This blog meme is hosted by Book Date. It is a place to meet up and share what you have been, are and about to be reading over the week. It’s a great post to organize yourself. It’s an opportunity to visit and comment, and er… add to that ever growing TBR pile!
What I just finished:
This weekend I finished This Is Why We Lie by Gabriella Lepore.
What I’m currently reading:
I’m currently reading When We Make It by Elisabet Velasquez.
What I’m reading next:
Next I will be reading Rule by Ellen Goodlett.
What are you guys reading this week? Have you read any of these books?
The meme that dares to ask what book has been in your bed this morning? Come share what book you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed, or which book you wish you had time to read today! This meme is hosted by Midnight Book Girl.
This Sunday I’m reading This Is Why We Lie by Gabriella Lepore.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Everyone in Gardiners Bay has a secret.
When Jenna Dallas and Adam Cole find Colleen O’Dell’s body floating off the shore of their coastal town, the community of Gardiners Bay is shaken. But even more shocking is the fact that her drowning was no accident.
Once Jenna’s best friend becomes a key suspect, Jenna starts to look for answers on her own. As she uncovers scandals inside Preston Prep School leading back to Rookwood reform school, she knows she needs Adam on her side.
As a student at Rookwood, Adam is used to getting judgmental looks, but now his friends are being investigated by the police. Adam will do whatever he can to keep them safe, even if that means trusting Jenna.
As lies unravel, the truth starts to blur. Only one thing is certain: somebody must take the fall.
Title: Doctor Who: The Wonderful Doctor of Oz Author: Jacqueline Rayner Genre: Science Fiction Publisher: BBC Children’s Books Source: Purchased Format: Paperback Release Date: June 10, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Embark on a strange and enchanting adventure with old foes and monsters in this glorious crossover of Doctor Who and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
When a sudden tornado engulfs the TARDIS, the Thirteenth Doctor and her fam find themselves transported to the magical land of Oz. With a damaged TARDIS and an unexpected stowaway from the 1930s, their only hope of getting home is to follow the yellow brick road.
But when an army of scarecrows ambushes them, they quickly realise that everything is not as it should be, and they’re thrown into a fight for survival against a mysterious enemy. As each of her companions becomes a shadow of their former selves, only the Doctor is left standing.
Desperate to save her friends, she must embark on a perilous journey to seek help from the mysterious Wizard of Oz – and stop whatever forces are at work before she and her friends are trapped in the fictional world forever.
Review:
The Thirteenth Doctor and her fam, Ryan, Graham, and Yaz, travelled back to the 1930s to see the premiere of The Wizard of Oz. However, when they land, they discover that no one has ever heard of L. Frank Baum or The Wizard of Oz. Then, the Tardis is pulled into a tornado, landing them in the land of Oz. The Doctor and her friends, along with a young man named Theodore who stowed away in the 1930s, have to follow the yellow brick road to see the Wizard and save Oz.
This story was a clever combination of The Wizard of Oz and Doctor Who. The Oz that they visited was mostly based on the book, which is slightly different from the movie. In place of some of the characters from Oz, were Doctor Who characters, such as the Cyberman who stood in for the Tin Man. Each of the Doctor’s companions also faced the same problems that Dorothy’s companions faced in the original after some accidents: needing a brain, a heart, and courage.
Gender was an important part of the story. The Thirteenth Doctor is the first female Doctor. In this story, she meets the Doctor’s longtime enemy the Master, in her female form, called Missy. This was an interesting meeting since these two female characters never met on the TV show. Though Missy is on the cover, she wasn’t in the story for very long. I would have loved to see more of her on the page because she’s an interesting character. There was also a clever ending that you’ll have to read to find out!
The Wonderful Doctor of Oz is a fun Doctor Who story.
What to read next:
Doctor Who: Combat Magicks by Steve Cole
Doctor Who: Legends of Camelot by Jacqueline Rayner
Have you read Doctor Who: The Wonderful Doctor of Oz? What did you think of it?
Title: The Merchant and the Rogue (The Dread Penny Society #3) Author: Sarah M. Eden Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance Publisher: Shadow Mountain Source: Publisher Format: Paperback arc Release Date: August 17, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
London, 1865
Vera Sorokina loves reading the Penny Dreadfuls and immersing herself in tales of adventure, mystery, and romance. Her own days are filled with the often mundane work of running the book and print shop she owns with her father. The shop offers her freedom and an income, and while she is grateful for the stability it brings to her life, she often feels lonely.
Brogan Donnelly was born and raised in Ireland, but has lived in London for several years, where he’s built a career as a penny dreadful writer. He has dedicated himself to the plight of the poor with the help of his sister. But with no one to share his life with, he fears London will never truly feel like home.
Brogan and Vera’s paths cross, and the attraction is both immediate and ill-advised. Vera knows from past experience that writers are never to be trusted, and Brogan has reason to suspect not everything at Vera’s print shop is aboveboard. When a growing criminal enterprise begins targeting their area of London, Brogan and Vera must work together to protect the community they’ve both grown to love. But that means they’ll need to learn to trust each other with dangerous secrets that have followed both of them from their home countries.
Review:
London, 1865: Vera Sorokina runs a print shop with her father. Though her father doesn’t like writers, she sells and reads the Penny Dreadful stories. Brogan Donnelly is a member of the secret Dread Penny Society, a group of writers who write Penny Dreadful stories and help those who need saving. Brogan had been questioning his membership in the group because he felt guilty about lying to his sister about it. The Dreadmaster gives Brogan permission to leave the group, so that he is no longer lying to his sister, and go investigate what is really going on at Vera’s print shop. Brogan works there under a pseudonym and must help Vera to figure out who is threatening her community.
This is another fun story in the Dread Penny series. Vera and Brogan were both immigrants with mysterious backgrounds. They both kept secrets, and they didn’t necessarily know everything that had happened in their pasts that led them both to London. Though they were from different cultures, Russian and Irish, their circumstances as immigrants to London drew them together.
One of my favourite parts of these books is that there are penny dreadful stories included throughout the novel. There are always two stories, one written by Mr. King, one of the best penny dreadful authors, and another by one of the protagonists. These stories relate to the main romance plot, but they’re also very entertaining in themselves. I really enjoy reading these stories within the novel.
The Merchant and the Rogue is a great Victorian novel. I hope there will be more in the series!
Thank you Shadow Mountain for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
The Matchmaker’s Lonely Heart by Nancy Campbell Allen
Title: Stalking Shadows Author: Cyla Panin Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy Publisher: Amulet Books Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: September 14, 2021 Rating: ★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
A gothic YA fantasy debut about a young woman striving to break her sister’s curse and stop the killing in her small French town
Seventeen-year-old Marie mixes perfumes to sell on market day in her small eighteenth-century French town. She wants to make enough to save a dowry for her sister, Ama, in hopes of Ama marrying well and Marie living in the level of freedom afforded only to spinster aunts. But her perfumes are more than sweet scents in cheap, cut-glass bottles: A certain few are laced with death. Marie laces the perfume delicately—not with poison but with a hint of honeysuckle she’s trained her sister to respond to. Marie marks her victim, and Ama attacks. But she doesn’t attack as a girl. She kills as a beast.
Marking Ama’s victims controls the damage to keep suspicion at bay. But when a young boy turns up dead one morning, Marie is forced to acknowledge she might be losing control of Ama. And if she can’t control her, she’ll have to cure her. Marie knows the only place she’ll find the cure is in the mansion where Ama was cursed in the first place, home of Lord Sebastien LeClaire. But once she gets into the mansion, she discovers dark secrets hidden away—secrets of the curse, of Lord Sebastien . . . and of herself.
Review:
Seventeen-year-old Marie makes perfume with her sister to sell at the market everyday, but there’s a secret behind the perfume. Some of it is laced with a scent that marks the wearer as a target for her sister, Ama, when she turns into a beast once a month. Marie limits the people that Ama kills to ones who won’t be missed from the village, so it doesn’t draw attention to her sister. However, when people are killed between the nights when her sister becomes the beast, Marie gets concerned that their secret will be discovered. Marie goes to the place where her sister became cursed: the home of Lord Sebastian LeClaire. While looking after Sebastian’s sickly younger brother, Marie searches for the cure to her sister’s beastly curse.
This story was an original version of the Beauty and the Beast tale. Instead of the Beauty and Beast characters being female and male, the two characters were sisters. This increased the intensity of their relationship right from the beginning, since Marie was trying to save her sister, rather than being in an enemies-to-lovers relationship like in the original tale.
Though there were some intense moments and high stakes in the story, it was a little slow paced. I would have liked to see more danger and tense moments with the “beast.” There was a lot of reflection and details, but I would have loved more dramatic action.
Stalking Shadows is a great original Beauty and the Beast story!
Thank you Amulet Books for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw
The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones
About the author:
Cyla Panin is an MG, YA and Adult Author who prefers to look at the world through a dusting of magic.
After spending most of her childhood wanting to escape into the wonderful worlds her favourite authors created, she’s now using her own words to craft magical places. When not writing, Cyla can be found playing dinosaurs with her two young boys, watching swashbuckling and/or period TV shows with her husband, and, of course, reading.
Her YA debut, STALKING SHADOWS will be out with Amulet, Abrams Fall 2021. She is represented by Chloe Seager of the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV, and Film Agency.
Have you read Stalking Shadows? What did you think of it?
TBR Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly Faye Reads, where you post a title from your shelf or e-reader and find out what others think about it.
My pick this week is All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’Donoghue.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Maeve’s strangely astute tarot readings make her the talk of the school, until a classmate draws a chilling and unfamiliar card—and then disappears.
After Maeve finds a pack of tarot cards while cleaning out a closet during her in-school suspension, she quickly becomes the most sought-after diviner at St. Bernadette’s Catholic school. But when Maeve’s ex–best friend, Lily, draws an unsettling card called The Housekeeper that Maeve has never seen before, the session devolves into a heated argument that ends with Maeve wishing aloud that Lily would disappear. When Lily isn’t at school the next Monday, Maeve learns her ex-friend has vanished without a trace.
Shunned by her classmates and struggling to preserve a fledgling romance with Lily’s gender-fluid sibling, Roe, Maeve must dig deep into her connection with the cards to search for clues the police cannot find—even if they lead to the terrifying Housekeeper herself. Set in an Irish town where the church’s tight hold has loosened and new freedoms are trying to take root, this sharply contemporary story is witty, gripping, and tinged with mysticism.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
Title: Walking in Two Worlds Author: Wab Kinew Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: September 14, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
An Indigenous teen girl is caught between two worlds, both real and virtual, in the YA fantasy debut from bestselling Indigenous author Wab Kinew. Perfect for fans of Ready Player One and the Otherworld series.
Bugz is caught between two worlds. In the real world, she’s a shy and self-conscious Indigenous teen who faces the stresses of teenage angst and life on the Rez. But in the virtual world, her alter ego is not just confident but dominant in a massively multiplayer video game universe. Feng is a teen boy who has been sent from China to live with his aunt, a doctor on the Rez, after his online activity suggests he may be developing extremist sympathies. Meeting each other in real life, as well as in the virtual world, Bugz and Feng immediately relate to each other as outsiders and as avid gamers. And as their connection is strengthened through their virtual adventures, they find that they have much in common in the real world, too: both must decide what to do in the face of temptations and pitfalls, and both must grapple with the impacts of family challenges and community trauma. But betrayal threatens everything Bugz has built in the virtual world, as well as her relationships in the real world, and it will take all her newfound strength to restore her friendship with Feng and reconcile the parallel aspects of her life: the traditional and the mainstream, the east and the west, the real and the virtual.
Review:
Bugz is an Indigenous teen who is caught between two worlds. She’s one of the top players in a virtual world, where she can be the confident girl who commands attention. In the real world, she has to deal with racism and sexism in her community. Feng is a Chinese teenage boy who was sent to live with his aunt in Bugz’s community. He is also part of the virtual world, but he is part of the group against Bugz’s character. Bugz and Feng get to know each other in both the real and virtual world, until a betrayal threatens their new friendship.
This story was set in the future, years after 2021. Bugz’s parents mentioned the pandemic and how it changed their lives as teenagers. A lot of the world became more digital after that, including the virtual world that Bugz played on.
There were some tough subjects in this novel. Bugz and Feng had to deal with racism, in person and online. Bugz faced sexism within her own family and community. There were also instances of self harm and cancer. These were intense scenes but were also integral to telling a realistic story.
Walking in Two Worlds is a great young adult Indigenous story.
Thank you Penguin Random House Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline
Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson
Have you read Walking in Two Worlds? What did you think of it?
This is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine. In this post we highlight a book that’s highly anticipated.
The book that I’m waiting on this Wednesday is The Keeper of the Night by Kylie Lee Baker. The expected publication date is October 12, 2021.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Death is her destiny.
Half British Reaper, half Japanese Shinigami, Ren Scarborough has been collecting souls in the London streets for centuries. Expected to obey the harsh hierarchy of the Reapers who despise her, Ren conceals her emotions and avoids her tormentors as best she can.
When her failure to control her Shinigami abilities drives Ren out of London, she flees to Japan to seek the acceptance she’s never gotten from her fellow Reapers. Accompanied by her younger brother, the only being on earth to care for her, Ren enters the Japanese underworld to serve the Goddess of Death… only to learn that here, too, she must prove herself worthy. Determined to earn respect, Ren accepts an impossible task—find and eliminate three dangerous Yokai demons—and learns how far she’ll go to claim her place at Death’s side.
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