Current TBR shelf: 3912
Last week's TBR shelf: 3920
January wasn't my best start to the year, I had a bit of a slumpy start at the beginning of the month but overall I'm happy with what I read. I've lessened the amount of books on my TBR this month by a significant amount as having too many books on there makes me feel super unaccomplished if I don't manage to get to them all. I'm taking part in a readathon this month and that's my main focus as well as getting to some of my old Netgalley ARC's as well.
I'm taking part in the next round of Pixarthon which is focusing on Toy Story and is aptly named Woody's Roundup Readathon hosted by @literarylily1. I'm joining #TeamAlsToyBarn for this and I love how much work has gone into creating this readathon, from creating the teams to how you participate. Each team has to collect a certain group of toys (each toy has a different prompt) and you can also steal toys from other teams by reading a book from someone's elses TBR. It's a lot clearer in the PDF so I'll just link that here!
Team Book • Strange the Dreamer by Lainie Taylor
This might be my last Owlcrate unboxing for a while as I decided to skip my renewals for January and February as the books just didn't interest me enough to justify the cost. We shall see what March's theme is and then I'll make a final decision about whether to cancel it completely or not. Anyway, this is super late going up as it took almost two months for the box to get to me because of the whole UK borders closing debacle. It eventually arrived and even though most people will have already seen what's in it, I still wanted to get my post up.
December's theme was Love Is A Battlefield and the book included this month was super highly anticipated by just about everybody. I've been so excited for this box so let's dive in to what we got...
I'm always hoping that the next book I read is going to be a five star/a new favourite because as readers we always want to enjoy every single book to the max. Saying that, I'm a fickle being and therefore I very rarely give out five stars because there's nearly always something holding me back. Out of the 78 books that I read in 2020, around 15 of them I gave 5 stars and I really want to read as many as I can in 2021. I've put together a list of ten books that I think could become new favourites and that I've been wanting to read for so long, I have no idea if I'll even get to them all this year but we'll give it a shot!
Current TBR shelf: 3920
Last week's TBR shelf: 3926
Current TBR shelf: 3926
Last week's TBR shelf: 3933
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature that highlights ten books that all relate to a certain topic and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
This meme was created by E. @ Local Bee Hunter's Nook and you can find the announcement post here. Also, side note, these aren't necessarily books that I own physically but they're all on my Goodreads TBR and they'll mostly be the five most recently added.
Current TBR shelf: 3933
Last week's TBR shelf: 3931
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature that highlights ten books that all relate to a certain topic and is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.
The forest is a dangerous place, where siren song lures men and women to their deaths. For centuries, a witch has harvested souls to feed the heartless tree, using its power to grow her domain.
When Owen Merrick is lured into the witch’s wood, one of her tree-siren daughters, Seren, saves his life instead of ending it. Every night, he climbs over the garden wall to see her, and every night her longing to become human deepens. But a shift in the stars foretells a dangerous curse, and Seren’s quest to become human will lead them into an ancient war raging between the witch and the king who is trying to stop her.
Give me all the witchy, fairytale-esque books right now! I am so drawn to this book just from the cover and the synopsis and I really, really want to get my hands on a copy as soon as possible.
Release Date: January 19th 2021
Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.
America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.
Lo Denham is used to being on her own. After her parents died, Lo's sister, Bea, joined The Unity Project, leaving Lo in the care of their great aunt. Thanks to its extensive charitable work and community outreach, The Unity Project has won the hearts and minds of most in the Upstate New York region, but Lo knows there's more to the group than meets the eye. She's spent the last six years of her life trying—and failing—to prove it.
When a man shows up at the magazine Lo works for claiming The Unity Project killed his son, Lo sees the perfect opportunity to expose the group and reunite with Bea once and for all. When her investigation puts her in the direct path of its leader, Lev Warren and as Lo delves deeper into The Project, the lives of its members it upends everything she thought she knew about her sister, herself, cults, and the world around her—to the point she can no longer tell what's real or true. Lo never thought she could afford to believe in Lev Warren . . . but now she doesn't know if she can afford not to.
I absolutely adored Sadie by Courtney Summers and therefore I now want to read everything that she's ever written. Cults and a fractures sister relationship, sign me up.
Tanya has worked at her tavern since she was able to see over the bar. She broke up her first fight at 11. By the time she was a teenager she knew everything about the place, and she could run it with her eyes closed. She’d never let anyone—whether it be a drunkard or a captain of the queen’s guard—take advantage of her. But when her guardian dies, she might lose it all: the bar, her home, her purpose in life. So she heads out on a quest to petition the queen to keep the tavern in her name—dodging unscrupulous guards, a band of thieves, and a powerful, enchanted feather that seems drawn to her. Fast-paced, magical, and unapologetically feminist, Wench is epic fantasy like you’ve never seen it before.
Eleanor has not seen or spoken with her family in years, not since they sent her away to Saint Brigid's boarding school. She knows them only as vague memories: her grandfather's tremendous fanged snout, the barrel full of water her mother always soaked in, and strange hunting trips in a dark wood with her sister and cousins. And she remembers the way they looked at her, like she was the freak.
When Eleanor finally finds the courage to confront her family and return to their ancestral home on the rainy coast of Maine, she finds them already gathered in wait, seemingly ready to welcome her back with open arms. "I read this in the cards," her grandmother tells her. However, Grandma Persephone doesn't see all, for just as Eleanor is beginning to readjust to the life she always longed for, a strange and sudden death rocks the family, leaving Eleanor to manage this difficult new dynamic without help.
In order to keep the family that abandoned her from falling apart, Eleanor calls upon her mysterious other grandmother, Grandmere, from across the sea. Grandmere brings order to the chaotic household, but that order soon turns to tyranny. If any of them are to survive, Eleanor must embrace her strange family and join forces with the ghost of Grandma Persephone to confront the monstrousness lurking deep within her Grandmere-and herself.
I'm so excited for this one, I mean it's described as Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children meets the Addams Family! I shall be saving this one for Halloween time I think.
Release Date: February 16th 2021
Eighteen-year-old Amelia Griffin is obsessed with the famous Orman Chronicles, written by the young and reclusive prodigy N. E. Endsley. They’re the books that brought her and her best friend Jenna together after Amelia’s father left and her family imploded. So when Amelia and Jenna get the opportunity to attend a book festival with Endsley in attendance, Amelia is ecstatic. It’s the perfect way to start off their last summer before college.
In a heartbeat, everything goes horribly wrong. When Jenna gets a chance to meet the author and Amelia doesn’t, the two have a blowout fight like they’ve never experienced. And before Amelia has a chance to mend things, Jenna is killed in a freak car accident. Grief-stricken, and without her best friend to guide her, Amelia questions everything she had planned for the future.
When a mysterious, rare edition of the Orman Chronicles arrives, Amelia is convinced that it somehow came from Jenna. Tracking the book to an obscure but enchanting bookstore in Michigan, Amelia is shocked to find herself face-to-face with the enigmatic and handsome N. E. Endsley himself, the reason for Amelia’s and Jenna’s fight and perhaps the clue to what Jenna wanted to tell her all along.
This novel has been getting incredible reviews from those who've read it early and they've describes it as a book that will rip your heart out and therefore I must read it!
Release Date: March 16th 2021
Graciela Cristales' whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gift for making enchanted pan dulce. Neighborhood trees vanish overnight, while mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. And Ciela is haunted by what happened to her, and what happened to the boy whose name she never learned.
But when the boy, Lock, shows up at Ciela's school, he has no memory of that night, and no clue that a single piece of mirrored glass is taking his life apart. Ciela decides to help him, which means hiding the truth about that night. Because Ciela knows who assaulted her, and him. And she knows that her survival, and his, depend on no one finding out what really happened.
I've never even read anything from Anna-Marie McLemore before but I already have a feeling that I'm going to love her books. I always really enjoy magical realism in fiction and I'm hoping they become a new favourite author.
Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.
Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.
As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.
The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.
In the next few hours, one of three things will happen.
1--We'll be rescued (unlikely)
2--We'll freeze to death (maybe)
3--We'll be eaten by thin and athletic zombies (odds: excellent)
Vivian Ellenshaw is fat, but she knows she doesn't need to lose weight, so she's none too happy to find herself forced into a weight-loss camp's van with her ex-best friend, Allie, a meathead jock who can barely drive, and the camp owner's snobby son. And when they arrive at Camp Featherlite at the start of the worst blizzard in the history of Flagstaff, Arizona, it's clear that something isn't right.
Vee barely has a chance to meet the other members of her pod, all who seem as unhappy to be at Featherlite as she does, when a camper goes missing down by the lake. Then she spots something horrifying outside in the snow. Something...that isn't human. Plus, the camp's supposed "miracle cure" for obesity just seems fishy, and Vee and her fellow campers know they don't need to be cured. Of anything.
Even worse, it's not long before Camp Featherlite's luxurious bungalows are totally overrun with zombies. What starts out as a mission to unravel the camp's secrets turns into a desperate fight for survival--and not all of the Featherlite campers will make it out alive.
That cover is glorious! I'm not usually a big fan of zombies but I can totally get behind this book because it sounds hilarious and super fun.
In Thanopolis, those gifted with magic are assigned undead spirits to guard them—and control them. Ever since Rovan’s father died trying to keep her from this fate, she’s hidden her magic. But when she accidentally reveals her powers, she’s bound to a spirit and thrust into a world of palace intrigue and deception.
Desperate to escape, Rovan finds herself falling for two people she can’t fully trust: Lydea, a beguiling, rebellious princess; and Ivrilos, the handsome spirit with the ability to control Rovan, body and soul.
Together, they uncover a secret that will destroy Thanopolis. To save them all, Rovan will have to start a rebellion in both the mortal world and the underworld, and find a way to trust the princess and spirit battling for her heart—if she doesn’t betray them first.
This is the only kind of pure fantasy that I have on this list and that is because it's about a pansexual bloodmage! I am excited and you should be too!
I completely failed my December TBR. I managed to read 6 books last month and only five of those were actually on my fixed TBR, as one of them I started in November and then finished at the beginning of the month. I really don't know what happened. I was doing fine for the first two weeks and then bam, reading slump just hit me out of nowhere. I'm really sad that I didn't get to most of the books that I wanted to. Time really got away from me and I've been so busy and distracted by Christmas and so I haven't finished a book in nearly two weeks. I'm really hoping that I can start 2021 off well and get some serious reading done.
Current TBR shelf: 3931
Last week's TBR shelf: 3937
Happy New Year! I can't believe we're in a new year already. 2020 felt like it went so slow but sped by at the same time. Here's hoping to a better and brighter 2021!
So, I thought my reading in November was bad but it was nothing compared to the trainwreck that was December. I don't know if I was just so burned out from the rest of the year but I haven't finished a book in nearly two weeks and I'm writing this on the last day of December! Everything that I was picking up I just wasn't into and then I just didn't pick up anything for days and days. I only managed to read 6 books and one of those was a novella! Fingers crossed that I can kick off 2021 with a good reading month.
Saying that, considering I didn't manage to read that much last month, I've put 13 books on my January TBR because apparently I hate myself and want myself to suffer from a nervous breakdown! I planned out my TBR at the beginning of December when my reading was actually going well so that's why there's so much on there!
I'm really excited about a lot of these books, particularly Legendborn by Tracy Deonn and The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. The Girl in the Tower was on my TBR last month but I just couldn't get out of my reading slump so I'm going to give it another try this month. I haven't got a non-fiction book this month but I will be reading The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick for my classic pick.
