Lisa's Looking Forward To #30 - September 17th, 2019

Back to joining up with the Waiting on Wednesday Posts, and the Can't Wait Wednesday posts hosted by Wishful Endings.  There are a ton of books out next week that I'm excited for!

From my ARC list for September 17th, 2019:

I want this one so bad!  It sounds just like one that is going to be a big hit.  And I mean they compare it to The Handmaid's Tale, which I haven't read, but love the tv show.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

A speculative thriller in the vein of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Power. Optioned by Universal and Elizabeth Banks to be a major motion picture!

“A visceral, darkly haunting fever dream of a novel and an absolute page-turner. Liggett’s deeply suspenseful book brilliantly explores the high cost of a misogynistic world that denies women power and does it with a heart-in-your-throat, action-driven story that’s equal parts horror-laden fairy tale, survival story, romance, and resistance manifesto. I couldn’t stop reading.” – Libba Bray, New York Times bestselling author

Survive the year.

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 
 

I always love stories that have settings or things that we are familiar with even if they are set in the future, like Costco.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

"If you see a beast, and you have the shot, don't hesitate. Kill it."


For seventeen years, fees have lived separate from beasts. The division of the sexes has kept their world peaceful. Glori Rhodes is like most other fees her age. She adores her neighborhood's abandoned Costco, can bench her body weight, and she knew twenty-seven beast counter attack moves by the time she was seven. She has never questioned the separation of the sexes or the rules that keep her post-nuclear hometown safe. But when her mother secretly gives birth to a baby beast, Glori grows to love the child and can't help wondering: What really is the difference between us and them?

When her brother, at the age of five, is snatched in a vicious raid, Glori and her best friend, Su, do the unthinkable - covertly infiltrate the City of Beasts to get him back. What's meant to be a smash-and-grab job quickly becomes the adventure of a lifetime as the fees team up with a fast-talking, T-shirt cannon wielding beast named Sway, and Glori starts to see that there's more to males, and her own history, than she's been taught. Glori, Sway, and a motley cohort of friends will go to the ends of the earth to find her little brother. And maybe save their divided world while they're at it.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.

Two of my favorite movies/tv shows are compared to this, although the cover is only so-so for me.  I wish I'd had time to read this one!

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer in this funny, action-packed novel about a coven of witchy babysitters who realize their calling to protect the innocent and save the world from an onslaught of evil.

Seventeen-year-old Esme Pearl has a babysitters club. She knows it's kinda lame, but what else is she supposed to do? Get a job? Gross. Besides, Esme likes babysitting, and she's good at it.

And lately Esme needs all the cash she can get, because it seems like destruction follows her wherever she goes. Let's just say she owes some people a new tree.

Enter Cassandra Heaven. She's Instagram-model hot, dresses like she found her clothes in a dumpster, and has a rebellious streak as gnarly as the cafeteria food. So why is Cassandra willing to do anything, even take on a potty-training two-year-old, to join Esme's babysitters club?

The answer lies in a mysterious note Cassandra's mother left her: "Find the babysitters. Love, Mom."

Turns out, Esme and Cassandra have more in common than they think, and they're about to discover what being a babysitter really means: a heroic lineage of superpowers, magic rituals, and saving the innocent from seriously terrifying evil. And all before the parents get home.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 

Sounds like it could be an emotional read.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:
 
Fifteen-year-old Lucky loves her grandparents. True, her grandmother forgets things, like turning the stove off, or Lucky's name, but her grandfather takes such good care of them that Lucky doesn't realize how bad things are . . . until she loses her grandfather and is left caring for her grandmother on her own. When her grandma sets the kitchen on fire, Lucky can't hide what's happening any longer, and she is sent into foster care. She quickly learns that some families are okay, and some aren't. And some really, really aren't. None of them feel like home. And they're certainly not family.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 

Another one that sounds like an emotional read.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

The only thing connecting Sloane to her older sister Talley is a list–random places, unfamiliar names, a phone number that she doesn’t recognize.

Ever since Talley died, Sloane has been completely fixated on it: maybe understanding how the items on list connect is the key to understanding why Talley took her own life. Except the clues on the list seem to be pointing her to California, and Talley had never even been there, right?

Turns out the list of things Sloane didn’t know about her sister is much longer than she realized.

She heads out west in search of Adam, the owner of the mysterious phone number, who claims he’d never met Talley. Even though Adam is clearly hiding something, Sloane can’t deny that she’s drawn to him. Can unraveling the cryptic non-sequiturs Talley left behind – and putting her trust in a stranger – heal the hole her sister’s death has left in Sloane’s life?

From author Courtney Sheinmel comes an engaging and heartfelt novel about the bonds of sisterhood, the imprecision of memory, and the incomparable value of finding something to live for.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE. 

This an author that I know I really need to read some day.

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that’s going to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian” thing. She’s interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff.

Will Juliet be able to figure out her life over the course of one magical summer? Is that even possible? Or is she running away from all the problems that seem too big to handle?

With more questions than answers, Juliet takes on Portland, Harlowe, and most importantly, herself. 

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.  

This is another author I know I need to read, and the story on this is really unique sounding!

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Ash gets on a Greyhound bus to the place Bly was last seen: Snowflake, Arizona. Six thousand feet up in the wide red desert, Ash meets Mona; her goat, Socrates; her dog, Cooper; and finds stepbrother Bly, too.


In their ramshackle homes, the walls lined with tinfoil, Mona and her neighbors are all sick. But this isn’t any ordinary sickness: modern life has poisoned them, and when Ash too falls ill, the doctor’s response is, “It’s all in your mind.” Meanwhile, as Ash lives through a cycle of illness and recovery and loss, the world beyond is succumbing to its own affliction: a breakdown of civilization only distantly perceived by Ash and the isolated residents of Snowflake, from which there may or may not be a chance for recovery. This humane and thoughtful novel is about resilience, trust, family, and love, when all seems lost.

Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.

Sounds like a good mystery, with maybe a twist?  And I think maybe this is a Wattpad author?

Here is the blurb from Goodreads:

Griffin Tomlin is dead. And Clara’s sister killed him . . .

Four months after the murder, the entire town of Shiloh is still in shock. For Clara Porterfield, the normal world has crumbled around her in a million chaotic pieces. Now Clara lives in a new reality, where her sister awaits trial for murder, her mother obsessively digs in a dead, frozen garden, and her father lives and breathes denial. At school, Clara is haunted by her classmates' morbid curiosity—and all of the unspoken questions they won’t ask.

But none of them knows what she knows . . .
Now Clara's sister wants something from her—the one thing in all of this that Clara isn't ready to face: the truth about what really happened that night. Because this story didn't die with Griffin Tomlin. There's another story that needs to be told. And sometimes, the lies we're told are nowhere near as deadly as the lies we tell ourselves . . .

 Sound good?  Add to Goodreads HERE.


  
Final Thoughts:
The same number as last week  Have you read any of these yet?  Are they on your TBR?  And hey, while you're here, you should go try to win some of my ARCs from Cleaning Up My TBR Post HERE. The US only giveaway is open till Friday at midnight, there are even some 2019 ARCs that can be one of your two choices. 

AND!  You've got one more day to help me celebrate my 10th blogoversary too!  Yep, you read that right, Lisa Loves Literature has been alive and kicking for 10 years now!  Go HERE and enter for more prizes! 

Review: The Ghosts of Heaven by Marcus Sedgwick (COYER Challenge #2)

First, thanks to Roaring Book Press and Edelweiss for allowing me to read an e-galley of this title.  I of course loved the cover right off, and the idea of the story sounded really intriguing.  I don't know that I was a huge fan of the story though.  It was very creative, and unique, and well-written for sure.  And I made it through the book, and for the most part wasn't bored at any part.  At the beginning of the book, the author makes a note about how it is divided into four different parts, and that the reader can read them in any way they want.  Personally, I'm not sure how true this is.  I feel like they were arranged chronologically and it works that way.  In fact, I think if you read them in a different order, there are small bits in each story that tie back to the story before it, that might not stick out as much to the reader if they didn't read them in order.  But that's my opinion, and how my brain works, so maybe for others it would be okay.  All of them deal with a spiral in some way, the cover is a perfect tie in for that.

The first story is told in poetry form.  It is the story of a girl in the time of cavemen, and references the paintings found in caves that date back to those times.  I skimmed through this rather quickly, as I am not always a big fan of the poetry, and it is a lot of times quicker to read as well.  I get the spiral bit in it, kind of, but not as much as it was set into the other stories.

The second story is a woman in the times of witch hunting.  She and her mother created herbs and "potions" to help those who were sick or in pain.  At the time of the story a new priest has come to town, one who is setting about proving there is a witch to be taken care of.  And in this time period, there are those who would give her up, even though she's helped them, because of their own problems.  Again, a spiral plays into the story, and the wonder of what it might mean.

The third story takes place in a time where asylums were a big thing.  And the story follows a single father who is a psychologist come to work at an asylum in a very remote area.  He and his daughter live on one of the top floors of the building, and the floors below are the different patients, the lower the floor, the worse off their problems are.  The first day there they meet a man who seems like he must work there, but it turns out he is a patient.  And one that lives on the lower floor, because his psychosis has to do with spirals.  I feel like this story brings in the "ghosts" bit from the title.

The final story is set in the future, a world where humans must move on, find a new planet to live on.  It is a space ship that carries 500 people to start a new life for humans on the "New Earth" that has been found.  Besides the 500 people that are in a sleep until they reach the planet, there are 10 sentinels.  These are people who are under a different kind of sleep, one that wakes them up every 10 years in order to see what has happened in the time they were asleep, and make sure things are still working.  The main character is one of these sentinels.  And he begins to wonder if he is really the only one awake during the 12 hours he gets to do his work every 10 years.  Especially when he wakes up to six people being dead.  And according to the computers on board, there is no reason for their deaths, no malfunctioning of anything.  Again there is a spiral tie in because of the ship having to spin to create the fake gravity needed to help with the long journeys in space and human health.  This story has the most tie ins to the other stories, especially at the end of it.  I kind of feel like it would be the best at the end, or if you were going to try a different order, maybe it could be the first one.

Definitely a very complex story overall, and a good one, just not something I would read over again.  I can definitely recommend it to people who enjoy a complex group of stories, and looking for the connections in them.  It is definitely very thought provoking, with numbers and science, nature and history.