Hello Readers! Who else has been too distracted to read lately? 🙋‍♀️ I’ve been doing more watching than reading. I can recommend Mare of Easttown with Kate Winslet on HBO Max, if you’re a fan of crime dramas. I’ve also been rewatching Lost, one of my all-time favorite shows, while listening to a podcast called The Hatch where they discuss each episode, and I’m obsessed all over again. Ha! I’m super excited to get back into The Handmaid’s Tale, as well. BUT we’re here to talk about books!

In May, I’m hoping to at least double my reading from April—which was four books. While I slacked off a bit, I’m (currently) still ahead on my ARCs (advanced reader copies) and I’d really love to keep it that way. 😉 Two of my most anticipated books are also publishing this month! Let’s see what I have planned…

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

This is my current read and I’m about 20% in. I’m enjoying it so far, and I’m excited to watch the Netflix adaptation once I finish it.

Synopsis:

Moxie girls fight back!

Vivian Carter is fed up. Fed up with her small-town Texas high school that thinks the football team can do no wrong. Fed up with sexist dress codes and hallway harassment. But most of all, Viv Carter is fed up with always following the rules.

Viv’s mom was a punk rock Riot Grrrl in the ’90s, so now Viv takes a page from her mother’s past and creates a feminist zine that she distributes anonymously to her classmates. She’s just blowing off steam, but other girls respond. Pretty soon Viv is forging friendships with other young women across the divides of cliques and popularity rankings, and she realizes that what she has started is nothing short of a girl revolution.

Goodreads

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A Summer to Remember by Erika Montgomery

I was invited to read this novel a few months ago, but I didn’t immediately accept. After seeing some recent glowing early reviews, I decided to add it to my stack! It does combine some of my favorite things: books, romance, and movies.

Synopsis:

For thirty-year-old Frankie Simon, selling movie memorabilia in the shop she opened with her late mother on Hollywood Boulevard is more than just her livelihood–it’s an enduring connection to the only family she has ever known. But when a mysterious package arrives containing a photograph of her mother and famous movie stars Glory Cartwright and her husband at a coastal film festival the year before Frankie’s birth, her life begins to unravel in ways unimaginable.

What begins is a journey along a path revealing buried family secrets, betrayals between lovers, bonds between friends. And for Frankie, as the past unlocks the present, the chance to learn that memories define who we are, and that they can show us the meaning of home and the magic of true love.

Experience the salty breeze of a Cape Cod summer as it sweeps through this sparkling, romantic, and timeless debut novel tinged with a love of old Hollywood.

“The perfect read for summer. A novel with depth, real emotions, lyrical writing, and flawed characters with whom to fall in love.”–New York Times bestselling author Karen White

5/11/21
Goodreads

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People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry

One of my most anticipated reads of 2021 is Emily Henry’s next novel. Her previous book Beach Read was my favorite read of 2020, and I may use the opportunity to pick this one up as my first venture back to a physical bookstore in over a year. 🙂

Synopsis:

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love. 

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Beach Read, a sparkling new novel that will leave you with the warm, hazy afterglow usually reserved for the best vacations.

5/11/21
Goodreads

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Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

Another one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 is the second installment in the Dreamer Trilogy. I would LOVE to find the time to reread Call Down the Hawk before I pick this one up, but I highly doubt that will happen. However, since I’ve preordered this one, it may not even show up until June.

Synopsis:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Raven Boys, a mesmerizing story of dreams and desires, death and destiny.

The stakes have never been higher as it seems like either the end of the world or the end of dreamers approaches.

Do the dreamers need the ley lines to save the world . . . or will their actions end up dooming the world? As Ronan, Hennessy, and Bryde try to make dreamers more powerful, the Moderators are closing in, sure that this power will bring about disaster. In the remarkable second book of The Dreamer Trilogy, Maggie Stiefvater pushes her characters to their limits – and shows what happens to them and others when they start to break.

5/18/11
Goodreads

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Version Zero by David Yoon

I’ve read and enjoyed Yoon’s previous two YA novels Frankly in Love and Super Fake Love Song, so I’m happy to give his adult debut a try!

Synopsis:

A lightning fast and scorchingly observant novel of the moment, Version Zero is a thrilling, humorous adult debut from the brilliant mind of New York Times bestselling author David Yoon.

Reboot the present. Save the future.

Max, a data whiz at the Facebook-like social media company Wren, has gotten a firsthand glimpse of the dark side of big tech. When he starts asking questions about what his company is doing with the data they collect, he finds himself fired…and then blackballed across all of Silicon Valley.

With time on his hands and inside knowledge about the biggest tech companies, Max and his longtime friend—and sometime crush—Akiko, decide to get even by…essentially, rebooting the internet. After all, in order to fix things, sometimes you have to break them. But when Max and Akiko join forces with a reclusive tech baron, they learn that breaking things can have unintended—and disastrous—consequences. And those consequences will ripple across the world, effecting every level of society in ways no one could have imagined.

5/25/21
Goodreads

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The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

I’ve seen several reviews stating the synopsis doesn’t really match the book for this one, but that has only piqued my interest even more. I’m mostly intrigued by the Get Out comparison, though. 🙂

Synopsis:

Get Out meets The Stepford Wives in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.

Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.

Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.

It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.

A whip-smart and dynamic thriller and sly social commentary that is perfect for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace, The Other Black Girlwill keep you on the edge of your seat until the very last twist.

6/1/21
Goodreads

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Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’ve been anxiously waiting to get to the next release by Reid! I’m surprised I didn’t read it sooner, but I really wanted to read it as close to summer as I could. 😉

Synopsis:

Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over–especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.

The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud–because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.

Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.

And Kit has a couple secrets of her own–including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.

By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.

Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.

6/1/21
Goodreads

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The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

A dark academia that I was invited to read from Celadon Books. I also saw that the publishers did a book drop where they had about 800 ARCs placed in Little Free Libraries across the US and Canada, so maybe check the ones near you if you would like to read this one! Originally it had a publishing date of June 1st, but while working on my TBR I discovered they moved the date to June 15th. So I won’t be too surprised if I don’t get to it until June. 😉

Synopsis:

Edward Fosca is a murderer. Of this Mariana is certain. But Fosca is untouchable. A handsome and charismatic Greek Tragedy professor at Cambridge University, Fosca is adored by staff and students alike—particularly by the members of a secret society of female students known as The Maidens. 

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge. 

Mariana, who was once herself a student at the university, quickly suspects that behind the idyllic beauty of the spires and turrets, and beneath the ancient traditions, lies something sinister. And she becomes convinced that, despite his alibi, Edward Fosca is guilty of the murder. But why would the professor target one of his students? And why does he keep returning to the rites of Persephone, the maiden, and her journey to the underworld?

When another body is found, Mariana’s obsession with proving Fosca’s guilt spirals out of control, threatening to destroy her credibility as well as her closest relationships. But Mariana is determined to stop this killer, even if it costs her everything—including her own life. 

6/15/21
Goodreads

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What are you most excited to read this month? Have you read any of these books yet? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!