This meme is hosted by Steph at A little but a lot. The weekly prompts for 2019 can be found here.
This week’s prompt is 2021 Books On My TBR. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
Did you make a Six for Sunday list?
Title: The Temple House Vanishing
Author: Rachel Donohue
Genre: Thriller
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Source: Thomas Allen and Son (book distributor)
Format: Paperback arc
Release Date: July 6, 2021
Rating: ★★★★
An Irish Bestseller and finalist for the Irish Book Awards Newcomer of the Year
Louisa is the new scholarship student at Temple House, a drafty, imposing cliffside boarding school full of girls as chilly as the mansion itself. There is one other outsider, an intense and compelling student provocateur named Victoria, and the two girls form a fierce bond. But their friendship is soon unsettled by a young art teacher, Mr. Lavelle, whose charismatic presence ignites tension and obsession in the cloistered world of the school.
Then one day, Louisa and Mr. Lavelle vanish without a trace, never to be found. Now, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the disappearance, one journalist—a woman who grew up on the same street as Louisa—delves into the past, determined to uncover the truth. She finds stories of jealousy and revenge, power and class. But might she find Louisa and Mr. Lavelle, too?
Told in alternating points of view, The Temple House Vanishing is tense, atmospheric, and page-turning . . . with a shocking, ingenious conclusion.
Louisa was a scholarship student at Temple House, a Catholic boarding school on the edge of a cliff. She became friends with Victoria, an intriguing girl who had a close relationship with their art teacher Mr. Lavelle. One day, Louisa and Mr. Lavelle vanished without a trace. The school soon closed and the case was never solved. Now, 25 years after they disappeared, a journalist begins her own investigation into what really happened to Louisa and Mr. Lavelle.
This was a slow burn thriller. It was told through alternating perspectives, from the journalist in the present and Louisa in the past. This provided an outsider view of the investigation and Louisa’s firsthand account of what happened in the months leading up to her death. Though it wasn’t fast paced, it was an unpredictable story in this format.
The writing was very descriptive. The settings were all described in detail, so I felt like I was right there with the characters. Boarding schools are one of my favourite settings in books. Temple House was the perfect, spooky setting for this story.
The Temple House Vanishing is an evocative thriller.
Thank you Thomas Allen and Son for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read The Temple House Vanishing? What did you think of it?
Title: The Gentleman and the Thief (The Dread Penny Society #2)
Author: Sarah M. Eden
Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Mystery
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: November 3, 2020
Rating: ★★★★★
A gentleman scribes penny dreadful novels by night and falls in love with a woman who is a music teacher by day—and a thief at night.
LONDON 1865
From the moment Hollis Darby meets Ana Newport, he’s smitten. Even though he’s from a wealthy, established family and she isn’t, he wishes he could have a life with her by his side. But Hollis has a secret: the deep coffers that have kept his family afloat for generations are bare, so he supports himself by writing penny dreadfuls under a pseudonym. If not for the income from his novels, he would be broke.
Ana Newport also has a secret. Though she once had a place in society thanks to her father’s successful business, bankruptcy and scandal reduced his fortune to nothing more than a crumbling town house. So Ana teaches music during the day, and at night she assumes the identity of the “Phantom Fox.” She breaks into the homes of the wealthy to reclaim trinkets and treasures she feels were unjustly stolen from her family when they were struggling.
When Hollis’s brother needs to hire a music tutor for his daughter, Hollis recommends Ana, giving him a chance to spend time with her. Ana needs the income and is eager for the opportunity to get to know the enigmatic gentleman. What neither of them expects is how difficult it will be to keep their respective secrets from each other.
When a spree of robberies rocks the city, Ana and Hollis join forces to solve the crimes, discovering that working together deepens the affection between them. After all, who better to save the day than a gentleman and a thief?
Hollis Darby is a gentleman with the secret job of writing penny dreadful books under a pseudonym. He comes from a wealthy family, who no longer has any money, so he must support himself with his books. Hollis was attracted to Ana Newport, a music teacher, as soon as they met. Ana is also from a wealthy family, but they lost their money and belongings when her father went bankrupt. Ana has a secret: she steals back the belongings that the elite families took from her family when they were struggling. These small robberies begin to draw attention in the city, earning the thief the name, “Phantom Fox.” Hollis and his friends at the Dread Penny Society investigate the robberies, though he isn’t prepared for what he discovers.
Hollis and Ana appear to be in different levels of society but they have similar backgrounds. Ana is working class and Hollis is upper class. However, both of their parents made mistakes that lost their family money. The difference is that Hollis kept up the appearance of wealth, whereas Ana had to work to survive.
This story also includes short penny dreadful stories, told in chapters throughout the book. These are stories that are written by characters under their pseudonyms. I love that these stories also relate to the plot and what is happening in the main narrative. These short stories are a great addition to this Victorian novel.
The Gentleman and the Thief is a fun historical romance!
Thank you Shadow Mountain for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read The Gentleman and the Thief? What did you think of it?
Title: When Elephants Listen With Their Feet
Author: Emmanuelle Grundmann, Clémence Dupont
Genre: Picture Book, Nonfiction
Publisher: Pajama Press
Source: Publisher
Format: Hardcover
Release Date: March 16, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★
Explore the wild and wonderful world of animal senses! Featuring engaging text from ethologist Emmanuelle Grundmann, inviting art from illustrator Clemence Dupont, When Elephants Listen with Their Feet is a lively nonfiction book that encourages curiosity about – and respect for – the animals with which we share our planet.
Humans experience the world through sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. But what if you had the compound eyes of a fly, the whiskers of a cat, or a whale’s ability to sense magnetic north? There’s a whole world of surprising senses out there, and fascinating adaptations that have allowed animals to make use of them. We can’t interpret the faint vibration of an elephant’s faraway stomp, but learning how they keep in touch with family across the wide savannah helps us understand that we are more alike than different.
This picture book is about the amazing things that animals can do with their bodies. It goes through all five senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell) and the unique ways that animals use the senses to interact with the world around them.
There are some animals, such as the golden mole, who don’t have eyes, but are able to “see” the world around them with scent. Elephants can communicate with stomping their feet and sending vibrations through the ground across long distances. Felines use their whiskers to sense the environment around them in the dark. Foxes use the earth’s magnets to hunt, always facing north-east to jump on their prey.
I didn’t know most of these fun animal facts before reading this book, so I found it fascinating. I think adults and children will enjoy this beautiful picture book!
Thank you Pajama Press for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read When Elephants Listen With Their Feet? 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 This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron.
Darkness blooms in bestselling author Kalynn Bayron’s new contemporary fantasy about a girl with a unique and deadly power.
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.
When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined–it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri’s unique family lineage.
When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri’s sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.
From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
Title: Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms
Author: Crystal Frasier, Val Wise (illustrator)
Genre: Young Adult, Graphic Novel, Romance, LGBTQ
Publisher: Oni Press
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: August 10, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★
A sweet, queer teen romance perfect for fans of Fence and Check, Please!
Annie is a smart, antisocial lesbian starting her senior year of high school who’s under pressure to join the cheerleader squad to make friends and round out her college applications. Her former friend BeeBee is a people-pleaser—a trans girl who must keep her parents happy with her grades and social life to keep their support of her transition. Through the rigors of squad training and amped up social pressures (not to mention micro aggressions and other queer youth problems), the two girls rekindle a friendship they thought they’d lost and discover there may be other, sweeter feelings springing up between them.
Annie is an antisocial lesbian senior who has to join a team to look good on her college applications. She decides to try out for the cheer squad, where her former best friend, and trans girl, Bebe is the captain. Bebe has to keep her grades up and do well in activities so her parents continue to support her transition. Both Annie and Bebe have to deal with social pressures to follow the path society thinks they should be on.
I joined the cheerleading team at my school in my final year, like Annie did. This story explained the positions of the sport, so it gives a good overview of what it involves. This team appeared to be supportive of Bebe’s transition because they always put her in the spotlight. However, Bebe didn’t want to be in the spotlight, so they ended up putting a lot of pressure on her and making her stand out in ways that made her uncomfortable. Bebe had to figure out how to share her feelings so she was treated fairly on the team.
Bebe’s identity as a trans girl was an important part of the story. Some people in her life, such as her parents, thought they were protecting her by treating her differently. Her parents gave her strict rules to follow because they thought she would be targeted for being trans. There was also a boy at school who would harass her because he thought she wanted male attention. The most important thing is to treat everyone in ways that make them comfortable. If you don’t know what would make them most comfortable, like Annie wasn’t sure about how Bebe wanted to be treated, the best thing to do is to ask them.
Cheer Up is a fun queer cheerleader graphic novel!
Thank you Oni Press for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Cheer Up: Love and Pompoms? 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 Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain. The expected publication date is August 31, 2021.
A teen girl disappears from her small town deep in the bayou, where magic festers beneath the surface of the swamp like water rot, in this chilling debut supernatural thriller for fans of Natasha Preston, Karen McManus, and Rory Power.
La Cachette, Louisiana, is the worst place to be if you have something to hide.
This tiny town, where seventeen-year-old Grey spends her summers, is the self-proclaimed Psychic Capital of the World–and the place where Elora Pellerin, Grey’s best friend, disappeared six months earlier.
Grey can’t believe that Elora vanished into thin air any more than she can believe that nobody in a town full of psychics knows what happened. But as she digs into the night that Elora went missing, she begins to realize that everybody in town is hiding something – her grandmother Honey; her childhood crush Hart; and even her late mother, whose secrets continue to call to Grey from beyond the grave.
When a mysterious stranger emerges from the bayou – a stormy-eyed boy with links to Elora and the town’s bloody history – Grey realizes that La Cachette’s past is far more present and dangerous than she’d ever understood. Suddenly, she doesn’t know who she can trust. In a town where secrets lurk just below the surface, and where a murderer is on the loose, nobody can be presumed innocent–and La Cachette’s dark and shallow lies may just rip the town apart.
What books are you waiting on this week?
Title: Some Girls Do
Author: Jennifer Dugan
Genre: Young Adult, LGBTQ, Romance, Contemporary
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Books for Young Readers
Source: Publisher via NetGalley
Format: Ebook
Release Date: May 18, 2021
Rating: ★★★★★
In this YA contemporary queer romance from the author of Hot Dog Girl , an openly gay track star falls for a closeted, bisexual teen beauty queen with a penchant for fixing up old cars.
Morgan, an elite track athlete, is forced to transfer high schools late in her senior year after it turns out being queer is against her private Catholic school’s code of conduct. There, she meets Ruby, who has two hobbies: tinkering with her baby blue 1970 Ford Torino and competing in local beauty pageants, the latter to live out the dreams of her overbearing mother. The two are drawn to each other and can’t deny their growing feelings. But while Morgan–out and proud, and determined to have a fresh start–doesn’t want to have to keep their budding relationship a secret, Ruby isn’t ready to come out yet. With each girl on a different path toward living her truth, can they go the distance together?
Morgan is a track star who had to transfer from her Catholic private school to a public high school after coming out as gay. Being queer was against her school’s code of conduct, so Morgan chose to leave the school so she could be herself. On her first day at the new school, Morgan meets Ruby, a beauty pageant competitor who likes to tinker with cars. Morgan and Ruby are instantly attracted to each other, but Ruby isn’t out of the closet, so she keeps her mysterious feelings for Morgan a secret. As Morgan becomes more comfortable with her queer identity, Ruby gets more scared to show her true self. Both girls have to decide how much they’re willing to risk for their relationship.
This was such a sweet romance. Though Morgan and Ruby had lots of differences, I was rooting for them to be together. They made up for each other’s weaknesses, so they made a really good couple.
This story dealt with some serious issues, such as homophobia, particularly in schools. Some characters mentioned hiding their queer identity until they were finished high school, so they didn’t draw attention to themselves. That’s so heartbreaking, to think that some kids don’t feel comfortable enough in their own school. This was a huge problem at Morgan’s previous school, where she was harassed for being queer to the point where she had to leave the school and jeopardize her future as a track star. Schools need to be a safe place for all students, regardless of their identities.
Some Girls Do is a beautiful queer YA romance!
Thank you Penguin Teen for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Have you read Some Girls Do? What did you think of it?
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish and it is now hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is Covers That Made Me Want to Read the Book. Here’s my list:
(All book covers from Goodreads)
What’s your list of books on your Top Ten Tuesday?
Happy Pub Day to all of these new books!
What books are you most excited for this week?
Jill's Book Blog 