One Last Stop

 

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston  New Adult and College

(from Amazon)  For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.  But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.  Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

(My Review)  This was a cute book.  Girl meets girl, but can only see her on the subway, on which she seems to be stuck on a loop (and from another time).  They start a relationship, but it seems hopeless, if one half of the relationship cannot leave the subway.  So, they must find a way to get her off the subway, without losing her forever.  I really enjoyed this!

Rise to the Sun

 

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson  YA

(from Amazon)  Olivia is an expert at falling in love . . . and at being dumped. But after the fallout from her last breakup has left her an outcast at school and at home, she’s determined to turn over a new leaf. A crush-free weekend at Farmland Music and Arts Festival with her best friend is just what she needs to get her mind off the senior year that awaits her.  Toni is one week away from starting college, and it’s the last place she wants to be. Unsure about who she wants to become and still reeling in the wake of the loss of her musician-turned-roadie father, she’s heading back to the music festival that changed his life in hopes that following in his footsteps will help her find her own way forward.  When the two arrive at Farmland, the last thing they expect is to realize that they’ll need to join forces in order to get what they’re searching for out of the weekend. As they work together, the festival becomes so much more complicated than they bargained for. Olivia and Toni will find that they need each other, and music, more than they ever could have imagined.

(My Review)  I thought this was a sweet story of two girls who go to music festival and find each other.  With 2 POV, you get each of their perspectives and backstories.  You really get into their heads and thinking processes about how they feel about each other.  I thought it was a good read.

Radio Silence

 

Radio Silence by Alyssa Cole (Off the Grid, Book 1)  New Adult & College

(from Amazon)  No one expects the apocalypse.  Arden Highmore was living your average postgrad life in Rochester, New York, when someone flipped the “off” switch on the world. No cell phones, no power, no running water—and no one knows why. All she and her roommate, John, know for sure is that they have to get out, stat. His family’s cabin near the Canadian border seemed like the safest choice.

(My Review)  So, I accidentally got the wrong Radio Silence.  There is another written by Alice Oseman, that I had heard about, and of course I reserved the wrong one from the library.  But, when I received it, realized it, I read the description, I decided to read it anyway.  

I thought it was pretty interesting.  In the Sociology classes I teach, we talk about the impact of technology, and about what we would do if it all went away.  This book imagines that kind of world and follows a group of young adults as they deal with the impact of a world reeling from a world turned upside down.  I liked how they formed a family and supported each other as they dealt with the not-knowing about their own families and just trying to survive. 

Definitions of Indefinable Things

 

Definitions of Indefinable Things  by Whitney Taylor YA

(from Amazon)  Reggie isn’t really a romantic: she’s been hurt too often, and doesn’t let people in as a rule. Plus, when you’re dealing with the Three Stages of Depression, it’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy. When Reggie meets Snake, though, he doesn’t give her much of a choice. Snake has a neck tattoo, a Twizzler habit, and a fair share of arrogance, but he’s funny, charming, and interested in Reggie.  Snake also has an ex-girlfriend who's seven months pregnant. Good thing Reggie isn’t a romantic.  Definitions of Indefinable Things follows three teens as they struggle to comprehend love, friendship, and depression—and realize one definition doesn’t always cover it.

(My Review)

So, I realize this book might not be for everyone.  I thought the author did a good job describing the experience one feels during depression - and how it can be complex, and different for each individual who experiences it.  This book follows three individuals, who, for different reasons, have found themselves struggling, and isolated, and their relationships with each other help them learn more about themselves and how to cope with the events in their lives.  Now, don't get me wrong.  This is not a deep book.  It is a YA, rom-comish book.  I enjoyed it.  

The Downstairs Girl

 

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee  YA  

(from Amazon)  By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender. While her opponents clamor to uncover the secret identity of Miss Sweetie, a mysterious letter sets Jo off on a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta's most notorious criminal, Jo must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light.

(My Review)

I thought this was a good read.  It took me a bit to get into it, but about half-way through, the story got more interesting.  This was definitely a view of early-twentieth century Atlanta that we are not used to seeing.  I thought it was interesting, and heart-breaking (albeit, not really surprised), to see how Chinese were treated.   This book had a sweet story, which will definitely draw the reader in.  My only criticism was the author's heavy use of exaggerated southern colloquialisms.  I felt it distracted me, and slowed down my reading.

September TBR

 September TBR - I've tried to include what I believe will also arrive from my Libby/Overdrive (audiobooks) - I really don't know when they will show up, but some I know are coming pretty soon.  My TBR list is always at the mercy of Libby/Overdrive, since I have only have a certain amount of time to "read" them.

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee    YA (Currently reading)

(from Amazon)  By day, seventeen-year-old Jo Kuan works as a lady's maid for the cruel daughter of one of the wealthiest men in Atlanta. But by night, Jo moonlights as the pseudonymous author of a newspaper advice column for the genteel Southern lady, "Dear Miss Sweetie." When her column becomes wildly popular, she uses the power of the pen to address some of society's ills, but she's not prepared for the backlash that follows when her column challenges fixed ideas about race and gender. While her opponents clamor to uncover the secret identity of Miss Sweetie, a mysterious letter sets Jo off on a search for her own past and the parents who abandoned her as a baby. But when her efforts put her in the crosshairs of Atlanta's most notorious criminal, Jo must decide whether she, a girl used to living in the shadows, is ready to step into the light. With prose that is witty, insightful, and at times heartbreaking, Stacey Lee masterfully crafts an extraordinary social drama set in the New South.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston  YA  (I'm really looking forward to this one!)

(from Amazon)  For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don’t exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can’t imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there’s certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.  But then, there’s this gorgeous girl on the train.  Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August’s day when she needed it most. August’s subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there’s one big problem: Jane doesn’t just look like an old school punk rocker. She’s literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it’s time to start believing in some things, after all.

The Hawthorne Legacy (Book 2 of 2:  The Inheritance Games) by Jennifer Lynn Barnes  - releases September 7, 2021 (Another one I am REALLY looking forward to - the Inheritance Games was a great book!!!)

(from Amazon) The Inheritance Games ended with a bombshell, and now heiress Avery Grambs has to pick up the pieces and find the man who might hold the answers to all of her questions—including why Tobias Hawthorne left his entire fortune to Avery, a virtual stranger, rather than to his own daughters or grandsons.   Thanks to a DNA test, Avery knows that she’s not a Hawthorne by blood, but clues pile up hinting at a deeper connection to the family than she had ever imagined. As the mystery grows and the plot thickens, Grayson and Jameson, two of the enigmatic and magnetic Hawthorne grandsons, continue to pull Avery in different directions. And there are threats lurking around every corner, as adversaries emerge who will stop at nothing to see Avery out of the picture—by any means necessary. 

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro  YA

(from Amazon)  As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is modern classic.

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller 

(from Amazon)  It is a perfect July morning, and Elle, a fifty-year-old happily married mother of three, awakens at “The Paper Palace”—the family summer place which she has visited every summer of her life. But this morning is different: last night Elle and her oldest friend Jonas crept out the back door into the darkness and had sex with each other for the first time, all while their spouses chatted away inside. Now, over the next twenty-four hours, Elle will have to decide between the life she has made with her genuinely beloved husband, Peter, and the life she always imagined she would have had with her childhood love, Jonas, if a tragic event hadn’t forever changed the course of their lives. As Heller colors in the experiences that have led Elle to this day, we arrive at her ultimate decision with all its complexity. Tender yet devastating, The Paper Palace considers the tensions between desire and dignity, the legacies of abuse, and the crimes and misdemeanors of families.

Rise to the Sun by Leah Johnson  YA  (I've heard great things about this book) - currently reading

(from Amazon)  Olivia is an expert at falling in love . . . and at being dumped. But after the fallout from her last breakup has left her an outcast at school and at home, she’s determined to turn over a new leaf. A crush-free weekend at Farmland Music and Arts Festival with her best friend is just what she needs to get her mind off the senior year that awaits her.  Toni is one week away from starting college, and it’s the last place she wants to be. Unsure about who she wants to become and still reeling in the wake of the loss of her musician-turned-roadie father, she’s heading back to the music festival that changed his life in hopes that following in his footsteps will help her find her own way forward.  When the two arrive at Farmland, the last thing they expect is to realize that they’ll need to join forces in order to get what they’re searching for out of the weekend. As they work together, the festival becomes so much more complicated than they bargained for. Olivia and Toni will find that they need each other, and music, more than they ever could have imagined.  Packed with irresistible romance and irrepressible heart, bestselling author Leah Johnson delivers a stunning and cinematic story about grief, love, and the remarkable power of music to heal and connect us all.

Not a Happy Family by Shari Lapena

(from Amazon)  Brecken Hill in upstate New York is an expensive place to live. You have to be rich to have a house there, and Fred and Sheila Merton certainly are rich. But even all their money can't protect them when a killer comes to call. The Mertons are brutally murdered after a fraught Easter dinner with their three adult kids. Who, of course, are devastated.  Or are they? They each stand to inherit millions. They were never a happy family, thanks to their vindictive father and neglectful mother, but perhaps one of the siblings is more disturbed than anyone knew. Did someone snap after that dreadful evening? Or did another person appear later that night with the worst of intentions? That must be what happened. After all, if one of the family were capable of something as gruesome as this, you'd know.  Wouldn't you?

Radio Silence (Off the Grid Book 1) by Alyssa Cole  YA - I accidentally reserved the wrong version of Radio Silence from the library, but this one sounds interesting, so I decided to read it.  Happy accident!

(from Amazon)  No one expects the apocalypse.  Arden Highmore was living your average postgrad life in Rochester, New York, when someone flipped the “off” switch on the world. No cell phones, no power, no running water—and no one knows why. All she and her roommate, John, know for sure is that they have to get out, stat. His family’s cabin near the Canadian border seemed like the safest choice.  It turns out isolation doesn’t necessarily equal safety.  When scavengers attack, it’s John’s ridiculously handsome brother, Gabriel, who comes to the rescue. He saves Arden’s life, so he can’t be all bad…but he’s also a controlling jerk who treats her like an idiot. Now their parents are missing and it seems John, Gabriel, their kid sister, Maggie, and Arden are the only people left alive who aren’t bloodthirsty maniacs.  No one knows when—or if—the lights will come back on and, in the midst of all that, Arden and Gabriel are finding that there’s a fine line indeed between love and hate. How long can they expect to last in this terrifying new world, be it together or apart?

We Were Liars by  E. Lockhart  YA

(from Amazon)  

A beautiful and distinguished family.
A private island.
A brilliant, damaged girl; a passionate, political boy.
A group of four friends—the Liars—whose friendship turns destructive.
A revolution. An accident. A secret.
Lies upon lies.
True love.
The truth.

Read it.
And if anyone asks you how it ends, just LIE.

1984 by George Orwell

(from Amazon)  It is 1984, and the worlds' three major powers-Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia-are constantly at war. In Oceania, where the Party is in power, the thought police unearth every act of dissent, and Big Brother is always watching. Winston Smith, a dutiful citizen of Oceania, works for the Ministry of Truth as a propaganda writer who rewrites history to suit the needs of the authoritarian government. But when Winston falls in love with fellow worker Julia, they begin to question the very system they work for, placing them in immense danger. Pursuing their forbidden love affair, Winston plans a rebellion against the Party in order to regain the freedom to shape his own future. But the ever-watchful Big Brother will not tolerate opposition, and for those who speak up against the system or dare to think what the Party does not want them to think, Room 101 awaits them . . .

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd  

(from Amazon)   Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on tiny Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion. Jessie Sullivan’s conventional life has been “molded to the smallest space possible.” So when she is called home to cope with her mother’s startling and enigmatic act of violence, Jessie finds herself relieved to be apart from her husband, Hugh. Jessie loves Hugh, but on Egret Island—amid the gorgeous marshlands and tidal creeks—she becomes drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is mere months from taking his final vows. What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, as Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, she will find a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right.  What inspires the yearning for a soul mate? Few writers have explored, as Kidd does, the lush, unknown region of the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic exists. The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body; one that illuminates a woman’s self-awakening with the brilliance and power that only a writer of Kidd’s ability could conjure.

Once There Were Wolves  by Charlotte McConaghy

(from Amazon)  Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing fourteen gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.  Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed―inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?

Definitions of Indefinable Things by Whitney Taylor  YA

(from Amazon)  Reggie isn’t really a romantic: she’s been hurt too often, and doesn’t let people in as a rule. Plus, when you’re dealing with the Three Stages of Depression, it’s hard to feel warm and fuzzy. When Reggie meets Snake, though, he doesn’t give her much of a choice. Snake has a neck tattoo, a Twizzler habit, and a fair share of arrogance, but he’s funny, charming, and interested in Reggie.  Snake also has an ex-girlfriend who's seven months pregnant. Good thing Reggie isn’t a romantic.  Definitions of Indefinable Things follows three teens as they struggle to comprehend love, friendship, and depression—and realize one definition doesn’t always cover it.

Don't Call Me Crazy:  33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health by Kelly Jenson (Editor).- I'm reading this periodically.

(From Amazon)  Who’s Crazy?  What does it mean to be crazy? Is using the word crazy offensive? What happens when such a label gets attached to your everyday experiences?  In order to understand mental health, we need to talk openly about it. Because there’s no single definition of crazy, there’s no single experience that embodies it, and the word itself means different things—wild? extreme? disturbed? passionate?—to different people.  (Don’t) Call Me Crazy is a conversation starter and guide to better understanding how our mental health affects us every day. Thirty-three writers, athletes, and artists offer essays, lists, comics, and illustrations that explore their personal experiences with mental illness, how we do and do not talk about mental health, help for better understanding how every person’s brain is wired differently, and what, exactly, might make someone crazy.  If you’ve ever struggled with your mental health, or know someone who has, come on in, turn the pages, and let’s get talking.

Howard's End  by E. M Forster 

(from Amazon)  "Howards End" is E. M. Forster's classic story of the varying struggles of members of different strata of the English middle class. The story centers around three families; the Wilcoxes, who made their fortune in the American colonies; the Schlegels, three siblings who represent the intellectual bourgeoisie; and the Basts, a young struggling lower middle-class couple. "Howards End", one of Forster's greatest works, is a classic dramatization of the differences in life amongst the English middle class.

The Box in the Woods

 

The Box in the Woods  by Maureen Johnson  YA

(from Amazon)  Amateur sleuth Stevie Bell needs a good murder. After catching a killer at her high school, she’s back at home for a normal (that means boring) summer.  But then she gets a message from the owner of Sunny Pines, formerly known as Camp Wonder Falls—the site of the notorious unsolved case, the Box in the Woods Murders. Back in 1978, four camp counselors were killed in the woods outside of the town of Barlow Corners, their bodies left in a gruesome display. The new owner offers Stevie an invitation: Come to the camp and help him work on a true crime podcast about the case.  Stevie agrees, as long as she can bring along her friends from Ellingham Academy. Nothing sounds better than a summer spent together, investigating old murders.  But something evil still lurks in Barlow Corners. When Stevie opens the lid on this long-dormant case, she gets much more than she bargained for. The Box in the Woods will make room for more victims. This time, Stevie may not make it out alive.

(My Review)  I love this series! Maureen Johnson continues this series with a totally new mystery, with Stevie and friends solving a cold-case at a summer camp. It was a fun read.