Each month, we ask you oh so nicely over on Facebook to suggest titles that you want to read together. This month we narrowed that list down to these six titles to vote on. I know, but they are all so good, I couldn’t narrow it down any more than that!
From here, head over to our Facebook page, vote for all of the titles that sound like you won’t spend the month avoiding them (not that I have ever done that), and we will discuss the top two next month!
*All synopsis come from the book’s Goodreads page.
The Storyteller’s Secret
Written By: Sejal Badani
Pages: 411
Genre: Historical Fiction
Series?: Nope
Current Goodreads Score: 4.47
This first one feels like one that people are going to be doing in book clubs for years. I would bet that there will be a lot of descriptive language that takes your breath away as you read it. The kind of read made for the slowing down of the fall.
Nothing prepares Jaya, a New York journalist, for the heartbreak of her third miscarriage and the slow unraveling of her marriage in its wake. Desperate to assuage her deep anguish, she decides to go to India to uncover answers to her family’s past.
Intoxicated by the sights, smells, and sounds she experiences, Jaya becomes an eager student of the culture. But it is Ravi—her grandmother’s former servant and trusted confidant—who reveals the resilience, struggles, secret love, and tragic fall of Jaya’s pioneering grandmother during the British occupation. Through her courageous grandmother’s arrestingly romantic and heart-wrenching story, Jaya discovers the legacy bequeathed to her and a strength that, until now, she never knew was possible.
Vox
Written by: Christina Dalcher
Pages: 326
Genre: Dystopian
Series: Nope.
Current Goodreads Score: 3.72
There was an underrated book out last year called All Rights Reserved in which all words were trademarked and people had to pay for every word that they uttered. Vox feels like taking that book and mixing it with The Handmaid’s Tale. We haven’t done a book about feminism in a while, so this book could be a definite contender.
Set in an America where half the population has been silenced, VOX is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.
On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words daily, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial—this can’t happen here. Not in America. Not to her.
This is just the beginning.
Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.
But this is not the end.
For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice.
People Kill People
Written By: Ellen Hopkins
Pages: 431
Genre: YA Lyrical
Series?: Nope
Current Goodreads Score: 4.03
I don’t think I could ever put into words how good Ellen Hopkins is. She is one of the original YA authors and the first person you should think of when you hear the phrase “Novel in Verse” (please tell me you read Crank when you were in high school). She is a total badass; when she was writing a book about human trafficking has spent time hanging out with prostitutes. I tell everyone that I want to read her as-of-now-just-my-dream memoir. This book will be amazing.
Someone will shoot. And someone will die.
People kill people. Guns just make it easier.
A gun is sold in the classifieds after killing a spouse, bought by a teenager for needed protection. But which was it? Each has the incentive to pick up a gun, to fire it. Was it Rand or Cami, married teenagers with a young son? Was it Silas or Ashlyn, members of a white supremacist youth organization? Daniel, who fears retaliation because of his race, who possessively clings to Grace, the love of his life? Or Noelle, who lost everything after a devastating accident, and has sunk quietly into depression?
One tense week brings all six people into close contact in a town wrought with political and personal tensions. Someone will fire. And someone will die. But who?
Dumplin’
Written By: Julie Murphy
Pages: 384
Genre: YA Fiction
Series: First of two!
Current Goodreads Score: 3.87
I have read this book and can give it a big thumbs up. It is a happy yet deep book and is soon to be a movie with Jennifer Aniston playing the mother. With the second book just having come out on top of it, there is some perfect timing here.
Self-proclaimed fat girl Willowdean Dickson (dubbed “Dumplin’” by her former beauty queen mom) has always been at home in her own skin. Her thoughts on having the ultimate bikini body? Put a bikini on your body. With her all-American beauty best friend, Ellen, by her side, things have always worked…until Will takes a job at Harpy’s, the local fast-food joint. There she meets Private School Bo, a hot former jock. Will isn’t surprised to find herself attracted to Bo. But she is surprised when he seems to like her back.
Instead of finding new heights of self-assurance in her relationship with Bo, Will starts to doubt herself. So she sets out to take back her confidence by doing the most horrifying thing she can imagine: entering the Miss Clover City beauty pageant—along with several other unlikely candidates—to show the world that she deserves to be up there as much as any twiggy girl does. Along the way, she’ll shock the hell out of Clover City—and maybe herself most of all.
With starry Texas nights, red candy suckers, Dolly Parton songs, and a wildly unforgettable heroine—Dumplin’ is guaranteed to steal your heart.
A Room Away From The Wolves
Written By: Nova Ren Suma
Pages: 315
Genre: YA Magical Realism
Series: Nope
Current Goodreads Score: 3.7
This one has been on a lot of the “YA to Read This Fall” lists. If that isn’t enough to get your attention, I believe that any author named “Nova” should be read because it is guaranteed to be the good kind of weird. That sentence doesn’t make sense? Then you’ve been sleeping better than I have been, my friend.
Bina has never forgotten the time she and her mother ran away from home. Her mother promised they would hitchhike to the city to escape Bina’s cruel father and start over. But before they could even leave town, Bina had a new stepfather and two new stepsisters, and a humming sense of betrayal pulling apart the bond with her mother—a bond Bina thought was unbreakable.
Eight years later, after too many lies and with trouble on her heels, Bina finds herself on the side of the road again, the city of her dreams calling for her. She has an old suitcase, a fresh black eye, and a room waiting for her at Catherine House, a young women’s residence in Greenwich Village with a tragic history, a vow of confidentiality, and dark, magical secrets. There, Bina is drawn to her enigmatic downstairs neighbor Monet, a girl who is equal parts intriguing and dangerous. As Bina’s lease begins to run out, and nightmare and memory get tangled, she will be forced to face the terrible truth of why she’s come to Catherine House and what it will take for her to leave…
The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Written By: Stuart Turton
Pages: 512
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Series: Nope (Why did I add this line this time? Oh, right, Dumplin’)
Current Goodreads Score: 4.13
This poor book is the victim of the American publisher changing the name. At least in this case they only added “1/2” but 1) is that a spoiler?! 2) it is making me feel a little gaslighted when I see the cover only slightly changed. But, I am a sucker for a Goundhog Day story.
The Rules of Blackheath
Evelyn Hardcastle will be murdered at 11:00 p.m.
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.
We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.
Understood? Then let’s begin…***
Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others…
The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave readers guessing until the very last page.
Buy it.
