Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Today's recommendation comes from Sandra, who loved Natalie C. Parker's much-buzzed debut, Beware the Wild.
Beware the swampy places, child,
Beware the dark and wild,
Many a soul has wandered there,
And many a soul has died.
Beware the Wild, southern gothic at its best, makes Natalie C. Parker’s debut novel a standout novel. Even better it satisfies a love of the creepy embedded into a story of love, family and friendship in the small town of Sticks, Louisiana where life moves placidly, slowly and uneventfully.
Or, so it seems to its residents who literally suffer from collective memory loss.
Swamps are not welcoming places. They’re the home of dangerous creatures and brackish waters. Alligators wait to snap a person with rocket-like speed, nasty plants sting, black bears abound and cottonmouths and other dastardly reptiles appear like they’re part of the ground.
But the swamp surrounding Sticks, Louisiana is worse than any imagination or reality can create. That swamp has a life of its own. It’s a place made of mud where dangerous creatures and slime abound in a substance that beguiles like glittering fireflies and beckons with a metaphorical siren song.
Sterling thrusts aside her fears to answer the call of the swamp. Her brother Phim has disappeared into its depths. Worse yet, a sister has replaced him and no one remembers the brother she adored. Phim must be rescued from the claws of the darkly disturbing and dangerous depths of the killer swamp and the sister returned to wherever she came from.
Parker’s novel rivals any gothic I’ve read.
Its unique story captivated me. Her writing creates characters who grow, learn and explore what lies beneath the surface in both the swamp and in their hearts. I highly recommend Beware the Wild for its carefully woven tale and its finely detailed characters--both human and swamp.
Find it at Amazon | Powell's | Goodreads
I can't recall who specifically recommended Katherine Center's Happiness for Beginners, but I'm most glad that whomever that was mentioned it--because it's most definitely a Sarah book, despite that it involves **shudder** camping. (UGH!)
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @SarahSMoon or tag me on Instagram @sarahbethmoon and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
I always feel weird recommending a "big" book that's gotten a lot of attention, because it feels like those books don't need me, but the heart likes what the heart likes, you know? In this case, I just finished reading and enjoyed the hell out of Alexandra Bracken's new epic time travel novel, Passenger.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @SarahSMoon or tag me on Instagram @sarahbethmoon and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Stephanie Tromly’s first novel, Trouble is a Friend of Mine, packs clever dialog, great characters and a complex mystery into a quick paced and excellent read.
Cordelia Jensen's debut novel first got on my radar thanks to Stasia Ward Kehoe's guest post for our Verse Week celebration this year. While I don't read all the blogs, it seems like it's not received much attention and I'm here to remedy that, because folks, Skyscraping is a special book.
I coined the term "nostalgia lit" on a podcast episode a couple years ago, and I'm generally a fairly reluctant about books set in near history, but Skyscraping is a wonderful example of this particular almost-contemporary setting.
You know all the ways you can kill a girl?
God, there are so many.
Courtney Summers' new novel, All The Rage, is out today and it's a difficult, important book that you need to pay attention to.
Al The Rageis an indictment of a culture that shames and silences girls when they need support the most, that tells them that they are not valued; this is the culture that creates the Steubenvilles. (Let's be honest, Steubenville is not one place, it is everywhere.)
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Richard Corben captures the gothic sensibility and the fears that plagued Edgar Allan Poe in his graphic representation of the great master’s work. Poe’s soulful poem Spirits of the Dead is a fitting title for Corben’s work.
Thy soul shall find itself alone
Mid dark thoughts of the gray tombstone ——
Not one, of all the crowd, to pry
Into thine hour of secrecy.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Have I ever told you guys what prompted me to pick up my first Courtney Milan book?
Obviously I'd heard of her, but I didn't decide to read one of her novels until one date I was screwing around on Tumblr (as one does) and accidentally tapped on the notes link on the bottom of a Tumblr post from one of the many Australian Shepherd Tumblrs I follow and noticed that the person who'd like the post of a cute Aussie puppy was Courtney Milan. Obviously, this was important information! A quite look at Courtney's Twitter feed told me that yes indeed she shares her life with one of these wacky dogs too. So, I picked up one of her books, even though historicals set in England aren't usually my cup of tea and enjoyed it.
And this, my friends, is why book marketing is such a tough nut to crack.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Quiet books aren't the trend right now, but they're still my favorites.
One of the real masters of quiet YA novels is C.K. Kelly Martin, who's been writing for a long time, but is deserving of far more acclaim and attention than she receives. So, it's no surprise that her latest, The Sweetest Thing You Can Sing, is another excellent, subtle novel that fans of contemporary YA shouldn't miss.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
Today, Sandra is recommending a book that's straight-up fun, the always-entertaining Jennifer Armentrout's Don't Look Back.
On its surface, Don't Look Back shouldn't be that gripping. The plot is not unique: murder, amnesia, uncertainty, danger and a dark shadow haunts the main character, Samantha Franco. But Jennifer Armentrout’s addictive plotting make this mystery deepens into an unforeseen denouement, an unravelling of a long-held secret.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Funny how the last thing we want the world to see is almost the first thing to show.
I could have sworn that I featured Courtney Summers' Some Girls Are on Recommendation Tuesday previously, but alas, I had not. Therefore, I'm fixing that today.
Some Girls Are is a book I read a relatively long time ago, when it came out in 2010 (there were a lot of fantastic contemporary YA novels released that year). This is a tough story, I'm warning you, but one that's extremely important.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Ms. Marvel, G. Willow Wilson's comic about teen superhero Kamala Khan, came highly recommended by many, many people. I usually don't care for the big comic publishers (Marvel, DC), largely because they're too slick for me, but the glowing recommendations from friends, plus the ridiculous controversy around meant my interest was piqued--and I pretty much loved it.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Today's recommendation comes from Sandra, who loved Natalie C. Parker's much-buzzed debut, Beware the Wild.
Beware the swampy places, child,
Beware the dark and wild,
Many a soul has wandered there,
And many a soul has died.
Beware the Wild, southern gothic at its best, makes Natalie C. Parker’s debut novel a standout novel. Even better it satisfies a love of the creepy embedded into a story of love, family and friendship in the small town of Sticks, Louisiana where life moves placidly, slowly and uneventfully.
Or, so it seems to its residents who literally suffer from collective memory loss.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
It's not often I find a work on literary fiction that has a story as compelling as its prose--hence, I don't recommend it very often. Sparkling, thoughtful writing is wonderful, but it feels awfully vapid when the story falters. Or it's filled with dull Middle Aged Man Angst.
Discovering Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You was an unexpected surprise, as result. While imperfect (as all novels are), it hits so many notes that make worth checking out, even if you normally avoid literary fiction. It's a historical novel, though the 1970s time period is one of the book's less-developed aspects, but more than anything it's a story of family and marriage.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.
I feel kind of ridiculous recommending a big book with a big publicity push behind it, but it's a rare sequel that enthralls me as much as the original.
The Fifth Wave was one of my favorite books last year, thanks to its editor literally shoving it in my hands and I clicked preorder on the follow up, The Infinite Sea, before it even had a title. The sophisticated plot, overwhelmingly ominous tone and captivatingly complex characters stood out in the sea of lookalike post-apocalyptic novels
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
If I were to make a list of novels for people who really love the X-Men movies, but are fed the hell up with the ridiculously thin characterization of the women, Maureen McGowan's Dust Chronicles trilogy would be high on that list.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
I have been on a graphic novel and comics binge of epic proportions lately, burning up my Multnomah County Library card at a furious rate with all checkouts. I've read a ton of good ones, but one that sticks out and I'm going to have to pick up for my forever and always shelf is Laura Lee Gulledge's Page by Paige.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
This week, I'm excited to recommend the cornpunk dystopian adventure Under the Empyrean Sky by Chuck Wendig, the first in his Heartland Trilogy.
Think you're burned out on dystopian stories because they are all kind of the same? Well this one is completely different and unforgettable.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
I discovered Lisa Schroeder's writing several year ago because someone pointed be toward this post she wrote on her blog about Friday Night Lights (which I can't seem to find, but I love this other one about what Friday Night Lights meant to her).
Obviously, I had to read all of her books, and The Day Before ended up being one of my favorite novels ever--her books are ones I'm constantly recommending to both teens and adults because her stories ring so true to many people's experiences and her writing is simply lovely. (Laura wrote more about Lisa's awesomeness last year for Verse Novel Week 2013.)
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
I'm not sure how I discovered Jill Sorenson's Aftershock suspense series--it's highly likely that I first heard about it from Brie, when I was looking for a series to replace Laura Griffin's Tracers series, which isn't as fun as it once was.
Regardless, this series continues to hit that sweet spot of interesting characters and fabulous WTFery. (That's a compliment.)
There are several books and this series, and while they do stand alone, there's actually quite a bit of world-building in the first novel, Aftershock, which depicts the immediate aftermath of a catastrophic earthquake in San Diego. We're introduced to characters who will serve as protagonists in future installments and the earthquake influences characters' arcs in the future. So, basically, start with Aftershock and read in order if you get hooked.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
When author Ruthie Knox emailed me about a review copy of the Summer Rain anthology, I jumped on it when I saw the lineup of authors contributing to this collection of "novelettes." In addition to Ruthie, favorites like Molly O'Keefe and Mary Anne Rivers also contributed to the anthology which supports the important work of RAINN.
Each of the nine novelettes is a complete story (unlike so many anthologies which are too often stuffed with teasers for other books *shakes fist*), thematically bound together by the idea of summer rain. The major are contemporary stories, but there are a couple of science fiction/fantasy entries and there's also a "new adult" entry from Audra North.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
This week, Sandra is getting in on the fun and recommending a collection of short stories she really, really enjoyed, A Darker Shade of Sweden.
Without any sense of shame, I admit to judging a book by its cover. I laser in on a beautifully bound book. But, a book can’t get by on looks alone. Intelligent writing is what truly endears it.
A Darker Shade of Sweden edited by John-Henri Holmberg has it all: beauty and brains.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
I want to reach back into my history with a grade-school pink eraser, scrubbing away my decisions like mistakes on a math test. Too bad I drew my mistakes in ink.
This week I'm happy to recommend a debut contemporary YA novel, Open Road Summer by Emery Lord. If you're looking for a a summer-themed read that offers a bit more than you're expected, this is a great choice.
There are oodles of summer road trip stories and I've gotten pretty particular about them, as much as I enjoy road trip narratives as concept. Open Road Summer is a bit different, however. Instead of a quest sort of story, the narrator, Reagan, is tagging along with her best friend, Dee, on a very structured sort of road trip--Dee's first major tour as emerging country artist Lilah Montgomery.
Reagan is not only grabbing the opportunity to spend time with her close friend who is rocketing to stardom, but to run away from a bad breakup and make changes in her life: No more partying, drinking or boys that are bad for her. She's a bit surly, and definitely not very forgiving of other people--I found Reagan infinitely relatable.
There is more good than bad. Life and love win if you let them. If you believe in them.
Y'all know I've gushed quite a bit about Liza Palmer's books, especially last year's marvelous Nowhere But Home. As a result, I was surprised that I haven't written about any of her other novels beyond a vague, "Yo, this is awesome!"
I actually have a hard time picking a favorite of Liza's novels because I like them each for different reasons. More Like Her was actually the last Liza Palmer book I read, despite that I immediately bought her entire backlist after reading Nowhere But Home, and it sicks in my mind because it has one of my favorite final chapters (though, Liza pretty much kicks ass when it comes to last chapters).
That plus the fantastically well-done friendships and stickiness of work relationships makes More Like Her a can't miss novel and tied with Nowhere But Home for my favorite.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Jennifer Echols is another relatively well-known author with a book I'm happy to include in my Recommendation Tuesday series. While Jennifer is well-loved by readers, she's generally under-recognized by gatekeeper types, despite having embraced positive depictions of teen girl sexuality and identity in her novels for many years.
Her latest, Biggest Flirts--the first in a new series of connected novels, is no different.
Tia, the first person narrator of Biggest Flirts, is a senior at her Florida high school, drummer in the marching band and notorious flirt. She unashamedly prefers casual hookups, eschewing boyfriends, and even has a regular hookup buddy (Sawyer, who's going to be a main character in the third book in the Superlatives series).
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. Basically, this is my way of making Tuesday a little more awesome. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
View all of the past recommendations over here.
Wouldn't we all look guilty, if someone searched hard enough?
Have you ever read a book that you wanted everyone you know to read so you can talk about it with them?
Dangerous Girls by Abigail Haas, which Racquel over at The Book Barbies has recommended rather aggressively for some time now, is one of those books.
Dangerous Girls opens with a 911 call on Aruba. A group of privileged teenagers on spring break report that they've found their friend stabbed to death, blood covering her room and the glass door broken. Elise, the dead girl, is the best friend of narrator Anna, a relative newcomer to this ultra-wealthy crowd, with her "new money" contrasting with the old New England wealth of many of her friends, including Elise. Before she knows it, Anna is arrested and awaiting trial for her best friend's murder.
As Anna's fighting the charges, the non-linear narrative explores the complicated nature of friendship, the very idea of truth, and how easy it is for court of public opinion to depict anyone as a monster.
If she was going to die, she might as well die sarcastic.
Do you love vampire books?
Are you burned out on vampires?
Do you think that you'd never, ever love a vampire book?
Are modern-day vampires too sparkly and innocuous for you?
If you answered "yes" to any of the above, then I have a recommendation for you!
I suppose I should feel a smidgen guilty for recommending a "big" book on Recommendation Tuesday, but I don't because Holly Black's The Coldest Girl in Coldtown is one of the more original, captivating novels I've read in a long time.
Better yet. it's a darn near perfect audiobook, mixing in atmospheric music and Chistine Lakin's understated, but effective narration.
Recommendation Tuesday started as a joke and is now an official thing. If you've got a book to recommend on this or any Tuesday, tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
This week's Recommendation Tuesday is part of our Verse Novel Week celebration! View all of the past recommendations over here.
And the pomegranates,
like memories, are bittersweet
as we huddle together,
remembering just how good
life used to be.
— Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
When I get ready to put together Verse Novel Week each year, I always try to (rather foolishly) get caught up on verse novels I've missed and check out as many as I can find from the library. This year, my pile reached fairly ridiculous proportions, but at the top was Guadalupe Garcia McCall's Under the Mesquite, which came highly recommended by Nafiza, who has excellent taste.
Under the Mesquite is one of those books that will just suck you into its words and rhythm, and the verse format adds so much to that feeling as Garcia McCall weaves together Mexican American immigrant Lupita's story of family, loss and hope.
Y'all, last week, I put on my crown and declared that Tuesdays are now "Recommendation Tuesday." I will be recommending things on Tuesdays, because Tuesday is pretty much worthless and we all need more awesome in our lives. You're welcome to join the fun too. Tweet me at @FullShelves and I'll help spread the word.
“Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are. We have to look inside many. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again. He selects one and holds it out to his friend. “Maybe this?”
— Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry
Gabrielle Zevin snuck up on me (metaphorically) and managed to snatch a spot on my forever auto-buy favorite authors list. I'm not sure how it happened, but her writing has a quality to it that sticks with my long after I've closed the covers of her books.
Her gripping futuristic family saga, the Birthright series, is a remarkable character-driven trio of books that is one of my favorite series, full-stop.
Her newest, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry is no less awesome, though much different.
(No, Recommendation Tuesday isn't an actual thing, but I wanted to highlight this book without writing a formal review/think piece/whatever, so I'm running with it.)
Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they’re made for you, but you can’t avoid them.
The first book I read this year was one I downloaded from Edelweiss on a whim because none of the 500+ books on my Kindle, nor any of the books falling out of my overflowing bookshelves seemed like they'd fit what I was in the mood to read.
I hate winter with a passion, and wanted something light but not shallow to pick me up--and believe it or not, that sort of thing is tough to find. Fortunately, I was lucky enough (after trying some straight-up terrible ones--I'm looking at you, On the Rocks) to stumble upon Scottish author Mhairi McFarlane's You Had Me at Hello, which was extremely popular upon its release in the U.K.
At its core, You Had Me at Hello is a story about friendship.
University's like this little world, a bubble of time separate from everything before and everything after.
Rachel and Ben met their first day at college and instantly became an inseparable duo. We see their friendship grow throughout college through a series of scattered flashbacks from present day, which finds Rachel and Ben separated for several years.
Disclosure: Review copy provided by the publisher.
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