These are stories about getting your butt touched by your boss, about friendship and dieting (kind of), and having two existential crises before the age of 20. Stories about travel, both successful and less so, and about having the kind of sex where you feel like keeping your sneakers on in case you have to run away during the act.
1.5* Read!
Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender. Ava – in all other ways a normal girl – is born with the wings of a bird. In a quest to understand her peculiar disposition, and a growing desire to fit in with her peers, 16 year old Ava ventures into the wider world, ill-prepared for what she might discover and naive to the twisted motives of others. Others like the pious Nathaniel Sorrows, who mistakes Ava for an angel and whose obsession with her grows until the night of the summer solstice celebration. That night, the skies open up, rain and feathers fill the air, and Ava’s quest and her family’s saga build to a devastating crescendo.
3.5* Read!
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, ambitious wizard, known only as the Dragon, to keep the wood’s powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman must be handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as being lost to the wood.
The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows – everyone knows – that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia – all the things Agnieszka isn’t – and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her. But no one can predict how or why the Dragon chooses a girl. And when he comes, it is not Kasia he will take with him.
4* Read!
Four years ago, 19 year old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, changing diapers and worrying about keeping food on the table. But he’s never regretted his decision. Bella is the light of his life. The reason behind every move he makes. And so far, she is fed. Cared for. Safe.
But when Travis loses his construction job and his home, the security he’s worked so hard to create for Bella begins to crumble. Then a miracle. A job in Raleigh has the power to turn their fortunes around. It has to. But when Travis arrives in Raleigh, there is no job, only an offer to participate in a one-time criminal act that promises quick money and no repercussions. With nowhere else to turn, Travis must make another choice for his daughter’s sake. Even if it means he might lose her.
4* Read!
On the internet, we can be anyone we choose. No one knows who we really are. Sheltered and obsessive, Leila spends more time online than out in the real world. So she seems the ideal person to take over the virtual identity of the vivacious and fragile Tess, who wants to disappear. But even with all the facts at her fingertips, there are things that Leila can’t possibly know about Tess – or herself – until it is too late…
3.5* Read!
Alice Love is 29, crazy about her husband, and pregnant with her first child. Imagine Alice’s surprise when she wakes up on the floor of a gym (a gym! She hates the gym!) and is whisked off to the hospital where she discovers the honeymoon is truly over – she’s getting divorced, she has three kids, and she’s actually 39 years old.
Alice must reconstruct the events of a lost decade, and find out whether it’s possible to reconstruct her life at the same time. She has to figure out why her sister hardly talks to her, and how she’s become one of those skinny mums with really expensive clothes. Ultimately, Alice must discover whether forgetting is a blessing or a curse, and whether it’s possible to start over.
3.5* Read!
When Alice finds herself in the rapidly downward spiral of Alzheimer’s Disease she is just 50 years old. A university professor, wife, and mother of three, she still has books to write, places to see, grandchildren to meet. But when she can’t remember how to make her famous Christmas pudding, when she gets lost in her own back yard, when she fails to recognise her actress daughter after a superb performance, she comes up with a plan. But can she see it through? Should she see it through? Losing her yesterdays, living for each day, her short-term memory is hanging on by a couple of frayed threads. But she is still Alice.
4* Read!
It’s the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O’Donovan is 18 years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there’s a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma. The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can’t remember what happened, she doesn’t know how she got there. She doesn’t know why she’s in pain. But everyone else does. Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don’t want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town’s heroes…
4.5* Read!
Feyre’s survival rests upon her ability to hunt and kill – the forest where she lives is a cold, bleak place in the long winter months. So when she spots a deer in the forest being pursued by a wolf, she cannot resist fighting it for the flesh. But to do so, she must kill the predator, and killing something so precious comes at a price.
4.5* Read!
Layken and Will’s love has managed to withstand the toughest of circumstances and the young lovers are beginning to feel safe and secure in their union. As much as Layken relishes their new life together, she finds herself wanting to know everything there is to know about Will, even though he makes it clear he prefers to keep the painful memories of the past where they belong. Still, he can’t resist Lake’s pleas and so he begins to untangle his side of the story, revealing for the first time his most intimate feelings and thoughts, retelling both the good and bad moments, and sharing a few shocking confessions of his own from the time when they first met.
4* Read!
Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, published August 2015 by Penguin Random House. Read: August 2015 Genre: Young Adult/Romance/Contemporary/Issues Source: Publisher #Pages: 320 Get It Now: Wordery Goodreads Synopsis: My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I’m allergic to the world. I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in 17 years. The only people […]
If 17 year old Skylar Evans were a typical Creek View girl, her future would involve a double-wide trailer, a baby on her hip, and the graveyard shift at Taco Bell. But after graduation, the only thing standing between straight-edge Skylar and art school are three minimum-wage months of summer. Skylar can taste the freedom—that is, until her mother loses her job and everything starts coming apart. Torn between her dreams and the people she loves, Skylar realizes everything she’s ever worked for is on the line.
4.5* Read!
A novel about love and forgiveness. 17 year old Lennie Walker spends her time tucked safely and happily in the shadow of her fiery older sister, Bailey. But when Bailey dies abruptly, Lennie is catapulted to centre stage of her own life – and suddenly finds herself struggling to balance two boys. One boy takes Lennie out of her sorrow; the other comforts her in it. But the two can’t collide without Lennie’s world exploding…
3.5* Read!
Layken and Will have managed to overcome the obstacles that threatened to destroy their love, proving that they are destined for one another. What they are about to learn, however, is that the things that have brought them together may be the very things that ruin their connection forever…
Layken is left second-guessing the relationship, whilst Will is jumping over hurdles to prove his love for her. What the young lovers discover about themselves along this journey may change their entire world and the lives of those who depend upon them the most…
4.5* Read!
France, 1939. In the quiet, rural village of Carriveau, Vianne says goodbye to her husband as he heads for the Front. The invading Nazi soldiers have arrived in droves with their trucks and tanks. Planes fill the skies, dropping bombs on the innocent. When a German captain requisitions her home, Vianne is forced to make one impossible sacrifice after another to keep her family alive.
Vianne’s rebellious sister Isabelle is searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. While thousands of Parisians flee the city, Isabelle meets and falls in love with Gaetan, a committed partisan. When war separates them, Isabelle joins the Resistance, risking her life time and again to save others.
5* Read!
When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village book store where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card. There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight – the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way – even if it means murder.
3.5* Read!
Confessions of a Book Geek 