August 2024 TBR

So despite my announcement of 30 volumes in 30 days I am still trying to read some novels during that time hahaha!

New Releases

  • Title: The Book Swap
  • Author: Tessa Bickers
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Romance
  • Pages: 336
  • Publication Date: 03/09


Plot: Still reeling from a recent tragedy, Erin Connolly knows she needs to start living, but has no idea how. When she accidentally donates her favorite book—a heavily annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird containing a memento she can’t be without—to a local little community library, she’s devastated. But then the book turns up a week later, back in the library with fresh notes in the margins, along with an invitation in a copy of Great Expectations to meet her newfound pen pal. A life-changing conversation, written only in the margins of beloved classic books, begins between Erin and her Mystery Man. Following each other through the pages of their favorite novels as the book exchange continues, they both begin to open up, falling into a friendship…and maybe something more. But Erin and her pen pal have a shared history that neither of them has guessed. Faced with painful reminders of the past—and the one person she swore never to forgive—Erin finds herself at a crossroads. One that could change her life forever.

  • Title: The Last Gifts of the Universe
  • Author: Riley August
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Sci-Fi
  • Pages: 204
  • Publication Date: 05/09


Plot: When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilisations. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last ones left – and whatever came for the others will one day come for them. Scout is an Archivist who scours the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals – anything left behind that might be useful to Home and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago. Now Scout, their brother and their sometimes-fearless, space-faring cat, Pumpkin, must race to save what matters most.

  • Title: What A Way To Go
  • Author: Bella Mackie
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Murder Mystery
  • Pages: 400
  • Publication Date: 12/09


Plot: One wealth-obsessed man – who is also dead. One status-obsessed woman – who is the perfect accessory. Their four inheritance-obsessed children – each with a killer instinct. And a murder-obsessed outsider looking to expose them all…

  • Title: Sorrow Spring
  • Author: Olivia Isaac-Henry
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Thriller
  • Pages: 448
  • Publication Date: 12/09


Plot: 1978. When teenager Rina Pine is dumped by her hippy mother in the parochial village of Sorrow Spring, and forced to live with her aged aunt, Agatha Pine, she doesn’t think things can get any worse.
There she finds a community beholden to the past, and a village in the grip of a close-knit circle of older women who worship the local spring and its patron saint, all under the leadership of the formidable Agatha. But when a child goes missing and a young mother is killed, Rina is drawn into the dark and sinister truth flowing through the sacred waters that give the place its name. Rina is about to learn what it truly means to be a daughter of Sorrow Spring…

Backlist

  • Title: One of Us Knows
  • Author: Alyssa Cole
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Thriller


Plot: Years after a breakdown and a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder derailed her historical preservationist career, Kenetria Nash and her alters have been given a second chance they can’t refuse: a position as resident caretaker of a historic home. Having been dormant for years, Ken has no idea what led them to this isolated Hudson River island, but she’s determined not to ruin their opportunity. Then a surprise visit from the home’s conservation trust just as a Nor’easter bears down on the island disrupts her newfound life, leaving Ken trapped with a group of possibly dangerous strangers—including the man who brought her life tumbling down years earlier. When he turns up dead, Ken is the prime suspect. Caught in a web of secrets and in a race against time, Ken and her alters must band together to prove their innocence and discover the truth of Kavanaugh Island—and their own past—or they risk losing not only their future, but their life.

  • Title: Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise
  • Author: Lin Yi-Han
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Literary Fiction


Plot: The most influential book of Taiwan’s #MeToo movement—a heartbreaking account of sexual violence and a remarkable reinvention of the trauma plot, turning the traditional Lolita narrative upside down as it explores women’s vulnerability, victimization, and the lengths they will go to survive. One of the biggest books to come out of Taiwan in the last decade, Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise is a chilling tale of grooming and its lingering trauma, and the power structures that allow it to flourish. Insightful, unsettling, emotionally raw, it is a staggering work of literature that reverberates across cultures and forces us to confront painful truths about the vulnerability and strength of women and those who use and hurt them.

  • Title: Percy Jackson and The Chalice of the Gods
  • Author: Rick Riordan
  • Series: Percy Jackson #6
  • Format: Hardback
  • Age Rating: YA
  • Genre: Fantasy


Plot: Percy Jackson, modern-day son of Poseidon, is just trying to get through high school. After saving the world multiple times by battling monsters, Titans, and giants, Percy is now settling in at Alternative High School in New York, where he hopes to finally have a normal senior year. Unfortunately, the gods aren’t quite done with him yet. Poseidon breaks the bad news that if Percy expects to get into New Rome University, he will have to fulfill three quests in order to earn the necessary three letters of recommendation from Mount Olympus. The first task is to help Ganymede, Zeus’s cupbearer, retrieve his golden goblet before it falls into the wrong hands. You see, one sip from it can turn a mortal into a god, and Zeus would not be pleased with that result. Can Percy and his friends Grover and Annabeth find the precious cup in time? And if they do, will they be able to resist its special power?

  • Title: North Woods
  • Author: Daniel Mason
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Literary Fiction


Plot: When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become home to an extraordinary succession of inhabitants . An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins survive war and famine, only to succumb to envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave, but finds the ancient trees refuse to give up their secrets. A lovelorn painter, a conman, a stalking panther, a lusty beetle; as each one confronts the mysteries of the north woods, they come to realize that the dark, raucous, beautiful past is very much alive. Traversing cycles of history, nature, and even literature, North Woods shows the myriad, magical ways in which we’re connected to our environment and to one another, across time, language and space. Written along with the seasons and divided into the twelve months of the year, it is an unforgettable novel about secrets and fates that asks the timeless how do we live on, even after we’re gone?

February 2023 TBR

Another month, another bunch of books. January was really successful so I am hoping the same for Feb. The theme for this month is Romance! Now it doesn’t specifically be romance novels it can also include books where there are strong romance side plots as well.

  • Title: The Bride Test
  • Author: Helen Hoang
  • Series: The Kiss Quotient #2
  • Format: eBook
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Contemporary Romance


Plot: Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, not big, important emotions – like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better – that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly refuses to consider a relationship, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride. As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. So when the opportunity arises to go to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down. This could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go quite as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working… but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection. As Esme’s time in the United States dwindles, will Khai let his head catch up with his heart? Will he find the strength to let go, and let love in?

  • Title: Once Upon a Broken Heart
  • Author: Stephanie Garber
  • Series: Once Upon a Broken Heart #1
  • Format: Hardback
  • Age Rating: New Adult
  • Genre: Fantasy Romance


Plot: Evangeline Fox was raised in her beloved father’s curiosity shop, where she grew up on legends about immortals, like the tragic Prince of Hearts. She knows his powers are mythic, his kiss is worth dying for, and that bargains with him rarely end well. But when Evangeline learns that the love of her life is about to marry another, she becomes desperate enough to offer the Prince of Hearts whatever he wants in exchange for his help to stop the wedding. The prince only asks for three kisses. But after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she’d pledged. And he has plans for Evangeline that will either end in the greatest happily ever after, or the most exquisite tragedy.

  • Title: Twisted Love
  • Author: Ana Huang
  • Series: Twisted #1
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Contemporary Romance


Plot: He has a heart of ice… but for her, he’d burn the world. Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can’t escape. Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart. But when he’s forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he starts to feel something in his chest: A crack. A melt. A fire that could end his world as he knew it. Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can’t remember. But despite her broken past, she’s never stopped seeing the beauty in the world… including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn’t want. Her brother’s best friend. Her neighbour. Her saviour and her downfall. Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen – but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both… and everything they hold dear.

  • Title: Inuyasha
  • Author: Rumiko Takahashi
  • Series: Inuyasha #1
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: YA
  • Genre: Historical Fantasy Romance


Plot: Kagome is a modern Japanese high school girl. Never the type to believe in myths and legends, her world view dramatically changes when, one day, she’s pulled out of her own time and into another! There, in Japan’s ancient past, Kagome discovers more than a few of those dusty old legends are true, and that her destiny is linked to one legendary creature in particular – he dog like half-demon called Inuyasha! That same trick of fate also ties them both to the Shikon Jewel, or Jewel of Four Souls. But demons beware… the smallest shard of the Shikon Jewel can give the user unimaginable power.

  • Title: This Is How You Lose the Time War
  • Author: Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Sci-Fi & Romance


Plot: Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

  • Title: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
  • Author: V.E. Schwab
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Hardback
  • Age Rating: New Adult
  • Genre: Historical/Fantasy Romance


Plot: When Addie LaRue makes a deal with devil, she trades her soul for immortality. But the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone. Addie flees her tiny home town in 18th-Century France, beginning a journey that takes her across the world, learning to live a life where no one remembers her and everything she owns is lost and broken. Existing only as a muse for artists throughout history, she learns to fall in love anew every single day. Her only companion on this journey is her dark devil with hypnotic green eyes, who visits her each year on the anniversary of their deal. Alone in the world, Addie has no choice but to confront him, to understand him, maybe to beat him. Until one day, in a second hand bookshop in Manhattan, Addie meets someone who remembers her. Suddenly thrust back into a real, normal life, Addie realises she can’t escape her fate forever.

  • Title: My Killer Vacation
  • Author: Tessa Bailey
  • Series: Standalone
  • Format: Paperback
  • Age Rating: Adult
  • Genre: Contemporary Romance & Murder Mystery


Plot: It was supposed to be a relaxing vacation in sweet, sunny Cape Cod – just me and my beloved brother – but discovering a corpse in our rental house really throws a wrench into our tanning schedule. Now a rude, crude bounty hunter has arrived on the back of his motorcycle to catch the killer and refuses to believe I can be helpful, despite countless hours of true crime podcast listening. Not to mention a fulfilling teaching career of wrangling second graders. A brash bounty hunter and an energetic elementary schoolteacher: the murder-solving team no one asked for, but thanks to these pesky attempts on my life, we’re stuck together, come hell or high tide. I’m just here to do a job, not babysit an amateur sleuth. Although… it is becoming less and less of a hardship to have her around. Sure, she’s stubborn, distracting and can’t stay out of harm’s way. She’s also brave and beautiful and reminds me of the home I left behind three years ago. In other words, the insatiable hunger and protectiveness she is waking up in me is a threat to my peace of mind. Before I sink any deeper into this dangerous attraction, I need to solve this murder and get back on the road. But will fate take her from me before I realize the road has been leading to her all along?

Gleanings Review

There are still countless tales of the Scythedom to tell. Centuries passed between the Thunderhead cradling humanity and Scythe Goddard trying to turn it upside down. For years humans lived in a world without hunger, disease, or death with Scythes as the living instruments of population control. Neal Shusterman—along with collaborators David Yoon, Jarrod Shusterman, Sofía Lapuente, Michael H. Payne, Michelle Knowlden, and Joelle Shusterman—returns to the world throughout the timeline of the Arc of a Scythe series. Discover secrets and histories of characters you’ve followed for three volumes and meet new heroes, new foes, and some figures in between.