Waiting on Wednesday: Don't You Forget About Me

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

I definitely had to take a step back from the bookshelves when visiting Barnes and Noble the other day... after sliding my fingers down one too many spines of Stephen King novels I already knew my father probably had collecting dust and spiders in a box in the garage, I eventually managed to remember that Finals were coming up soon, and it would probably be bad for my grade if I started losing sleep. Best wait until summer then... or maybe just June 10th, when Kate Karyus Quinn's Don't You Forget About Me hits the shelves, too! 

From Goodreads: 

"Welcome to Gardnerville.

A place where no one gets sick. And no one ever dies.

Except...
There’s a price to pay for paradise. Every fourth year, the strange power that fuels the town exacts its payment by infecting teens with deadly urges. In a normal year in Gardnerville, teens might stop talking to their best friends. In a fourth year, they’d kill them.

Four years ago, Skylar’s sister, Piper, was locked away after leading sixteen of her classmates to a watery grave. Since then, Skylar has lived in a numb haze, struggling to forget her past and dull the pain of losing her sister. But the secrets and memories Piper left behind keep taunting Skylar—whispering that the only way to get her sister back is to stop Gardnerville’s murderous cycle once and for all." 

Why am I so excited?

Honestly, I've never heard anything like this plot before. Usually I'd immediately pin down the whole "mysterious small town" and "damaged older sibling" tropes and decide this book wasn't worth my time, but damn, if that isn't an intriguing plot! Besides, both this title and Kate Karyus Quinn's previous novel - Another Little Piece - have been well-reviewed for their matching up of contemporary feeling with the creep factor, and I'm definitely feeling the need for some creepiness with these long, comfy summer nights lying in front of me. Bonus points for the incredibly intriguing cover! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Vacationers

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

The sun is out in Seattle, and has been for a week or so now, which is leading me downwards in a summertime spiral which, unfortunately, isn't set to become my home for at least three more weeks. So, while I'm still trapped inside endless Psych lectures, I might as well sneak my Kindle between the pages of my textbook, and dream of summer a little harder, especially because in eight days, on May 29th, 2014, Emma Straub's The Vacationers is published! 

The Posts are in a celebratory mood, as they head off to the beautiful Balearic island of Mallorca, off the coast of Spain, for a vacation with their friends and relatives honoring not only their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, but their daughter, Sylvia, and her graduation from high school. Everything is set for the perfect European adventure for the elite, complete with tapas, tennis courts, blue beaches, and a stunning lack of the Manhattan skylines beneath which tensions have been simmering at home. 

Unfortunately, the friction they've attempted to escape follows them to this idyllic new place, and over the course of the vacation, secrets are exposed, childhood tensions reemerge, and even old wounds are torn open again. As the Post family celebrates their present, they find themselves striving to evade their past, while this unwelcome conflict may be just the thing that allows them a new kind of future. Those glittering waters to which they've journeyed may just allow them to emerge from their vacation renewed in a different way than they imagined. 

Why am I excited?

Well, let's kick it off with the basest of my emotions in regards to this book, and let me say, I'm just excited to see a novel with an American family taking a European vacation, where no one ends up dead, murdered, or involved in some kind of unnecessary foreign espionage (or, on the flip side, with anyone falling in love in the Italian countryside. That one deals less with actual trends in fictionalization, than my mother's attempts to induce me to study abroad next year). Second, DAT COVER DOE. Talk about giving me vacation pains, those waters are glorious. Get me out of school, stat! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Waiting on Wednesday: The Girls at the Kingfisher Club

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

I already mentioned last week how I was feeling a bit of a craving for fairy tale fodder, and that feeling is far from going away, now that the sun in shining and I've seen both a bluebird and a red-winged blackbird in one day. My newest novel on the TBR-list promises just that, meshing the world of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" with the excitement of the Big Apple during Prohibition, with The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, by Genevieve Valentine, set for publication this upcoming June 3rd, 2014. 

When their father isn't looking, the Hamilton Girls escape the constraints of their father's townhouse, into the speakeasies of the busy Big Apple. Jo - the firstborn, and the closest thing the other ten have to a mother - was the mastermind behind the sojourns into actual society, teaching them how to dance, and giving the signal for each night's excursion into the world of which their father would never approve. Swanning about town, from Salon Renaud to the Swan, the Funeral Parlor Supper Club to the Kingfisher Club, the one club they call home, these girls surround themselves with a sumptuous extravagance, a fantasy to free their minds from the control of their demanding father. 

That is, until the day he decides they should all be married off. 

But still, the girls dance, and when they are caught in a raid by the Prohibition police, they are separated, and suddenly, Jo comes face-to-face with a man from the past, a bootlegger named Tom who she hasn't seen in years. Now, Jo doesn't just have to remember to protect her sisters, but protect her heart, as well. 

Why am I so excited? 

Well, let's be real, I'm kind of hoping this preoccupation with the Jazz Age is on its way out, because in terms of randomized adoption of particular time periods, the bastardization of that particular point in history by pop culture in the early 2010's is almost as annoying as when we did it with the '80s in the late 2000's. However, this seems like a sweet send-up of a tale that isn't told all that often, which also happens to be one of my favorites. Can't wait! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday? 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

This week, I'm favoring a bit of fantasy and fairy tales in my life - mainly because I spent an hour or so just this morning finishing up the last installment of Kiera Cass' The Selection series, The One, but MORE ON THAT LATER - so when I saw that Holly Black had a new fantasy set to debut early in 2015, you could say that I got a little bit irrationally excited. Set for publication on January 13th, 2015, is Holly Black's The Darkest Part of the Forest. 

In a world where monsters run rampant and fairies live alongside humans in semi-harmony, Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the town of Fairfold. Primarily a tourist attraction full of harmless magic, Hazel knows how deadly the fairies could really be, and knows how to stop them... at least, she has before. 

Meanwhile, in the heart of the woods, a boy lies in a glass coffin, with horns on his head, and ears as pointed as knives. Ben and Hazel were both in love with him, at one point. 

Having slept through generations, one day, he awakens. 

And suddenly, nothing will ever be the same. All of those years Hazel has pretended to be a knight, are all she really has to defend herself now, but with the whirlwind of new love, old loyalties, and the pain of betrayal, those years seem to be lost in the shuffle. 

Why am I excited? 

Oh, come ON, what do you mean, I have to wait until the new year? Holly Black is a master at this kind of thing, and I cannot wait that long to get my hands on it. From co-writing The Spiderwick Chronicles with Tony DiTerlizzi, to the Modern Faerie Tales series, to even last year's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, Holly Black knows how to please her audience with creepy, twisty humor, and this time, we're heading straight back into fairy tale territory. 

Besides, holy moly, is that cover five million kinds of gorgeous. I need it.... NEED it. Give it too me now! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday? 

Waiting on Wednesday: Bittersweet

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

This week, I'm looking forward to summer, which makes beach reads a reasonably welcome topic at this time. Featuring family and brutality in a summer paradise, Bittersweet, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore seems like it will serve up plenty of heat for those smokin' summer evenings, making its day May 13th. 

Mabel Dagmar is shocked as her gorgeous, Old Money roommate Genevra Winslow, affectionately nicknamed Ev, not only chooses  to befriend her, just a scholarship student at their prestigious East Coast university, but invites her to spend the summer at her family's Vermont century-old estate. There, the Winslow clan has been retreating for over a hundred years, and soon enough, Mabel feels like she's one of the family, too. Sinking into the languid summer's heavy rotation of sun, sparklers, cocktails and comfort, she finally feels like everything she's ever wanted - money, friendship, a boyfriend - is within her grasp... but it soon comes to light that her new position as one of the family makes for a great position for viewing some of the family's more dangerous secrets. 

When the Winslow's power comes from a more shocking source than she could ever have imagine and elicits striking violence into the core of the comfort she had so recently attained, Mabel must choose to hide the secrets she's uncovered, or revert to the powerless positions she held before. In defining for herself the lines running between good and evil, she finds that the two aren't so mutually exclusive, but she can't have both. 

Why am I excited? 

An idyllic waterside retreat plagued by corrupt people with too much money on their hands and shady dealings in their past? Man, is this going to make for a helluva summer read. And man, does it sound like an episode of Revenge (which is right up there by Scandal on the list of kick ass TV shows of which I have never been able to partake in, but seriously feel like I would enjoy immensely). I can't wait to get my hands on this novel! 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Waiting on Wednesday: Lies My Girlfriend Told Me

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

This week, I'm waiting on an upcoming YA release that exposes the infidelity and hurt at the heart of a young relationship. The topic wouldn't come off as breaking new ground in the Young Adult Romance genre... except for those tied to the tumultuous romance are both women. There's been a lot of attention paid to LGBTQ teens in contemporary Young Adult lit recently, and rightfully so, and Lies My Girlfriend Told Me is one among many upcoming releases to touch on the socially conscious topic. 

Following the sudden and unexpected death of her girlfriend, Swanee, to cardiac arrest, Alix decides to work through her grief by searching through the things Swanee left behind, looking for mementos of their relationship in her room. What she is looking for is something to remember her by, but what she finds leads her to someone else entirely: Liana, the secret girlfriend that Swanee has been with the whole time she was with Alix. Shocked and betrayed, Alix decides she's going to get to the bottom of the matter... by texting Liana on Swanee's phone as Swanee. As they come closer together, Alix is faced with a heartbreaking quandry: she knows what it's like to be lied to, but does she have the strength to come clean? 

This book sounds incredibly intriguing. And, let's face it, I'm a total cover snob, too. The gorgeous text, the Instagram-y filter, the Cara Delevigne-like model on the front... I was sunk as soon as I saw the front of the book. 

Lies My Girlfriend Told Me, by Julie Anne Peters, is set to be published June 10th. 

What are you waiting on this Wednesday?

Waiting on Wednesday: To Rise Again at a Different Hour

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

Getting your identity stolen is a scary thing... and a thing my family is becoming a little more intimate with this year, after the Seattle Archdiocese had its accounts hacked, and someone stole my mom's social security number! With this issue fresh in my brain, I stumbled across this upcoming release, about a man whose online identity, manipulated by a different person, causes him to call into question everything he knows about the divisions between reality and virtuality. Here's Joshua Ferris' To Rise Again at a Later Hour, due for publication this upcoming May 13th. 

Paul O'Rourke, a complex man who doesn't quite know what to make of his own many contradictions, can't understand the motives behind the mystery, after someone creates multiple social media identities in his name, and begins to impersonate him online. However, it isn't just the flagrant violation of his privacy and rights of his own identity that causes him concern, but the fact that this new, virtual version of himself just might be more interesting than the flesh-and-blood Paul. Now the question comes into play, not only why his identity was stolen in the first place, but what is Paul going to be able to do to get it back. 

Forcing Paul to come to terms with his past problems, present discomfort, and future uncertainty,  as well as his own issues with the internet, To Rise Again at a Later Hour is a hilarious account of one man's grappling with his virtual counterpart and the absurdities of the modern world. 

Why I'm Excited? 

Like I said, identity theft is something I've really got my mind stuck on right now, and growing up with a Dad whose main source of inspiration in this world deals with computers, as well as just having finished the INFO class from Hell last quarter, that explicitly dealt with information systems and social media, I've already got a lot of opinions on this subject matter. I can't wait to see how this one turns out, especially because it's supposed to be very humorously presented, as well. 

What novels are you waiting on this Wednesday? 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Fever

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

While last week's Waiting on Wednesday wasn't a title I had to wait all that long for, today's is a bit farther in advance... June 17th, to be precise. But when you've got a title brewing on the horizon that features a rapidly spreading contagion, and a town full of secrets, well, how am I supposed to wait? Here's The Fever: A Novel, by Megan Abbott, set to debut on June 17th. 



A seemingly idyllic small town's peaceful veneer is shattered, after a young girl collapses in an unexplained seizure during class. Inspired by the real story of 12 New York teenage girls at La Roy High School suddenly stricken with tics, outbursts, and strange convulsions, eventually classified as a mass psychogenic illness, The Fever follows the Nash family, whose closely-kept secrets have been cracked open by the drama, and whose daughter, Deenie, is left reeling after her best friend is the first to fall victim to the strange psychological disorder.
As the terrifying mystery illness spreads through the girls at their high school, sparking rumors of contagion, outbreak, and distrust, and causing rifts between members of the suburban community such violence has now infiltrated, more and more are diagnosed, and the question of what is striking these seemingly happy, normal girls, and who - or what - is to blame, still remains unanswered. 

Why I'm Excited?

Holy Source of Inspiration, Batman! I didn't know what much to make of the official blurb listed on the Goodreads page, but in following it back to the author's own website, I am mightily intrigued. If I can scream through this upcoming release with the same kind of suspense I found in those news articles from the 2013 La Roy outbreak, I will be one happy reader. 

What novels are you waiting on this Wednesday? 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Swan Gondola

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

This week, I'm getting pumped for a release that's coming out really, really, really soon... tomorrow, actually! Detailing the transformative romance between a con man and a mysterious woman named Cecily, set against the vivid turn-of-the-century backdrop of the 1898 Omaha World's Fair, here is The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert, set to debut February 6th. 

Billed towards those who have a passion for the circus-style setups of Water for Elephants and The Night Circus, The Swan Gondola uses the gritty, fast-paced development of the burgeoning city of Omaha at the dimming of the 19th century as a focal point for a magical whirlwind romance, as a ventriloquist con man named Ferret Skerritt falls in love with the enigmatic actress across the way, who reenacts Marie Antionette's tragic beheading for the stage every day, only to disappear into the crowds of the dusty city at the close of the midway. Carrying only her mysterious carpetbag and not speaking a word to the besotted admirer, Skerrit is desperate to find a way to catch Cecily's eye. However, after a moonlight whirl on the lagoon in one of the Exposition's swan-shaped gondolas, the magic of the Fair will change this blossoming relationship just like it will revolutionize the budding metropolis of Omaha, and nothing will be the same. 

Why I'm excited? 

Because the official blurb on their Goodreads page has all of the key words I never knew I needed in it: Wild West, scandalous burlesques, midnight seances, etc. And the leading player of the story is described as a "ventriloquist by trade, con man by birth," which, for whatever reason, has me suddenly imagining Flynn Rider with one of those creepy dummies from The Twilight Zone, and if that doesn't sound intriguing to you, I don't know what sort of magic it takes to peak your interest. 

Regardless, it's a romantic read with interesting characters and an imaginative story line set in an unfamiliar setting, and I'm super pumped. I know what I'll be spending my Valentine's Day with! (And I mean that in a very enthusiastic and excited way!) 

What novels are you waiting on this Wednesday? 

Waiting on Wednesday: Boy, Snow, Bird

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

This week, I'm getting really pumped about a mature re-imagining of a classic story, transplanting a well-worn fairy tale into 1950s suburbia, called Boy, Snow, Bird, by Helen Oyeyemi, set to be published March 6th. 

The story follows ex-New Yorker Boy Novak as she fruitlessly searches for the kind of beauty that she couldn't find in the big city - or in any other place, for that matter - until she lands in a small town in Massachusetts. Once there, she quickly falls for a widower, and suddenly finds herself the new stepmother to young, beautiful Snow Whitman. However, in a new and dramatic twist on the classic tale of crippling disgust for an aesthetic aberration on the part of an evil stepmother, Boy's condemnation of her new family stems from the birth of her own daughter with distinctly dark skin... resulting in the revelation that the Whitmans themselves are actually light-skinned African Americans, only passing themselves off as white to survive in the heated social scheme of mid-century East Coast life. This is the 1950s, and America is far from colorblind, but Boy has to look deep into the mirror for herself to figure out how much reflection really matters. 

Why I'm excited? 

Um, if you know me, then you definitely know that fairy tales? They're my jam. And not just the Disney version... I 4.0'd my class last quarter on Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales without bothering to go to half of the actual classes (and if you don't think that stuff is dark enough for you, go look up "The Story of a Mother." Seriously, I dare you). I feel like Oyeyemi is reinventing the fairy tale in such a revolutionary way here, by harkening back to the darkness of "Snow White" in a way that's totally modern, calling out the horrifying aspect of violent familial aversion through the scope of one of the darkest periods of America's sucky track record for social equality. 

Also, it's supposed to be beautifully written, and I believe it. Helen Oyeyemi is a British-raised, Nigerian-born novelist and playwright whose take on the subject will be very noteworthy, I can just feel it. 

What novels are you waiting on this Wednesday?