Hey guys! So August is basically already upon us and for the month of August I will be participating in the month-long event called ARC August!
This event is hosted by Octavia, Shelly, and Angie over at Read.Sleep.Repeat! I’ll leave their blog info here: Read.Sleep.Repeat and it’s a challenge where you try to read as many ARCs as you can so you can get ahead for your blog reviews and catch up on books you’re behind on! It’s going to be so much fun! I can’t wait for it to start tomorrow, and it takes place during the whole month of August.
I’m so behind on my ARCs and I have plenty that are going out in the next two months so I’ll have plenty to keep me busy.
My TBR is pretty ambitious since some of these books are sequels to books I haven’t read yet so I have to read those as well as the sequel. I don’t think I have that many but if I do I’ll have to read those as well!
So here are the books I’m hoping to get to:
First book I want to get to is Shimmer and Burn by Mary Taranta. This book YA Fantasy and I’ll be leaving the summary down below. This cover is just so stunning and wow I love it so so much! Hope I enjoy the book as much as the cover.
Summary: To save her sister’s life, Faris must smuggle magic into a plague-ridden neighboring kingdom in this exciting and dangerous start to a brand-new fantasy duology.
Faris grew up fighting to survive in the slums of Brindaigel while caring for her sister, Cadence. But when Cadence is caught trying to flee the kingdom and is sold into slavery, Faris reluctantly agrees to a lucrative scheme to buy her back, inadvertently binding herself to the power-hungry Princess Bryn, who wants to steal her father’s throne.
Now Faris must smuggle stolen magic into neighboring Avinea to incite its prince to alliance—magic that addicts in the war-torn country can sense in her blood and can steal with a touch. She and Bryn turn to a handsome traveling magician, North, who offers protection from Avinea’s many dangers, but he cannot save Faris from Bryn’s cruelty as she leverages Cadence’s freedom to force Faris to do anything—or kill anyone—she asks. Yet Faris is as fierce as Bryn, and even as she finds herself falling for North, she develops schemes of her own.
With the fate of kingdoms at stake, Faris, Bryn, and North maneuver through a dangerous game of magical and political machinations, where lives can be destroyed—or saved—with only a touch.
Release date: August 8th 2017
I also want to get to the book All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis. This book is something that I really think is relevant and important. I’ll leave the summary down below but from what I gathered from the summary, I feel this book will be amazing and I’m excited to see where this book goes. I really hope it will be!
Summary: Speth Jime is anxious to deliver her Last Day speech and celebrate her transition into adulthood. The moment she turns fifteen, Speth must pay for every word she speaks (“Sorry” is a flat ten dollars and a legal admission of guilt), for every nod ($0.99/sec), for every scream ($0.99/sec) and even every gesture of affection. She’s been raised to know the consequences of falling into debt, and can’t begin to imagine the pain of having her eyes shocked for speaking words that she’s unable to afford.
But when Speth’s friend Beecher commits suicide rather than work off his family’s crippling debt, she can’t express her shock and dismay without breaking her Last Day contract and sending her family into Collection. Backed into a corner, Speth finds a loophole: rather than read her speechrather than say anything at allshe closes her mouth and vows never to speak again. Speth’s unexpected defiance of tradition sparks a media frenzy, inspiring others to follow in her footsteps, and threatens to destroy her, her family and the entire city around them.
Release date: August 29th, 2017
Up next on my TBR is Hunting Prince Dracula, and also along the lines with that is Stalking Jack the Ripper. I haven’t read it yet so I need to read Stalking Jack the Ripper then dive into Hunting Prince Dracula. Jack the Ripper and Dracula are two characters I really enjoy reading and learning about so when this series came out I knew I needed to read it! I hope I love them like so many people already have! I’ll post the covers for both books below, as well as the Stalking Jack the Ripper summary.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Audrey Rose Wadsworth was born a lord’s daughter, with a life of wealth and privilege stretched out before her. But between the social teas and silk dress fittings, she leads a forbidden secret life.
Against her stern father’s wishes and society’s expectations, Audrey often slips away to her uncle’s laboratory to study the gruesome practice of forensic medicine. When her work on a string of savagely killed corpses drags Audrey into the investigation of a serial murderer, her search for answers brings her close to her own sheltered world.
Release date (Hunting Prince Dracula): September 19th, 2017
And I’ll also be reading Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust which I’ve heard is a feminist Snow White retelling and I’m so down for that! I’m just so down to read this and I honestly have heard much about it which is weird but I will be diving into it soon I hope! The cover is stunning though let’s be honest!
Summary: At sixteen, Mina’s mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone—has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother.
Fifteen-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image, at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories, displacing Mina. Now Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do—and who to be—to win back the only mother she’s ever known…or else defeat her once and for all.
Entwining the stories of both Lynet and Mina in the past and present, Girls Made of Snow and Glass traces the relationship of two young women doomed to be rivals from the start. Only one can win all, while the other must lose everything—unless both can find a way to reshape themselves and their story.
Release date: September 5th, 2017
So I also really want to get to some of my eARCs off Netgalley so I’ll be listing a few that I’ll be working hard to get to.
First up is When I Cast Your Shadow by Sarah Porter. I haven’t read her other book Vassa in the Night which is a fairy tale retelling, and I think this book is a paranormal series I believe. It sounds super good and creepy; and I can’t wait to try out her writing and see what I think!
Summary: After her troubled older brother, Dashiell, dies of an overdose, sixteen-year-old Ruby is overcome by grief and longing. What she doesn’t know is that Dashiell’s ghost is using her nightly dreams of him as a way to possess her body and to persuade her twin brother, Everett, to submit to possession as well.
Dashiell tells Everett that he’s returned from the Land of the Dead to tie up loose ends, but he’s actually on the run from forces crueler and more powerful than anything the Bohnacker twins have ever imagined….
Release date: September 12th, 2017
I also really want and need to read Zero Repeat Forever by G. S. Prendergast which I believe is a fantasy novel?? Maybe Sci-fi. I’ve heard it’s like the 5th Wave, but I wouldn’t know since I haven’t read The 5th Wave so….But the cover looks so cool and I really want to get to this book this coming month and see how I enjoy it!
Summary: He has no voice, or name, only a rank, Eighth. He doesn’t know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind.
Dart the humans. Leave them where they fall.
His job is to protect his Offside. Let her do the shooting.
Until a human kills her…
Sixteen year-old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade, annihilating entire cities, taking control of the Earth. Isolated in the wilderness, Raven and her friends have only a fragment of instruction from the human resistance.
Shelter in place.
Which seems like good advice at first. Stay put. Await rescue. Raven doesn’t like feeling helpless but what choice does she have?
Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend.
Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear. But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival comes to depend on trusting each other…
Release Date: August 29th, 2017
I know the next couple of books coming up are pretty ambitious to include them in this TBR but I will try my hardest to get to them! I’m being overly ambitious but I don’t care!
- Amber Sky by Claire Warner and this came out in June so I’m behind on this but I still want to read this anyways.
- Summary: Beneath the Amber Sky, the nobility control the food, education, and the mysterious C.O.I.L.S of Copper and Brass. To Tay, struggling to keep her siblings alive, the ideas of rebellion and freedom are distant and unreachable.
But when her father is arrested, she begs Darius James, the son of the Overseer, to save his life. Darius agrees, but his help costs her a favour, one he can call in at any time.
Darius’ favour will bring her to the Palace, and the perfect position to help the growing rebellion. But the court has games beyond anything she has seen before, and Darius’ secrets will add to the danger.
Tay is now able to make a difference, to join the rebellion, find the C.O.I.L.S and discover the secrets of the Amber Sky. All she has to do is survive.
- Release Date: June 23rd, 2017
- Summary: Beneath the Amber Sky, the nobility control the food, education, and the mysterious C.O.I.L.S of Copper and Brass. To Tay, struggling to keep her siblings alive, the ideas of rebellion and freedom are distant and unreachable.
- Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller. I got a physical arc but also an eARC off Netgalley so I really need to get on this badly because I’ve heard really good things about it!
- Summary: Sallot Leon is a thief, and a good one at that. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape the drudgery of life as a highway robber and get closer to the upper-class—and the nobles who destroyed their home.
When Sal steals a flyer for an audition to become a member of The Left Hand—the Queen’s personal assassins, named after the rings she wears—Sal jumps at the chance to infiltrate the court and get revenge.
But the audition is a fight to the death filled with clever circus acrobats, lethal apothecaries, and vicious ex-soldiers. A childhood as a common criminal hardly prepared Sal for the trials. And as Sal succeeds in the competition, and wins the heart of Elise, an intriguing scribe at court, they start to dream of a new life and a different future, but one that Sal can have only if they survive.
- Release date: August 29th 2017
- Summary: Sallot Leon is a thief, and a good one at that. But gender fluid Sal wants nothing more than to escape the drudgery of life as a highway robber and get closer to the upper-class—and the nobles who destroyed their home.
- House of Chaos by Sarai Henderson is the last book I want to try and get into. I got this off Netgalley and it was honestly a cover request. The cover drew me in and I decided to request it and see if I would get it. So I hope to get to this as well but I’m not holding my breath for that…
- Summary: Sixteen years ago, Tabri showed up in the mountains an orphaned child with the magic of the Chaotics running through her veins. She survived the bitter winter, the wrath of a yeti, and mutinied on the flying pirate ship Stallings, but then the Madnesi came.
Nell’s Furyon bloodline and elemental magic make her the perfect warrior. Perfect to revenge her sister’s death at the hand of a Madnesi Lord, to defend the Chaotic until her magic fully emerges and to defeat the masses of rotting undead who threaten the survival of the Wilders. If only there was more time in the day.
The Earth Stone has given the two companions a path to safety, but Tabri’s magic is on the fritz and Nell has completely lost her mind with grief. Can they hold it together long enough to allow Chaos to shine a light in the darkness, or will the Madnesi destroy all magic in the world along with the prophecy?
- Release Date: September 13th, 2017
- Summary: Sixteen years ago, Tabri showed up in the mountains an orphaned child with the magic of the Chaotics running through her veins. She survived the bitter winter, the wrath of a yeti, and mutinied on the flying pirate ship Stallings, but then the Madnesi came.
And that is my ARC August TBR! Keep checking Twitter and the hashtag and see what everyone else is doing and how they’re doing! Wish me luck this month and keep an eye on my wrap-up I’ll be posting for this read-a-thon.
Let me know if you plan on participating and I’ll see you in my next post!
Lo's Lo-Down on Books 