It seems every time we turn around someone is posting about a new, great looking book, that everyone just has to read! Here are a few that have caught our eye lately and have been added to our TBR (to be read) lists…
~KIM~
Last year I posted about Someone We Know, Shari Lapena and The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi Waxman. I read and really enjoyed Someone We Know. I need to read more of Shari Lapena’s books! I never did read The Bookish Life of Nina Hill. After awhile I just kind of lost interest in it and was on to some other new and shiny book. Isn’t that how it goes sometimes? Well, here we are again with a couple new ones that I’ve been seeing everyone talk about lately…
Felix Ever After, Kacen Callender
I saw a lot of people on #bookstagram reading this for #PrideMonth and that gorgeous cover caught my eye. This was just barely released in May so I haven’t had a chance to get my hands on it yet, but I plan to before the end of the year.
Felix Love has never been in love—and, yes, he’s painfully aware of the irony. He desperately wants to know what it’s like and why it seems so easy for everyone but him to find someone. When an anonymous student begins sending him transphobic messages—after publicly posting Felix’s deadname alongside images of him before he transitioned—Felix comes up with a plan for revenge. What he didn’t count on: his catfish scenario landing him in a quasi–love triangle….But as he navigates his complicated feelings, Felix begins a journey of questioning and self-discovery that helps redefine his most important relationship: how he feels about himself.
The House In The Cerulean Sea, T.J. Klune
Another book that has popped up a few times in #bookstagram and made me do a double take is The House in the Cerulean Sea. I’m a sucker for a colorful cover I guess and the synopsis on this one is really intriguing. It’s been awhile since a read a good fantasy (I’ve surprisingly been reading a lot of contemporary lately) and I hope this one will fit the bill.
A magical island. A dangerous task. A burning secret.
Linus Baker leads a quiet, solitary life. At forty, he lives in a tiny house with a devious cat and his old records. As a Case Worker at the Department in Charge Of Magical Youth, he spends his days overseeing the well-being of children in government-sanctioned orphanages.
When Linus is unexpectedly summoned by Extremely Upper Management he’s given a curious and highly classified assignment: travel to Marsyas Island Orphanage, where six dangerous children reside: a gnome, a sprite, a wyvern, an unidentifiable green blob, a were-Pomeranian, and the Antichrist. Linus must set aside his fears and determine whether or not they’re likely to bring about the end of days.
But the children aren’t the only secret the island keeps.
💓 TANYA PATRICE 💓
Last year my choices were award winning books – Milkman, Anna Burns, and The Overstory, Richard Powers. I read – and did not like or finish – Milkman, but never got to The Overstory. This year, my choices are from Goodreads – The Top 40 Hit Books of the Year (So Far) and from Amazon’s Best Books of the Yeas So Far 2020 or recommendations from other bloggers.
The Sun Down Motel, Simone St. James
I saw that Kim had a rave review for this earlier this year when she put it on How I Spent My Last 4 Audible Credits – if she says “WOWEE” – then it’s going on my reading list.
The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before. Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn’t right at the Sun Down, and before long she’s determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden.
The Girl With the Louding Voice, Abi Dare
This is the #1 pick on om Amazon’s Best Books of the Year So Far – 2020 list.
Adunni is a fourteen-year-old Nigerian girl who knows what she wants: an education. This, her mother has told her, is the only way to get a “louding voice” – the ability to speak for herself and decide her own future. But instead, Adunni’s father sells her to be the third wife of a local man who is eager for her to bear him a son and heir. When Adunni runs away to the city, hoping to make a better life, she finds that the only other option before her is servitude to a wealthy family. But while misfortunes might muffle her voice for a time, they cannot mute it. And when she realizes that she must stand up not only for herself, but for other girls, she finds the resolve to speak, however she can – in a whisper, in song, in broken English – until she is heard.
Deacon King Kong, James McBride
I first saw Deacon King Kong on Time’s Best Books of 2020 So Far and then on Amazon’s list.
In September 1969, a fumbling, cranky old church deacon known as Sportcoat shuffles into the courtyard of the Cause Houses housing project in south Brooklyn, pulls a .38 from his pocket, and in front of everybody shoots the project’s drug dealer at point-blank range. As the story deepens, it becomes clear that the lives of the characters–caught in the tumultuous swirl of 1960s New York–overlap in unexpected ways, including the victim, the African-American and Latinx residents who witnessed it, the white neighbors, the local cops assigned to investigate, the members of the Five Ends Baptist Church where Sportcoat was deacon, the neighborhood’s Italian mobsters, and Sportcoat himself.
Which books have been inspiring your Bookish (E)nvy lately?
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