If you too have a case of FOMO, do not fear! You still have time to read the much shorter (under 300 pages!) Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society before our discussion on Monday, April 23 (here’s our March Wrap Up to get a glimpse of how Boozy Book Club works).
Historical fiction not your thing?
Then keep reading to see the books that Boozy Book Clubber’s suggested for our May discussion and head over to Facebook to vote!
*All summaries are copied from their Goodreads pages
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
Pages: 288
Genre: Literary Fiction
Series?: Stand-Alone
Current Goodreads Score: 3.85
The Mothers won a good amount of awards when it came out in 2016–including a Goodreads Choice Nomination, which I always assume will be a better fit for myself than most of the rest of the awards–and I remember seeing this cover everywhere I went (online). I have a little bit of a bias towards it seeing as the author shares my last name.
But also because it is the shortest of the bunch.
It is the last season of high school life for Nadia Turner, a rebellious, grief-stricken, seventeen-year-old beauty. Mourning her own mother’s recent suicide, she takes up with the local pastor’s son. Luke Sheppard is twenty-one, a former football star whose injury has reduced him to waiting tables at a diner. They are young; it’s not serious. But the pregnancy that results from this teen romance—and the subsequent cover-up—will have an impact that goes far beyond their youth. As Nadia hides her secret from everyone, including Aubrey, her God-fearing best friend, the years move quickly. Soon, Nadia, Luke, and Aubrey are full-fledged adults and still living in debt to the choices they made that one seaside summer, caught in a love triangle they must carefully maneuver, and dogged by the constant, nagging question: What if they had chosen differently? The possibilities of the road not taken are a relentless haunt.
In entrancing, lyrical prose, The Mothers asks whether a “what if” can be more powerful than an experience itself. If, as time passes, we must always live in servitude to the decisions of our younger selves, to the communities that have parented us, and to the decisions we make that shape our lives forever.
Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi
Pages: 394
Genre: YA? New Adult? Definitely Romance
Series?: Stand-Alone
Current Goodreads Score: 4.07
Emergency Contact is currently #1 (Hardcover) and #3 (Kindle) on Amazon’s Teen & Young Adult New Experiences Fiction (yes, apparently that is a thing). Beth reviewed it earlier this month and basically gave it a billion stars. I will be reading this one whether it wins or not (that isn’t actually saying much, I think I’ve read most of the poll losers at this point).
I am a teensy bit concerned about us library users having to fight the hold lists on this one, so I would suggest not waiting until Tuesday and checking your catalogs now!
For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.
Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.
When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.
Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli
Pages: 352
Genre: YA
Series?: Sequel to Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Current Goodreads Score: 4.14
I LOVE Becky Albertalli. If you haven’t read Simon or The Upside of Unrequited yet, you need to stop everything you are doing and do it. Right now. Seriously, they will make you so happy.
This book isn’t even out yet (released on Tuesday 4/24, don’y you worry) and it is already #1 on Amazon’s New Releases in Teen & Young Adult Friendship Fiction. Yes, that is a thing, too. I’m now wondering how many of these lists Amazon actually has. It is followed by Emergency Contact at #2 & #3, BTW.
When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon.
So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp
Pages: 358
Genre: YA Mystery
Series?: Stand-Alone
Current Goodreads Score: 3.28
I’ll admit, this was my suggestion this month. I have wanted to read This Is Where It Ends, also by Marieke Nijkamp, for a few years now (I have a weird obsession with books about gun violence for someone that is terrified of guns) and am hoping reading her latest will set me off on an author binge. That logic might only make sense in my head.
I also think that we are due a mystery/thriller.
Best friends Corey and Kyra were inseparable in their snow-covered town of Lost Creek, Alaska. When Corey moves away, she makes Kyra promise to stay strong during the long, dark winter, and wait for her return.
Just days before Corey is to return home to visit, Kyra dies. Corey is devastated―and confused. The entire Lost community speaks in hushed tones about the town’s lost daughter, saying her death was meant to be. And they push Corey away like she’s a stranger.
Corey knows something is wrong. With every hour, her suspicion grows. Lost is keeping secrets―chilling secrets. But piecing together the truth about what happened to her best friend may prove as difficult as lighting the sky in an Alaskan winter…
The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli
Pages: 432
Genre: YA Fantasy
Series?: Number 1
Current Goodreads Score: 4.2
We have already talked about this one on TN, too, so you know it will be good. It feels like it will be an interesting anti-hero story, which always leads to great conversations about morals and “what-would-you-do?” questions in book club. Also, how, exactly, do you pronounce “Firgaard” anyway, because I am definitely sounding it out like a pirate.
In the beginning, there was the Namsara: the child of sky and spirit, who carried love and laughter wherever he went. But where there is light, there must be darkness—and so there was also the Iskari. The child of blood and moonlight. The destroyer. The death-bringer.
These are the legends that Asha, daughter of the king of Firgaard, has grown up learning in hushed whispers, drawn to the forbidden figures of the past. But it isn’t until she becomes the fiercest, most feared dragon slayer in the land that she takes on the role of the next Iskari—a lonely destiny that leaves her feeling more like a weapon than a girl.
Asha conquers each dragon and brings its head to the king, but no kill can free her from the shackles that await at home: her betrothal to the cruel commandant, a man who holds the truth about her nature in his palm. When she’s offered the chance to gain her freedom in exchange for the life of the most powerful dragon in Firgaard, she finds that there may be more truth to the ancient stories than she ever could have expected. With the help of a secret friend—a slave boy from her betrothed’s household—Asha must shed the layers of her Iskari bondage and open her heart to love, light, and a truth that has been kept from her.
Still wondering what exactly Boozy Book Club is?!
It is pretty much exactly how it sounds. We meet up from the comfort of our couches/beds/wherever-you-internet at a certain time (usually a Monday @9/8c) on the Boozy Book Club Facebook page. There, we encourage you to grab a drink of your choosing while we post questions about the two books with the most votes and we discuss.
No, you don’t have to read both.
No, you don’t even have to finish both.
And, especially no, you don’t have to be left out if you can’t do the time we choose–the great thing about Facebook is you can comment on the questions whenever you get to them!
