Stacking the Shelves (229)

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme created by Tynga’s Reviews and hosted by Reading Reality.
It’s all about sharing the books we’ve picked up for the week, whether they are bought, borrowed, gifted, galleys, physical or virtual.
Share your shelves and remember to visit Tynga’s Reviews where it all started to find more great books!

---

Borrowed

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America’s Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the “recruiters” who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing “factories.”

I was looking for my next audiobook and this one was available at my library.

---

Murder and intrigue surround a girl in this mystery set in American in the aftermath of WWII

When Evie’s father returned home from World War II, the family fell back into its normal life pretty quickly. But Joe Spooner brought more back with him than just good war stories. When movie-star handsome Peter Coleridge, a young ex-GI who served in Joe’s company in postwar Austria, shows up, Evie is suddenly caught in a complicated web of lies that she only slowly recognizes. She finds herself falling for Peter, ignoring the secrets that surround him . . . until a tragedy occurs that shatters her family and breaks her life in two.

Another post-war Evie. Borrowed from my local library on audio.

Purchased

The War Outside by Monica Hesse

A novel of conviction, friendship, and betrayal.

It’s 1944, and World War II is raging across Europe and the Pacific. The war seemed far away from Margot in Iowa and Haruko in Colorado–until they were uprooted to dusty Texas, all because of the places their parents once called home: Germany and Japan.

Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a “family internment camp” for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day, and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother’s health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis.

With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their growing, secret friendship. But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone–even each other?

I’m not usually drawn to stories about WWII because I find them to be quite white male-centric, but this sounds really diverse and about a female friendship, which we all know is my jam.

---

 

My Name is Not Peaseblossom by Jackie French

Titania rose to her feet. ‘What is going on here, Peaseblossom?’ she demanded.

I bowed to her. ‘I apologise, Your Majesty. But I’d rather be known as Pete.’

‘Pete?’ She frowned. ‘That’s no name for a fairy.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ I said, meeting her eyes.

At court, he’s known as Peaseblossom, a servant to the Fairy Queen.

But as Pete, he prefers pizza to sugarplums and denim to daffodils. He wants to choose his own life too. But how can he when a fairy’s sole duty is to obey the all-powerful Queen Titania?

This is Shakespeare’s popular and delightful comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream with an added army of Amazons, a sea serpent and a selkie called Gaela, who luckily for Pete makes the best pizza in the world.

It is also a story of the intrigues of the Fairy Court, of vampire plots to dominate the world and of impossible loves that might just come true. Not by enchantment, but when two hearts thread together, making a magic of their own.

I literally have a degree in deciphering Shakespeare, so I’m drawn to this AU of a relatively minor and mostly forgotten or cut character from one of Shakespeare’s best plays (and I was Bottom, so that was not overall a great experience for me!)

---

The Rest of the Story by Sarah Dessen

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Dessen comes a big-hearted, sweeping novel about a girl who reconnects with a part of her family she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl—and falls in love, all over the course of a magical summer.

Emma Saylor doesn’t remember a lot about her mother, who died when she was ten. But she does remember the stories her mom told her about the big lake that went on forever, with cold, clear water and mossy trees at the edges.

Now it’s just Emma and her dad, and life is good, if a little predictable…until Emma is unexpectedly sent to spend the summer with her mother’s family—her grandmother and cousins she hasn’t seen since she was a little girl.

When Emma arrives at North Lake, she realizes there are actually two very different communities there. Her mother grew up in working class North Lake, while her dad spent summers in the wealthier Lake North resort. The more time Emma spends there, the more it starts to feel like she is divided into two people as well. To her father, she is Emma. But to her new family, she is Saylor, the name her mother always called her.

Then there’s Roo, the boy who was her very best friend when she was little. Roo holds the key to her family’s history, and slowly, he helps her put the pieces together about her past. It’s hard not to get caught up in the magic of North Lake—and Saylor finds herself falling under Roo’s spell as well.

For Saylor, it’s like a whole new world is opening up to her. But when it’s time to go back home, which side of her will win out?

This is my first Sarah Dessen novel…

---

What books did you get this week? Have you read any of these and what did you think? Share the love in the comments below!

Subscribe to Blog via Email