Cleaning Up My TBR With a Giveaway (US Only) - Down the TBR Hole #24

This meme was started by Lost in a Story.  Here is how it works:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

Because I have so many to do, I'm going to try to do this weekly, and do 10 at a time.


1.   The Deadly Sister by Eliot Schrefer:

From the author of School for Dangerous Girls, another suspenseful stunner about a girl who helps her sister escape from a murder charge - and then falls for the murder victim's brother.

Abby Goodwin is sure her sister Maya isn't a murderer. But her parents don't agree. Her friends don't agree. And the cops definitely don't agree. Maya is a drop-out, a stoner, a girl who's obsessed with her tutor, Jefferson Andrews...until he ends up dead. Maya runs away, and leaves Abby following the trail of clues. Each piece of evidence points to Maya, but it also appears that Jefferson had secrets of his own. And enemies. Like his brother, who Abby becomes involved with...until he falls under suspicion.
Is Abby getting closer to finding the true murderer? Or is someone leading her down a twisted false path?
 
My thoughts:
I've wanted to read something by this author for a while, but just don't know that this will be the one.

Verdict: Toss



2.  The Mark by Jen Nadol:

Sixteen year old Cassandra Renfield has seen the mark since forever: a glow around certain people as if a candle were held behind their back.

The one time she mentioned it to someone else, the mark was dismissed as a trick of the light. So Cassie has kept quiet, considering its rare appearances odd, but insignificant. Until the day she watches a man die. Mining her memories, Cassie realizes she can see a person's imminent death. Not how or where, only when: today.

Cassie searches her past, her philosophy lessons, even her new boyfriend for answers, answers, always careful to hide her secret. How does the mark work? Why her?

Most importantly: if you know today is someone's last, should you tell them?

My thoughts:  
Sounds like a lot of other books that were popular around the time I added this to my TBR. 

Verdict: Toss



3.  Primacy by J.E. Fishman:

A New Species of Suspense

Tens of thousands of monkeys and apes suffer in animal testing labs. If just one of them could speak, what might it say and whose interests would it threaten?

Researcher Liane Vinson thinks she can handle her promotion to the primate lab at Pentalon, the world's biggest and most secretive animal testing facility. Going along to get along, she'll ignore both the vitriol of animal rights protestors outside the front gates and the cold calculus that her bosses use to distance themselves from their subjects behind closed doors.

But when Liane discovers that one of her favorite apes, a young bonobo called Bea, has shockingly developed the ability to speak, all her doubts awaken--doubts about right and wrong, about following the rules, and about sacrificing individuals to the supposedly greater good.

She'd spare the unique being the knife if she could, but only Axel Flickinger, Pentalon's cold-hearted CEO, holds the power of life and death within the closely monitored laboratory. If there's any chance of rescuing Bea, Liane will need to involve her neighbor, Mickey Ferrone, a rough-hewn veterinarian with his own grievances.

Soon, at risk of life and limb, Liana and Mickey must challenge forces almost beyond their comprehension: a malevolent corporation, a venal federal government, and animal rights movement that's lost its way--and all of our assumptions about man's primacy in nature.

My thoughts:  
There was a time when this was the exact type of book I would go "ape" over. Not sure it's one I'd ever get around to again.

Verdict:  Toss



4.  Destined by Jessie Harrell:

When Psyche receives a prophecy gone horribly wrong, she learns that even the most beautiful girl in Greece can have a hideous future. Her fate? Fall in love with the one creature even the gods fear.

As she feels herself slipping closer into the arms of the prophecy, Psyche must choose between the terrifyingly tender touch she feels almost powerless to resist and the one constant she's come to expect out of life: you cannot escape what is destined.
 
My thoughts:
This is another one that just sounds so much like the type of books I was reading at the time. Nothing new.

Verdict:  Toss

5.   We All Wore Stars: Memories of Anne Frank from Her Classmates by Theo Coster and Marjolijn De Jager:

In 1941, Theo Coster was a student at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum, one in a class of 28 Jewish children that the Nazis had segregated from the rest of the Dutch population. Among Theo's fellow students was a young Anne Frank, whose diary would later become one of the most important documents of the Holocaust. In this remarkable group portrait, Coster and five of his fellow classmates gather their personal stories and memories of Anne. The accounts collected here do not just help us to rediscover Anne Frank. They also stand on their own as remarkable stories of ingenuity and survival during the Holocaust--from Albert Gomes de Mesquita, who hid in ten different towns across Europe--to Hannah Goslar, who experienced the horrors of Bergen-Belsen but also made a miraculous reconnection with Anne days before her death.
  
My thoughts:
I'm always really fascinated by anyone else that was alive during the holocaust and survived, and their connections to Anne Frank definitely keep my wanting to learn more.

Verdict: Keep



6.  Anne Frank Remembered:  The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold:

For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, here at last is Miep Geis's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims.

She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope.

It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts....Yours, Anne

From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange, checkered diary -- Anne's legacy -- in Otto Frank's hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty.

My thoughts:
As with the book above, one I want to read more about.

Verdict: Keep



7.  The Candidates by Inara Scott:

Dancia Lewis has a secret problem: whenever she sees someone threaten a person she cares about, it's a disaster. Cars skid. Structures collapse. Usually someone gets hurt. So Dancia does all she can to avoid getting close to anyone, hoping to suppress her powers and stay under the radar. But when recruiters from the prestigious Delcroix Academy offer her a scholarship, she accepts. After all, it's a school for diplomats' kids and prodigies, not B students with uncontrollable telekinetic tendencies. Or is it?

This captivating debut, the first in a series, puts a paranormal twist on private school.

My thoughts:  
Doesn't sound that unique, so probably  not something I'll get to.

Verdict: Toss



 8.  Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu:

Once upon a time, Hazel and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best friends. But they couldn't help it - Hazel and Jack fit, in that way you only read about in books. And they didn't fit anywhere else.

And then, one day, it was over. Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. And while her mom tried to tell her that this sometimes happens to boys and girls at this age, Hazel had read enough stories to know that it's never that simple. And it turns out, she was right. Jack's heart had been frozen, and he was taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to live in a palace made of ice. Now, it's up to Hazel to venture into the woods after him. Hazel finds, however, that these woods are nothing like what she's read about, and the Jack that Hazel went in to save isn't the same Jack that will emerge. Or even the same Hazel.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's "The Snow Queen," Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.

My thoughts:
As much as I love a fairy tale retelling, I don't know if I'll ever get to this one.

Verdict: Toss



9.  The Last Blind Date by Linda Yellin:

A fun, charming memoir about a woman who falls in love, packs her bags, and starts over in the city that eats its young.

My thoughts:
There was a time when I actually cared about dating, but now that I've pretty much completely given up on ever having another date, I just don't really care to even read about it anymore.

Verdict:  Toss






10.  Ghost Trackers #1 by Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Tim Waggoner:

In this spine-tingling new series, the stars of TV's GHOST HUNTERS introduce readers to a team of paranormal investigators who reunite to defeat a sinister force they unleashed long ago. . . .

For fifteen years, Amber, Drew, and Trevor have barely been able to recall -- let alone explain -- what happened the terrifying night they decided to explore the old, abandoned Lowry House. According to local legend, the house was cursed by a dark past and inhabited by evil. It burst into flames on the night of their visit, leaving the friends traumatized and nearly dead with only vague memories of the frightening events they had witnessed inside. Now, on the eve of their high school reunion, they have gathered to reopen their investigation and figure out, once and for all, what took place that fateful night . . . before the supernatural entity they escaped threatens to overtake them again.

My thoughts:
Now I didn't actually watch this one, but I still am interested in  maybe reading this one.

Verdict: Keep


Final Thoughts:
Tossing all but 3 again this week!  Sorry this post is a little late, I had no internet a few days this week!  I also think I'm going to start pointing out how many books are on my Want to Read list on Goodreads each week. So you can see that I may have dropped some, but you can also see how many I've added during the week as well.  This week, after taking these 7 off, I have more than the 3,188 books listed  last week, I added so many more that I now have 3,191.  Oops.

Have you read any of these?  Would you suggest I keep any I'm tossing?  And if you're inspired to do this on your blog, please feel free to join in and share a link in the comments, since it's not really catching on, I'm not going to waste time with the link up this week.  It will also get you an extra entry into my giveaway at the bottom of this post.      
 

Giveaway:
Once again this is a US only giveaway, unless you are International and see a book here you really want and would be willing to pay for the difference in the shipping through Paypal or some other way.  This week I'm upping the prize, you get to pick any two books from the pictures below, as long as they don't get traded away, or picked by last week's winner, and I will pick a surprise book from the piles to add to your choice.  Here are your choices:   

2018 ARCs:

2017 ARCs:

2014-2015 ARCs:

And, surprise!  I am adding in my early 2019 ARCs now.  You can pick one of your two choices from the picture below, the other book you pick needs to come from the pictures above.

Once again I'm going to let you pick two, along with me throwing in a surprise third book!  Just enter the Rafflecopter below. 

  a Rafflecopter giveaway