Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge [January Check In]

Welcome to the first round of the 2020 Monthly Key Word Reading Challenge! Each month we’ll be publishing these check-in posts with book recommendations that fit the key words for that month. So let’s get started! Here are January’s Key Words:

Water, This, Hello, Sun, Six

Here are a handful of book recommendations that fit for this month if you need some ideas:

Into The Water, Paula Hawkins

A single mother turns up dead at the bottom of the river that runs through town. Earlier in the summer, a vulnerable teenage girl met the same fate. They are not the first women lost to these dark waters, but their deaths disturb the river and its history, dredging up secrets long submerged.

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price—and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone.

Daisy Jones & The Six, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six: The band’s album Aurora came to define the rock ‘n’ roll era of the late seventies, and an entire generation of girls wanted to grow up to be Daisy. But no one knows the reason behind the group’s split on the night of their final concert at Chicago Stadium on July 12, 1979 . . . until now.

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that he meets Marlena, the beautiful young star of the equestrian act, who is married to August, the charismatic but twisted animal trainer. He also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems untrainable until he discovers a way to reach her.

SEAL Team Six Outcasts, Howard E. Masdin & Stephen Templin

The team’s mission: Take out the seven terror merchants vying to take Bin Laden’s place. The team’s status: Expendable.

The Sun is Also A Star, Nicola Yoon

Natasha: I’m a girl who believes in science and facts. Not fate. Daniel: I’ve always been the good son, the good student, living up to my parents’ high expectations. Never the poet. Or the dreamer. The Universe: Every moment in our lives has brought us to this single moment. A million futures lie before us. Which one will come true?

This is How You Lose The Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. And 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. Except discovery of their bond would be 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?

Hello, Goodbye, & Everything in Between, Jennifer E. Smith

On the night before they leave for college, Clare and Aidan have only one thing left to do: figure out whether they should stay together or break up. Over the course of twelve hours, they retrace the steps of their relationship, trying to find something in their past that might help them decide what their future should be.

This Tender Land, William Kent Krueger

1932, Minnesota—the Lincoln School is a pitiless place where hundreds of Native American children, forcibly separated from their parents, are sent to be educated. It is also home to an orphan named Odie O’Banion, a lively boy whose exploits earn him the superintendent’s wrath. Forced to flee, he and his brother Albert, their best friend Mose, and a brokenhearted little girl named Emmy steal away in a canoe, heading for the mighty Mississippi and a place to call their own.

HOW THE CHALLENGE WORKS

  • Your task is to read at least 1 book for any of the keywords
  • Post about what you’ve read anywhere online – your blog, Goodreads and / or social media using the hashtag #MonthlyKeyWordGXO
  • Come back to our check-in here in the comments leave a link and/or tell us which book(s) you read and what you thought.

If you have any other book suggestions please drop them in the comments. Also- we’d love to know which book you picked for this month!