculiar collection of myths and legends. Turns out it was so much more than stories. And just as I was on the verge of unlocking its secrets, it was stolen from me by someone I called a friend.

Now, I don’t know whom I can turn to, whom I can trust. All I know is that there are two sides, and I am straddling the great divide because I am both Faerie and Hunter. And although I swore I would never choose, I am slowly falling for one of those sides…

Fans of Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series will adore Wildenstein’s Lost Clan series.

I finished reading this September 1st, but I’m still including this in my tbr for September since it is a part of my September reads. This was definitely a fun read that I look forward to reviewing very soon.

Plank’s Law by Lesley Choyce

Trevor has known since he was ten years old that he has Huntington’s disease, but at sixteen he is informed that he has one year to live. One day while he’s trying to figure stuff out, an old man named Plank finds him standing at a cliff by the ocean. It’s the beginning of an odd but intriguing relationship. Both Trevor and Plank decide to live by Plank’s Law, which is “just live.” This means Trevor has to act on the things on his bucket list, like hanging out with real penguins, star in a science fiction movie and actually talk to Sara—the girl at the hospital who smiles at him.

With the aid of Plank and Sara, Trevor revises his bucket list to include more important things and takes charge of his illness and his life.

I am currently reading Plank’s Law and am already halfway through this short novel. It is not at all what I expected it to be, but I am excited to be reading it!

Age of the Ashers by Diana Tyler

Petros is a well-oiled machine of an empire that has been overrun by evil. Every individual’s life is mapped out precisely, from the day of their birth until their much-anticipated Coronation at age seventy-five, when they each become ruler of their own personal paradise.

Eighteen-year-old Chloe Zacharias is content to exist as a social outcast and virtual recluse. Orphaned at the age of eight, she and her twin brother Damian live with their aunt and uncle, who only just tolerate their unwelcome charges. When classmate Ethan Ross gives Chloe a one-day pass to a newly opened museum, she discovers there’s much more to her utopian city, and the mysterious government that runs it, than she could ever have imagined.

I have been reading this book for longer then I probably should have as this has been on my tbr for far too long. I am not quite halfway through this yet, but I am finishing this book this month for sure! I definitely didn’t look at what the book was about before I started reading and I think that completely threw me off. I think after a break from it I will be able to return with a better mindset to read this book.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

I won’t describe what I look like. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably worse.

August Pullman was born with a facial difference that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. WONDER, now a #1 New York Times bestseller and included on the Texas Bluebonnet Award master list, begins from Auggie’s point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.

“Wonder is the best kids’ book of the year,” said Emily Bazelon, senior editor at Slate.com and author of Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy. In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope. R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel “a meditation on kindness” —indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.

I am about halfway through Wonder and have been reading it for a while and taking my time with it. I am really enjoying it so far and I can’t wait to share my thoughts about it!

Book Club Books:

As some of you may know I started the Beyond The Surface Book Club last month with a blogger friend of mine named Indy and we read My Heart and Other Black Holes. This month I decided to go for something that might be a little more light-hearted, but still centered around mental health with The Goldfish Boy.

The Goldfish Boy by Lisa Thompson

Lisa Thompson’s debut novel is a page-turning mystery with an emotionally-driven, complex character study at its core — like Rear Window meets The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Matthew Corbin suffers from severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. He hasn’t been to school in weeks. His hands are cracked and bleeding from cleaning. He refuses to leave his bedroom. To pass the time, he observes his neighbors from his bedroom window, making mundane notes about their habits as they bustle about the cul-de-sac.

When a toddler staying next door goes missing, it becomes apparent that Matthew was the last person to see him alive. Suddenly, Matthew finds himself at the center of a high-stakes mystery, and every one of his neighbors is a suspect. Matthew is the key to figuring out what happened and potentially saving a child’s life… but is he able to do so if it means exposing his own secrets, and stepping out from the safety of his home?

Here is the link to my announcement post here.

I am also joining in reading a book for a book club hosted by Clues and Reviews and The Suspense is Thrilling Me who have picked out some books to read for September and October.

This months book pick was The Nightingale which is a book I own but have waited far to long to read. I’m super excited to finally read it this month!

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

A #1 New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and soon to be a major motion picture, this unforgettable novel of love and strength in the face of war has enthralled a generation.

With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women’s war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France—a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.

ARC’s:

We Can’t Be Friends by Cyndy Etler

Book 2

In the follow-up to Cyndy Etler’s chilling memoir, The Dead Inside, Etler details her turbulent readjustment to life at home and high school after spending sixteen months in Straight, Inc. Advertised as a rehab program for troubled teens, in reality, Straight subjected Cyndy and her fellow Straightlings to cultlike brainwashing and bizarre “treatment” methods. There was no privacy, no freedom, and no room for error. But when Cyndy is finally released, she discovers she’s living by an entirely different set of rules than her peers. What new extremes will she go to in order to fit in?

I really enjoyed reading The Dead Inside a short while back and I am happy to be able to read We Can’t Be Friends this month! I know it is going to be a difficult read emotionally as The Dead Inside was, but a story like this is an important one to read about and to consider.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

At sixteen, Mina’s mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.

Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.

Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.

“Dark, fantastical, hauntingly evocative.”

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

There is a surprising lack of true fantasy in this tbr and I am so glad to have Girls Made of Snow and Glass to help remedy that. I can’t believe I won an arc of this amazing sounding novel!

YA Fun:

Gilded Cage by Vic James

MAGIC RULES. WE SERVE.

In a darkly fantastical debut set in modern-day Britain, magic users control everything: wealth, politics, power—and you. If you’re not one of the ultimate one-percenters—the magical elite—you owe them ten years of service. Do those years when you’re old, and you’ll never get through them. Do them young, and you’ll never get over them.

This is the darkly decadent world of Gilded Cage. In its glittering milieu move the all-powerful Jardines and the everyday Hadleys. The families have only one thing in common: Each has three children. But their destinies entwine when one family enters the service of the other. They will all discover whether any magic is more powerful than the human spirit.

Have a quick ten years. . . .

I was lucky enough to have won a copy of Gilded Cage and to have one of the most beautiful conversations with Vic James on Twitter thanks to the second book that she sent to me as well. I already adore this author as a person and I heard amazing things about this novel so I can’t wait to dive right in!

The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender by Leslye Walton

Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga.

Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava — in all other ways a normal girl — is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, sixteen-year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo. First-time author Leslye Walton has constructed a layered and unforgettable mythology of what it means to be born with hearts that are tragically, exquisitely human.

Ever since I posted this post about magical realism books on my tbr I have been in desperate need of some magical realism. So, yesterday I finally ordered Ava Lavender (A book I think I am going to fall in love with) so I could finally read it this month. I am so excited!!!!

Thanks for reading! What books are you thinking of reading this month? Let me know down in the comments below.

-Till next time!

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