Jill lives in Toronto, Canada. She has studied English, Creative Writing, and Publishing. Jill is the creator and content producer of Jill’s Book Blog, where she has published a blog post every day for the last four years, including 5-7 book reviews a week. She can usually be found with her nose in a book.
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 Poison Priestess (Lady Slayers #2) by Lana Popović. The expected publication date is April 6, 2021.
Goodreads Synopsis:
Book 2 in the Lady Slayers series, about French murderess and fortune teller Catherine Monvoisin
In 17th-century Paris, 19-year-old Catherine Monvoisin is a well-heeled jeweler’s wife with a peculiar taste for the arcane. She lives a comfortable life, far removed from a childhood of abject destitution—until her kind spendthrift of a husband lands them both in debt. Hell-bent on avoiding a return to poverty, Catherine must rely on her prophetic visions and the grimoire gifted to her by a talented diviner to reinvent herself as a sorceress. With the help of the grifter Marie Bosse, Catherine divines fortunes in the IIle de la Citee—home to sorcerers and scoundrels.
There she encounters the Marquise de Montespan, a stunning noblewoman. When the Marquise becomes Louis XIV’s royal mistress with Catherine’s help, her ascension catapults Catherine to notoriety. Catherine takes easily to her glittering new life as the Sorceress La Voisin, pitting the depraved noblesse against one other to her advantage. The stakes soar ever higher when her path crosses with that of a young magician. A charged rivalry between sorceress and magician leads to Black Masses, tangled deceptions, and grisly murder—and sets Catherine on a collision course that threatens her own life.
Title: Love in English Author: Maria E. Andreu Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary Publisher: Balzer + Bray Source: Publisher Format: Paperback arc Release Date: February 2, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Sixteen-year-old Ana has just moved to New Jersey from Argentina for her Junior year of high school. She’s a poet and a lover of language—except that now, she can barely understand what’s going on around her, let alone find the words to express how she feels in the language she’s expected to speak.
All Ana wants to do is go home—until she meets Harrison, the very cute, very American boy in her math class. And then there’s her new friend Neo, the Greek boy she’s partnered up with in ESL class, who she bonds with over the 80s teen movies they are assigned to watch for class (but later keep watching together for fun), and Altagracia, her artistic and Instagram-fabulous friend, who thankfully is fluent in Spanish and able to help her settle into American high school.
But is it possible that she’s becoming too American—as her father accuses—and what does it mean when her feelings for Harrison and Neo start to change? Ana will spend her year learning that the rules of English may be confounding, but there are no rules when it comes to love.
With playful and poetic breakouts exploring the idiosyncrasies of the English language, Love in English tells a story that is simultaneously charming and romantic, while articulating a deeper story about what it means to become “American.”
Review:
Sixteen-year-old Ana moved to New Jersey from Argentina. She likes to write poetry, but now she’s somewhere that she doesn’t speak the language. She meets Harrison, a cute American boy, who needs her help with math. Then, she meets Neo, a cute Greek boy, in her ESL class. Harrison is the ideal boyfriend she imagined having in America, but she has a lot in common with Neo, as they both help each other with English. Ana has to navigate this new world with a new language, while also dealing with the usual issues of growing up.
English is the only language I speak, so I’ve never had the experience that Ana had. However, everyone at some point in their lives has felt left out of a group, whether at a new school or a new workplace. When I was a child, most of my friends spoke English as a second language. I was reminded of them while reading this book. After reading this story, I feel like I have a better understanding of how they felt coming to a new country and learning English.
This story gave an interesting view of the English language. There are so many strange things in the language that really don’t make sense. Some sayings, such as “have your cake and eat it too,” were mentioned a lot because Ana thought it was so strange. She also pointed out how the words dough, rough, and bough look so similar but have completely different pronunciations. I don’t usually examine these parts of English, since it’s the only language I know. It was fun to see all these unusual parts of language pointed out in this story.
This was a fun and beautiful story!
Thank you HarperCollins Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
Hot British Boyfriend by Kristy Boyce
A Taste for Love by Jennifer Yen
Have you read Love in English? What did you think of it?
Title: Her Dark Lies Author: J.T. Ellison Genre: Thriller Publisher: Mira Books Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: March 9, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
At the wedding of the year, a killer needs no invitation
Jutting from sparkling turquoise waters off the Italian coast, Isle Isola is an idyllic setting for a wedding. In the majestic cliff-top villa owned by the wealthy Compton family, up-and-coming artist Claire Hunter will marry handsome, charming Jack Compton, surrounded by close family, intimate friends…and a host of dark secrets.
From the moment Claire sets foot on the island, something seems amiss. Skeletal remains have just been found. There are other, newer disturbances, too. Menacing texts. A ruined wedding dress. And one troubling shadow hanging over Claire’s otherwise blissful relationship—the strange mystery surrounding Jack’s first wife.
Then a raging storm descends, the power goes out—and the real terror begins…
Review:
Claire Hunter is an up-and-coming artist who is marrying into the famous Compton family. Jack Compton is taking Claire to his family’s villa on an island in Italy to have the wedding of the year. On the night before they leave, they come home to find an intruder in their house. Claire gets the gun away from the intruder and shoots him dead. Jack’s bodyguard takes the fall for it. Then, when they arrive at the villa, a body has just been found in ruins on the island. This is just the beginning of the ominous disasters that happen at the villa. Everything that happens has one thing in common: it all leads back to the death of Jack’s first wife.
This was a heart pounding thriller from the beginning to the end. It was so hard to put this book down because I wanted to know what was going to happen. Each incident escalated the drama and made me excited to keep reading.
I figured out what was behind the incidents pretty early on in the story, but I couldn’t figure out how or why they were happening. There were still some unexpected twists at the end that surprised me. Even though I was pretty sure I was right, I had to keep reading to find out how it all happened.
This was such a great thriller!
Thank you HarperCollins for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
Good Girls Lie by J.T. Ellison
About the author:
J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 25 novels, and the EMMY® award winning co-host of the literary TV show A WORD ON WORDS. With millions of books in print, her work has won critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and has been published in 28 countries. Ellison lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens.
Have you read Her Dark Lies? What did you think of it?
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 Her Dark Lies by J.T. Ellison.
What I’m currently reading:
I’m currently reading Love in English by Maria E. Andreu.
What I’m reading next:
Next I will be reading The Dating Plan by Sara Desai.
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 Her Dark Lies by J.T. Ellison.
Goodreads Synopsis:
At the wedding of the year, a killer needs no invitation
Jutting from sparkling turquoise waters off the Italian coast, Isle Isola is an idyllic setting for a wedding. In the majestic cliff-top villa owned by the wealthy Compton family, up-and-coming artist Claire Hunter will marry handsome, charming Jack Compton, surrounded by close family, intimate friends…and a host of dark secrets.
From the moment Claire sets foot on the island, something seems amiss. Skeletal remains have just been found. There are other, newer disturbances, too. Menacing texts. A ruined wedding dress. And one troubling shadow hanging over Claire’s otherwise blissful relationship—the strange mystery surrounding Jack’s first wife.
Then a raging storm descends, the power goes out—and the real terror begins…
Title: City of the Plague God Author: Sarwat Chadda Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy Publisher: Rick Riordan Presents Source: Publisher via NetGalley Format: Ebook Release Date: January 12, 2021 Rating: ★★★★★
Goodreads Synopsis:
Best-selling author Rick Riordan presents CITY OF THE PLAGUE GOD, an adventure based on ancient Mesopotamian mythology written by Sarwat Chadda, author of the Ash Mistry series. Characters from the Epic of Gilgamesh populate this high-stakes contemporary adventure in which all of Manhattan is threatened by the ancient god of plagues.
Thirteen-year-old Sik wants a simple life going to school and helping at his parents’ deli in the evenings. But all that is blown to smithereens when Nergal comes looking for him, thinking that Sik holds the secret to eternal life.Turns out Sik is immortal but doesn’t know it, and that’s about to get him and the entire city into deep, deep trouble.
Sik’s not in this alone. He’s got Belet, the adopted daughter of Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, on his side, and a former hero named Gilgamesh, who has taken up gardening in Central Park. Now all they have to do is retrieve the Flower of Immortality to save Manhattan from being wiped out by disease. To succeed, they’ll have to conquer sly demons, treacherous gods, and their own darkest nightmares.
Review:
Thirteen-year-old Sik helps out with his parents’ deli in Manhattan. One night, he’s attacked by demons who were working with the plague god Nergal. Their deli is destroyed and his parents are left in the hospital with a mysterious virus. Sik is rescued by his new friend Belet who lives with a god of her own. Nargal insists that Sik is hiding an item that Sik’s brother sent back from Iraq just before he died. Sik and Belet have to find this item, with the help of the hero Gilgamesh, to save their city and Sik’s parents.
I have never read Mesopotamian mythology before, or even the epic story of Gilgamesh, so this was all new to me. I loved learning about the different gods and their stories. The story was set in the familiar city of New York, so I could picture everything that happened, even though the characters were all new.
This story addressed racism and Islamophobia. Sik’s friend Daoud was an actor, but he had accepted the fact that he was always going to be cast as the villain or a terrorist. He wouldn’t be the hero. Luckily in this story, Sik is a Muslim hero. This racism was disturbing because it’s so outrageous and doesn’t make any sense. I’m glad that books like this can be published, because I love reading about different cultures. My favourite books are the ones that teach me things, and I feel like I learned a lot from this one.
This is a great story in the Rick Riordan Presents collection!
Thank you Rick Riordan Presents for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
What to read next:
Tristan Strong Punches a Hold in the Sky by Kwame Mbalia
Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi
Have you read City of the Plague God? What did you think of it?
