Top Ten Tuesday – Books I Don’t Even Remember Adding to My TBR
Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Top Ten Tuesday has been one of my favorite memes ever since I started blogging, so huge thanks to Jana for taking over the hosting duties!
This week’s TTT topic is Books I’ve Added to my TBR and Forgotten Why. This topic made me laugh because I do this a lot. I’ll be scrolling through my TBR on Goodreads and will come across titles where I’m just like “Who added that? How did that get there?” But then, as in the case with almost all of the titles I’m sharing this week, I’ll read the synopsis, think the book sounds good and will leave it on the TBR. I’m guessing some of them were based on blogger reviews, some are maybe from when I entered a giveaway and adding it was a requirement. Some of the pre-blogging ones, I honestly have no clue.
Out of the titles below, the only one I actually deleted as I was working on this post was The Silent Waters. It sounds good, but it’s the third book in a series I’ve never read and I didn’t even have the first two books on my list. Go figure. Anyway, I decided I need to focus on the umpteen series I’ve started and never finished, so off went The Silent Waters.
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Books I Don’t Even Remember Adding to My TBR
1. THE ONE by John Marrs
How far would you go to find The One?
A simple DNA test is all it takes. Just a quick mouth swab and soon you’ll be matched with your perfect partner—the one you’re genetically made for. That’s the promise made by Match Your DNA. A decade ago, the company announced that they had found the gene that pairs each of us with our soul mate. Since then, millions of people around the world have been matched. But the discovery has its downsides: test results have led to the breakup of countless relationships and upended the traditional ideas of dating, romance and love.
Now five very different people have received the notification that they’ve been “Matched.” They’re each about to meet their one true love. But “happily ever after” isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Because even soul mates have secrets. And some are more shocking than others…
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2. THE MUSE by Jessie Burton
A picture hides a thousand words . . .
On a hot July day in 1967, Odelle Bastien climbs the stone steps of the Skelton gallery in London, knowing that her life is about to change forever. Having struggled to find her place in the city since she arrived from Trinidad five years ago, she has been offered a job as a typist under the tutelage of the glamorous and enigmatic Marjorie Quick. But though Quick takes Odelle into her confidence, and unlocks a potential she didn’t know she had, she remains a mystery – no more so than when a lost masterpiece with a secret history is delivered to the gallery.
The truth about the painting lies in 1936 and a large house in rural Spain, where Olive Schloss, the daughter of a renowned art dealer, is harbouring ambitions of her own. Into this fragile paradise come artist and revolutionary Isaac Robles and his half-sister Teresa, who immediately insinuate themselves into the Schloss family, with explosive and devastating consequences . . .
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3. NOW IS EVERYTHING by Amy Giles
The McCauleys look perfect on the outside. But nothing is ever as it seems, and this family is hiding a dark secret.
Hadley McCauley will do anything to keep her sister safe from their father. But when Hadley’s forbidden relationship with Charlie Simmons deepens, the violence at home escalates, culminating in an explosive accident that will leave everyone changed.
When Hadley attempts to take her own life at the hospital post-accident, her friends, doctors, family, and the investigator on the case want to know why. Only Hadley knows what really happened that day, and she’s not talking.
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4. GOING PLACES by Kathryn Berla
Hudson Wheeler is a teen for whom everyone had high expectations, but since his father was killed when he was ten, he’s felt unmotivated to pursue much other than his art. During his senior year, he decides to home school, thinking he will get to relax and focus on his two lazy businesses. But instead, he experiences love and rejection for the first time; meets an athletic girl who shows him by example what it means to be a man; and solves the painful mystery of the WWII vet whose poignant plight forces Hudson out of the comfort zone of boyhood.
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5. SOMETHING LIKE HAPPY by Eva Woods
With wry wit and boundless heart, Eva Woods delivers an unforgettable tale of celebrating triumphs great and small, seizing the day, and always remembering to live in the moment.
“It’s simple, really. You’re just meant to do one thing every day that makes you happy. Could be little things. Could be big. In fact, we’re doing one right now…”
Annie Hebden is stuck. Stuck in her boring job, with her irritating roommate, in a life no thirty-five-year-old would want. But deep down, Annie is still mourning the terrible loss that tore a hole through the perfect existence she’d once taken for granted—and hiding away is safer than remembering what used to be. Until she meets the eccentric Polly Leonard.
Bright, bubbly, intrusive Polly is everything Annie doesn’t want in a friend. But Polly is determined to finally wake Annie up to life. Because if recent events have taught Polly anything, it’s that your time is too short to waste a single day—which is why she wants Annie to join her on a mission…
One hundred days. One hundred new ways to be happy. Annie’s convinced it’s impossible, but so is saying no to Polly. And on an unforgettable journey that will force her to open herself to new experiences—and perhaps even new love with the unlikeliest of men—Annie will slowly begin to realize that maybe, just maybe, there’s still joy to be found in the world. But then it becomes clear that Polly’s about to need her new friend more than ever…and Annie will have to decide once and for all whether letting others in is a risk worth taking.
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6. TWO GIRLS DOWN by Louisa Luna
When two young sisters disappear from a strip mall parking lot in a small Pennsylvania town, their devastated mother hires an enigmatic bounty hunter, Alice Vega, to help find the girls. Immediately shut out by a local police department already stretched thin by budget cuts and the growing OxyContin and meth epidemic, Vega enlists the help of a disgraced former cop, Max Caplan. Cap is a man trying to put the scandal of his past behind him and move on, but Vega needs his help to find the girls, and she will not be denied.
With little to go on, Vega and Cap will go to extraordinary lengths to untangle a dangerous web of lies, false leads, and complex relationships to find the girls before time runs out, and they are gone forever.
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7. THE REFUGEES by Viet Thanh Nguyen
From a young Vietnamese refugee who suffers profound culture shock when he comes to live with two gay men in San Francisco, to a woman whose husband is suffering from dementia and starts to confuse her for a former lover, to a girl living in Ho Chi Minh City whose older half-sister comes back from America having seemingly accomplished everything she never will, the stories are a captivating testament to the dreams and hardships of immigration.
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8. THE IMPOSSIBLE VASTNESS OF US by Samantha Young
I know how to watch my back. I’m the only one that ever has.
India Maxwell hasn’t just moved across the country—she’s plummeted to the bottom rung of the social ladder. It’s taken years to cover the mess of her home life with a veneer of popularity. Now she’s living in one of Boston’s wealthiest neighborhoods with her mom’s fiancé and his daughter, Eloise. Thanks to her soon-to-be stepsister’s clique of friends, including Eloise’s gorgeous, arrogant boyfriend Finn, India feels like the one thing she hoped never to be seen as again: trash.
But India’s not alone in struggling to control the secrets of her past. Eloise and Finn, the school’s golden couple, aren’t all they seem to be. In fact, everyone’s life is infinitely more complex than it first appears. And as India grows closer to Finn and befriends Eloise, threatening the facades that hold them together, what’s left are truths that are brutal, beautiful, and big enough to change them forever…
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9. THE SILENT WATERS by Brittainy C. Cherry
Moments. Our lives are a collection of moments. Some utterly painful and full of yesterday’s hurts. Some beautifully hopeful and full of tomorrow’s promises.
I’ve had many moments in my lifetime, moments that changed me, challenged me. Moments that scared me and engulfed me. However, the biggest ones—the most heartbreaking and breathtaking ones—all included him.
I was ten years old when I lost my voice. A piece of me was stolen away, and the only person who could truly hear my silence was Brooks Griffin. He was the light during my dark days, the promise of tomorrow, until tragedy found him. Tragedy that eventually drowned him in a sea of memories.
This is the story of a boy and girl who loved each other, but didn’t love themselves. A story of life and death. Of love and broken promises. Of moments.
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10. WHAT LIES BETWEEN US by Nayomi Munaweera
In the idyllic hill country of Sri Lanka, a young girl grows up with her loving family; but even in the midst of this paradise, terror lurks in the shadows. When tragedy strikes, she and her mother must seek safety by immigrating to America. There the girl reinvents herself as an American teenager to survive, with the help of her cousin; but even as she assimilates and thrives, the secrets and scars of her past follow her into adulthood. In this new country of freedom, everything she has built begins to crumble around her, and her hold on reality becomes more and more tenuous. When the past and the present collide, she sees only one terrible choice.
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Question: Have you read any of these? Do you ever add books to your TBR and later forget why you wanted to read them?
Review: ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW by Kristan Higgins
Always the Last to Know by Kristan Higgins Also by this author: Good Luck with That, Pack Up the Moon
Published by BERKLEY on June 9, 2020
Genres: Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Pages: 400
Source: Netgalley
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FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Kristan Higgins is fast becoming one of my go-to authors when I’m in the mood for a moving read that focuses on family. That’s exactly what I was in the mood for when I picked up her latest novel, Always the Last to Know, and wow, does it deliver! I just finished reading and I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes as I’m writing this review.
Always the Last to Know follows the Frost family. Barb and John have been married for five decades but have gradually drifted apart over the years. They have two daughters, Juliet and Sadie, who are night and day in terms of personality. Juliet is an Ivy League graduate and a brilliant and successful architect, while Sadie is a struggling artist trying to make it in New York, currently working as an elementary school art teacher to make ends meet. Juliet is also happily married with two beautiful children, while Sadie lost the love of her life when she moved to New York to follow her dream. Because they’re so different, the relationship between Sadie and Juliet is somewhat contentious at times. Sure, they love each other; they just don’t necessarily like each other very much. Their lives all come to a screeching halt, however, when John suffers a stroke and ends up unable to care for himself or even speak.
I have to admit that the novel did start off a little slow for me, but thankfully it picked up as soon as Sadie moved home to help with her dad. I loved that the story is presented in alternating chapters between Barb, Sadie, Juliet, and John, and Higgins does a wonderful job of conveying what each of them was thinking and feeling as they are trying to navigate John’s recovery. It’s an emotional journey for everyone, as they are all dealing with personal and/or professional dramas as well. John’s chapters are of course moving since we’re the only ones who know what he’s feeling. My heart also went out to Barb as she is forced to really examine her relationship with John and where it went wrong over the years, as well as to Juliet, who is starting to cave under the pressure of always having to be the “perfect” one.
For me though, it was Sadie who is actually the heart and soul of Always the Last to Know. I was in her corner as soon as I realized she was the underdog in her family, and her journey is the one that I found myself the most emotionally invested in. Even before her dad had the stroke, Sadie has already gone through so much, being rejected repeatedly in terms of her art, and then having to choose between her art and Noah, her first love. When Sadie moves home and comes face-to-face with Noah again, I felt their chemistry so hard and was immediately rooting for them to find their way back to each other.
I don’t want to give away any major spoilers, so I’m just going to say that Always the Last to Know was an emotional roller coaster for me as I followed each of these characters. The family dynamics, the secrets revealed, and the ensuing drama all felt very realistic, not over the top at all, and everything about this family just really got to me. I cried several times the closer I got to the end of the story and even though I was still in tears when it was all over, I was very content with the way the story ended. If you’re looking for a moving story about love, family, self discovery, and second chances, look no further.
About Kristan Higgins
Kristan Higgins is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Her books have been honored with dozens of awards and accolades, including starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Library Journal, the New York Journal of Books and Romantic Times. She is a two-time winner of the RITA award from Romance Writers of America and a five-time nominee for the Kirkus Prize for best work of fiction. She is happily married to a heroic firefighter and the mother of two fine children.
Mini Reviews: June 2nd Releases
Today I’m sharing reviews of some great new books that are being released this week. I’ve got a couple of contemporary reads and the first installment in an exciting new YA fantasy trilogy. And yes, I know my “mini” reviews aren’t all that mini, but I easily could have written so much more for each of these books so these are definitely mini for me, haha.
The Second Home Goodreads Author: Christina Clancy
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
Christina Clancy’s debut novel, The Second Home, is a compelling and emotionally-charged family drama that centers on three siblings, Ann, Poppy, and Michael, and one fateful summer when they were teenagers that turned all of their lives upside down.
Ann is the sibling we encounter first, and we meet her at her family’s beach house in Cape Cod, where the events of that infamous summer took place. Their parents have died in a car accident and their affairs, including what to do about the beach house, must be put into order. We soon learn that Ann and her siblings have had minimal contact over the years and that Ann feels particularly hostile toward her adopted brother, Michael. It’s unclear what Michael has done to hurt Ann, but it’s obvious that the hurt runs deep. Ann not only doesn’t want him to inherit anything from their parents, she also seems determined to cut him out of her life permanently. Relations are only slightly better with Poppy, a free spirit with no fixed address, who is usually only available by email. Considering Ann had to email Poppy to even let her know their parents were dead, Ann isn’t convinced Poppy will actually show up and help with their estate. It’s clear that there is a pretty high level of family dysfunction between the siblings.
I’m always up for a story that focuses on family drama and the author really delivers in that department. She allows the drama of that ill-fated summer to unfold in vivid flashbacks. I don’t want to give anything away, but I will say that much of what unfolds in those flashbacks is a pretty tragic chain of events, including instances of abuse, deception, manipulation, and more than a few troubling family secrets. In the midst of all of the drama unfolding, the author also paints such sympathetic portraits of Ann, Poppy, and Michael, that the more I got to know them, the more I just really wanted them to reconcile. They’re family and they clearly need each other, especially after suffering the loss of their parents.
The Second Home isn’t a light read by any stretch, but it is a poignant story that moved me to tears more than once. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys books that focus on sibling relationships and family drama.
Again Again Goodreads Author: E. Lockhart
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
Publisher: Delacorte Press
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
What I always enjoy about E. Lockhart’s books is how unique and creative they always are. Again Again is no exception as it explores the idea of the multiverse and all its various possibilities. It does so through the protagonist, teenager Adelaide Buchwald, as she spends her summer living on campus at the private school she attends and where her father is a professor.
The story is unique in the sense that every time Adelaide has an important conversation with someone, be it an ex boyfriend, a new potential boyfriend, a teacher, family member, whatever – in her mind and actually on the page, we get to see Adelaide process how these conversations could potentially go. If she changes just a word or a phrase or tone of voice, there could be a completely different outcome and chain reaction of events. At first I found the repetitive nature of each scene a little confusing, but once I got into a rhythm, I loved exploring all of the different possibilities.
As much as I enjoyed the unique aspect of the storytelling, the biggest draw for me was Adelaide herself. She and her family have gone through some difficult times, particularly with respect to her brother, and not wanting to add more stress, Adelaide spends a lot of time pretending that she’s much happier than she really is. In reality, she’s struggling to concentrate in school and her grades are falling because of it and she just lacks the motivation to try to stop the free fall. On top of that, her boyfriend abruptly breaks up with her so she’s trying to come to terms with that, as well as figure out what’s going on with another boy she has just met on campus. I found many of her experiences, as well as her frustration and confusion, just so relatable, and I also found her especially endearing because of her attachment to all the dogs she has been hired to walk during the summer. How can you not love a dog person?
The synopsis of Again Again advertises it as mostly a romance, but I personally viewed it as more of a coming of age story for Adelaide as she comes to terms with everything that has been dragging her down. It’s a story that can definitely be funny at times, but I also found it quite moving. If you usually enjoy Lockhart’s unique brand of storytelling, I think you’ll enjoy Again Again as well.
The Court of Miracles Goodreads Author: Kester Grant
Publication Date: June 2, 2020
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
FTC Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
The Court of Miracles is Kester Grant’s debut novel and the first installment in her YA fantasy “A Court of Miracles” series. It’s an ambitious novel, advertised as a reimagining/retelling of Les Miserables with some Six of Crows vibes thrown in. Those are two of my favorite books so I was excited to give this new series a try.
As with the original Les Mis, The Court of Miracles is set in Paris at the time of the French Revolution. In The Court of Miracles, however, the revolution has failed. The ruthless royals still rule the city, and there is now an underground society called the Court of Miracles, which is comprised of various criminal guilds, including a Guild of Assassins, a Guild of Thieves, and a Guild of Flesh, among others. It was a little confusing at first, but the worldbuilding for this underground society ended up being one of my favorite parts of the book. It’s a dark and fascinating world that sometimes appears lawless, but in reality, has its own set of laws that they loosely abide by.
The protagonist Nina, Eponine in the original Les Mis, lands in the Court of Miracles after her father betrays both her and her sister. Quick, quiet, and resourceful, Nina can break in and out of anywhere and can steal anything and therefore finds that she fits right in with the Guild of Thieves. Nina is a great character, very complex and well-drawn – she’s smart, passionate, and she can also be impulsive and headstrong, often throwing herself directly into harm’s way to protect those she loves. Her bond with little Ettie, Cosette from the original Les Mis, is wonderful too. Even though Nina is originally ready to betray Ettie because she thinks it will help save her own sister, she quickly grows to think of Ettie as her sister as well and is willing to lay down her life to keep Ettie safe. The leader of the Guild of Flesh becomes obsessed with getting his hands on Ettie, and it’s Nina’s determination to protect Ettie that actually drives much of the action of this first book. It’s an exciting and dangerous mission and it kept me on the edge of my seat!
If you’re a fan of Les Miserables and especially of the character Eponine, I think you’re going to enjoy this one. A very solid start to what I think is going to be an exciting series!