I told myself that when I finished this post, I would start my review for my new Bookstagram, but my hands had other plans. Sometimes you don’t know how much you will miss something until you can’t do it anymore. Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl, who has a new weekly topic.
September 15: Authors I’ve Met. Since I live on an island and am not leaving anytime soon, I can’t leave without my wheelchair, even if I wanted to. Issue number two: most of my favourite authors are from the USA. I’m sharing the first book I read from them
Goodreads Blurb:
Baya Brighton is looking forward to her first year at Whitney Briggs University, new friends, dorm life, and finally being close to her brother again. Love is the last thing on the list, but when Baya meets her brother’s roommate she begins to have thoughts and feelings that make even her blush.
Bryson Edwards has a secret he prefers buried in the past and long forgotten. He prefers loose girls, fast cars, and long nights working at the string of bars his family owns. When his roommate’s sister shows up on the scene, she’s far too innocent and sweet for him but he can’t shake Baya out of his mind and worse, it looks like she’s seeping into his heart as well.
Baya seems determined to show her brother she’s not a little kid and equally determined to use Bryson’s body to prove her point. It’s been made pretty clear that Baya is off limits to Bryson but their undeniable sparks explode into a whole lot more than just a few 3:AM kisses.
Goodreads Blurb:
What happens when the billionaire with too much money meets the single mom with too much heart?
Disgustingly wealthy billionaire, Tobias Stone, is a man who is struggling to come to terms with his past. He uses his wealth to insulate him from the real world where everything can be bought. Even sex.
Single mom, Savannah Page, has come to New York with her young son to make a fresh start. Struggling to make ends meet, she is determined to give her son a wonderful Christmas but finding work isn’t that easy.
Not my first novel by this author, but this one is one of my favourites.
Goodreads Blurb:
When the devil comes to town, you have to meet him head-on.
Which is exactly what I did when Grant Stone rolled into our small Texas town, driving a sports car I could fit in the bed of my truck, wearing a suit as black as his soul. He’s here to acquire mineral rights to half a dozen farms in town.
And there’s no way he’s getting mine.
I don’t make deals with the devil.
So when he challenges me to show him the small town ropes, my motivation is the prospect of seeing him make a fool of himself. He might have an angle, but if he thinks he can finagle me into endangering my bee farm, he’s got another thing coming.
Until the line in the sand is washed away.
My farm in danger. A town in upheaval. A man who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.
And me in the middle.
When the devil comes to town, you have to meet him head-on.
And when he sneaks into your heart, he’ll only break it.
Sadly, Eva Mozes Kor passed away.
Goodreads Blurb:
The Nazis spared their lives because they were twins.
In the summer of 1944, Eva Mozes Kor and her family arrived at Auschwitz.
Within thirty minutes, they were separated. Her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, while Eva and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man who became known as the Angel of Death: Dr. Josef Mengele. They were 10 years old.
While twins at Auschwitz were granted the ‘privileges’ of keeping their own clothes and hair, they were also subjected to Mengele’s sadistic medical experiments. They were forced to fight daily for their own survival and many died as a result of the experiments, or from the disease and hunger rife in the concentration camp.
In a narrative told simply, with emotion and astonishing restraint, The Twins of Auschwitz shares the inspirational story of a child’s endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil.
Goodreads Blurb:
1970s Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what would happen to Hassan that afternoon, an event that is to shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return to an Afghanistan under Taliban rule to find the one thing that his new world cannot grant redemption.
I only read this from this author, but it’s done so well. To be fair, Lee has only 10 books out.
Goodreads Blurb:
A killer seeking revenge. A community protecting its own. The most explosive case yet for DC Willis and DI Carter.
Cornwall, 2000. Jenna wakes up after a drug-laced party to the realization that she has been raped. And it looks like it involved her new boyfriend, who has come down from London for the summer. But the case is assigned to a corrupt local police sergeant, who knows he can extort money from the boy’s father, prominent London MP Jeremy Forbes-Wright, in return for his silence.
Fifteen years later and Jeremy Forbes-Wright is found dead under highly suspicious circumstances. On the same day, his two-year-old grandson Samuel is kidnapped on a London street and DC Ebony Willis and DI Dan Carter are called in to find the missing boy. They soon realize all roads lead to Cornwall and to find the little boy they must finally get justice for Jenna. But someone is murdering the people they need to speak to and time is running out …
Goodreads Blurb:
Halfway through sixth grade, Noah’s best friend and the only other trans boy in his school, Lewis, passed away in a car accident. Adventurous and curious, Lewis was always bringing a new paranormal story to share with Noah. Together they daydreamed about cryptids and shared discovering their genders and names.
After Lewis’s death, lonely and yearning for someone who could understand him like Lewis once did, Noah starts writing letters to Mothman, wondering if he would understand how Noah feels and also looking for evidence of Mothman’s existence in the vast woods surrounding his small Poconos town. Noah becomes determined to make his science fair project about Mothman, despite his teachers and parents urging him to make a project about something “real.”
Meanwhile, as Noah tries to find Mothman, he also starts to make friends with a group of girls in his grade, Hanna, Molly, and Alice, with whom he’d been friendly, but never close to. Now, they welcome him, and he starts to open up to each of them, especially Hanna, whom Noah has a crush on. But as strange things start to happen and Noah becomes sure of Mothman’s existence, his parents and teachers don’t believe him. Noah decides it’s up to him to risk everything, trek into the woods, and find Mothman himself.
Goodreads Blurb:
He can’t stand her. She thinks he’s crazy. Will their feelings stay etched in permanent ink? Cruz Hunter has always stuck out in his small hometown. Now that he’s covered in tattoos, the residents peg him as even more of an outcast. It seems like the whole world is against his dream of opening a local tattoo parlor. When he finally finds the perfect place for his new business, Cruz discovers a pastor and his daughter have already bought it. The only thing more irritating than the change in his plan is Talia, a beautiful and feisty argument in a dress. Cruz would like nothing more than to have her out of his life and his mind, but for some reason, she’s the only thing he can think about. If Cruz and Talia can stop arguing long enough, opposites may do much more than attract.
Goodreads Blurb:
Penny Rooney has cystic fibrosis, which means she has to do breathing treatments to help her lungs work. Some days, it seems like her CF is the only thing Penny knows about herself for sure.
From her point of view, everyone around her can make sense of their place in the world. So why can’t Penny even begin to write a poem about herself for school?
Then during spring break Penny spots something impossible in the creek behind her house: a dolphin, far from its home. Penny names the dolphin Rose and feels an immediate bond, since the dolphin is also sick.
But as Penny’s CF worsens, she realizes that Rose needs to return to her pod to get better. Will Penny be able to help guide Rose back to the ocean, even if it means losing her friend?
Goodreads Blurb:
Free-spirited coffee shop owner meets uptight coffee addict. Is an opposites-attract match brewing… or burning? Crushed under the weight of writer’s block and a looming deadline, Mack escapes from New York to Seattle. She meets Charlie, a beautiful, generous, nearly bankrupt coffee shop owner recovering from heartbreak. For the first time, Mack has a muse. And then Mack starts using Charlie’s private stories in her novel…When a storm traps Mack and Charlie in the coffee shop, they share a mind-bending, knee-shaking kiss. But Charlie is an eternal optimist who sleeps with fairy-lights on, while Mack is an ironing-at-5am worrier who sleeps with… everyone. They could never turn this chemistry into something real, right?And if Charlie finds out what Mack has been doing, turning Charlie’s most intimate secrets into a juicy page-turner, will they even have a chance to try?
Alex