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A History Of Wild Places by Shea Ernshaw

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Atria and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James—a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books—he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend. Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James. Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease—rot—into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed—and that darkness takes many forms.

I have friends who are huge Shea Ernshaw fans, and that made incredibly eager to read her books. On top of that, this one sounded incredibly intriguing. Missing people becoming missing from searching for missing people. A reclusive community with a rotting disease keeping them secluded, and secrets building on secrets. I sounded like something I would really like, and I was eager to see what I would think! Trigger warnings: mentions of suicide, grief, blood

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The Shaadi Set-Up by Lillie Vale

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Putnam and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

High school sweethearts Rita Chitniss and Milan Rao were the golden couple, until the day he broke her heart. Now, six years later, Rita has turned her passion for furniture restoration into a career and has an almost-perfect boyfriend, Neil. The last thing she needs is for Milan to re-enter her life, but that’s exactly what happens when her mother, an unfailing believer in second chances, sets them up. Milan is just as charming, cocky, and confident as he was back in school. Only this time, he actually needs her business expertise, not her heart, to flip a hard-to-sell house for his realty agency.While Rita begrudgingly agrees to help, she’s not taking any risks. To prove she’s definitely over him, she signs herself and Neil up on MyShaadi.com, a Desi matchmaking site famous for its success stories and trustworthy enough to convince everyone that she and Neil are the new and improved couple. Instead, she’s shocked when MyShaadi’s perfect match for her isn’t Neil…it’s Milan. Ignoring the website and her mother is one thing, but ignoring Milan proves much more difficult, especially when she promises to help him renovate the beach house of her dreams. And as the two of them dive deeper into work—and their pasts—Rita begins to wonder if maybe her match wasn’t so wrong after all….

After seeing friends rave about Vale’s YA debut, I knew I was going to want to give her romance debut a try. I’m always a bit wary of second-chance romances, simply because I need to be in the right mood for the angst. But this one sounded like it was going to be amazing, with a match that is not expected and forced proximity. Plus, there are even dogs on the cover. I was eager to see what this book was going to hold!

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Cazadora by Romina Garber

*Spoiler free, but spoilers for Lobizona*

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Thank you so much to WednesdayBooks and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

Manu and her friends are on the run from the Cazadores hunters and chasing down leads about the Coven, a mythical resistance manada that might not even exist. When news breaks out that Fierro is about to be arrested and his identity publicly revealed, Manu and her friends step right into a trap to expose her. They escape, but it’s not long before the Cazadores track her down. Just as it looks like Manu and her friends are about to be arrested, they find the Coven, who shows Manu that the Septimus need a revolution as much as she does. The Coven promises to protect Manu, but when Manu and her friends are attacked at the Coven, they must find a new safe space. Manu recognizes the danger she presents to her friends and their families, and she decides to stop running. As terrified as she is to face the tribunal’s judgment, she knows what she wants now—a home and family with Tiago, and a place among the Septimus—and she’s willing to risk everything to earn it. Manu knows she’s risking a death sentence, but she can’t live her life on the run. She’s ready to take a stand. But Manu isn’t giving up—because she plans to change things from the inside, so she and her friends can have the futures they’ve dreamt about.

I absolutely adored Lobizona, so I could not wait to see what the sequel held in store. I was ready to see Manu, Saysa, Cata, and Tiago again, and eager to find out what their direction their stories were going to take.

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The (Un)Popular Vote by Jasper Sanchez

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Katherine Tegen Books and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

Vaseline on the teeth makes a smile shine. It’s a cheap stunt, but Mark Adams knows it’s optics that can win or ruin an election. Everything Mark learned about politics, he learned from his father, the congressman who still pretends he has a daughter and not a son. To protect his father’s image, Mark promises to keep his past hidden and pretend to be the cis guy everyone assumes he is. But when he sees a manipulatively charming candidate for student body president inflame dangerous rhetoric, Mark decides to risk the low profile he assured his father and insert himself as a political challenger. One big problem? No one really knows Mark. He didn’t grow up in this town, and he has few friends; plus, the ones he does have aren’t exactly with the in-crowd. Still, thanks to countless seasons of Scandal and The West Wing, these nerds know where to start: from campaign stops to voter polling to a fashion makeover. Soon Mark feels emboldened to get in front of and engage with voters—and even start a new romance. But with an investigative journalist digging into his past, a father trying to silence him, and a bully front-runner who stands in his way, Mark will have to decide which matters most: perception or truth, when both are just as dangerous.

This is a book with a trans main character. That means I absoluetly wanted to read it. I also knew that it featured an MC who had to be stealth because his dad is a politican who wants to keep his son’s transition on the downlow. And the MC wants to run of student body president because a complete asshole is trying to run as well. It sounded like an interesting book and I was eager to see what it would hold! Trigger warnings: homophobia, dead naming, transphobia

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The Wolf And The Woodsman by Ava Reid

*Spoiler free*

Thank you so much to Voyager and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered. But when monsters attack the Woodsmen and their captive en route, slaughtering everyone but Évike and the cold, one-eyed captain, they have no choice but to rely on each other. Except he’s no ordinary Woodsman—he’s the disgraced prince, Gáspár Bárány, whose father needs pagan magic to consolidate his power. Gáspár fears that his cruelly zealous brother plans to seize the throne and instigate a violent reign that would damn the pagans and the Yehuli alike. As the son of a reviled foreign queen, Gáspár understands what it’s like to be an outcast, and he and Évike make a tenuous pact to stop his brother. As their mission takes them from the bitter northern tundra to the smog-choked capital, their mutual loathing slowly turns to affection, bound by a shared history of alienation and oppression. However, trust can easily turn to betrayal, and as Évike reconnects with her estranged father and discovers her own hidden magic, she and Gáspár need to decide whose side they’re on, and what they’re willing to give up for a nation that never cared for them at all.

I saw a flash of a picture of this book for a giveaway and was practically sold. Then I saw a flash on the description, a girl who has no magic because she has been abandoned by the gods, based on Hungarian history and Jewish myth, and the only survivors of a monster attack being Évike, the main character, and the cold, one eyed captain of the Woodsman. Then I basically fell head over heels for this book and definitely, definitely, wanted to read it. Trigger warnings: torture, antisemitism, physical abuse by parental figures, vomiting, animal death, self-harm, gore, body horror

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What’s Not To Love by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Puffin and NetGalley for the e-ARC!

Since high school began, Alison Sanger and Ethan Molloy have competed on almost everything. AP classes, the school paper, community service, it never ends. If Alison could avoid Ethan until graduation, she would. Except, naturally, for two over-achieving seniors with their sights on valedictorian and Harvard, they share all the same classes and extracurriculars. So when their school’s principal assigns them the task of co-planning a previous class’s ten-year reunion, with the promise of a recommendation for Harvard if they do, Ethan and Alison are willing to endure one more activity together if it means beating the other out of the lead. But with all this extra time spent in each other’s company, their rivalry begins to feel closer to friendship. And as tension between them builds, Alison fights the growing realization that the only thing she wants more than winning…is Ethan.

Even before reading and adoring If I’m Being Honest and Always Never Yours, I was looking forward to this book. Rivals-to-lovers with some amazing kissing. Yeah, that’s pretty much all I needed to know to want to read this book desperately. Then, I found out how amazing these authors’ books are, and I was even more ready to see what this book was all about.

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If I’m Being Honest by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka

*Minor spoilers*

High school senior Cameron Bright’s reputation can be summed up in one word: bitch. It’s no surprise she’s queen bee at her private L.A. high school—she’s beautiful, talented, and notorious for her cutting and brutal honesty. So when she puts her foot in her mouth in front of her crush, Andrew, she fears she may have lost him for good. In an attempt to win him over, Cameron resolves to “tame” herself, much like Katherine in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. First, she’ll have to make amends with those she’s wronged, which leads her to Brendan, the guy she labelled with an unfortunate nickname back in the sixth grade. At first, Brendan isn’t all that receptive to Cameron’s ploy. But slowly, he warms up to her when they connect over the computer game he’s developing. Now if only Andrew would notice… But the closer Cameron gets to Brendan, the more she sees he appreciates her personality—honesty and all—and wonders if she’s compromising who she is for the guy she doesn’t even want.

I’ve been wanting to read a book by these authors for a long time. I’ve seen so much love for them and their books online that I couldn’t help but want to check out their books! All of them sound amazing, but I was pulled to this one specifically because of the bitchy main character. I’m a big fan of unlikable, or even sometimes mean, main characters. I was looking forward to seeing what Cameron’s journey was going to be, because it certainty sounded like she would be going on one that would change her view of the world drastically.

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The Roommate by Rosie Danan

*Spoiler free*

The Wheatons are infamous among the east coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. When Clara’s childhood crush invites her to move cross-country, the offer is too much to resist. Unfortunately, it’s also too good to be true. After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive—not to mention handsome—for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet… Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet. His professional prowess inspires her to take tackling the stigma against female desire into her own hands. They may not agree on much, but Josh and Clara both believe women deserve better sex. What they decide to do about it will change both of their lives, and if they’re lucky, they’ll help everyone else get lucky too.

The title of this book alone captured my interest. A romance book with roommate in the title? Yes, that sounded incredibly intriguing. And then I found out one of the roommates is a porn star, while the other is not as well versed in sex. And both of them set off to destigmatize female pleasure. And that’s not all, my friend read and absolutely loved this book, and then even more friends read and loved it, so I was basically bursting into flames with how much I wanted to read it.

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Even If We Break by Marieke Nijkamp

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Sourcebooks and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

FIVE friends go to a cabin.
FOUR of them are hiding secrets.
THREE years of history bind them.
TWO are doomed from the start.
ONE person wants to end this.
NO ONE IS SAFE.

Are you ready to play?

 

 

 

 

Even though thrillers are so hit or miss for me, I seem to be drawn to every single one I stumble across. This one was no different. I had seen it around here and there, but when I finally found out what it was about, I was intrigued. And when I got the chance to read it, I jumped. Broken friendships and a deadly weekend, secrets and lies. It sounded like something that’d terrify me in the best way. Trigger warnings: blood, addiction, gore

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Tools Of Engagement by Tessa Bailey

*Spoiler free*

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Thank you so much to Avon and Edelweiss for the e-ARC!

Hair, makeup, clothing, decor… everything in Bethany Castle’s world is organized, planned, and styled to perfection. Which is why the homes she designs for her family’s real estate business are the most coveted in town. The only thing not perfect? Her track record with men. She’s on a dating hiatus and after helping her friends achieve their dreams, Bethany finally has time to focus on her own: flip a house, from framework to furnishings, all by herself. Except her older brother runs the company and refuses to take her seriously. When a television producer gets wind of the Castle sibling rivalry, they’re invited on Flip Off, a competition to see who can do the best renovation. Bethany wants bragging rights, but she needs a crew and the only member of her brother’s construction team willing to jump ship is Wes Daniels, the new guy in town. His Texas drawl and handsome face got under Bethany’s skin on day one, but the last thing she needs is some cocky young cowboy in her way. As the race to renovate heats up, Wes and Bethany are forced into close quarters, trading barbs and biting banter as they remodel the ugliest house on the block. It’s a labor of love, hate, and everything in between, and soon sparks are flying. But Bethany’s perfectly structured life is one kiss away from going up in smoke and she knows falling for a guy like Wes would be a flipping disaster.

After reading Fix Her Up, I had to admit, I liked Tessa Bailey’s romance books. I know I’m certainly not the only one. I’m not very clued into the romance world (though still slowly dipping my toes into it!), but I know she’s a pretty big name. So, I was interested in reading this installment of this series! (Yes, I know I skipped over Love Her Or Lose Her, but I have to be in a very specific mood to read books like that.) Trigger warnings: intense perfectionism, minor self-harm

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