Top 10 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. You can find the prompts here.
How is it autumn already in my part of the world? It feels like summer evaporated in the blink of an eye! I read some great books, so that’s something, but I’m being totally honest here: I hate summer. It’s too hot and there are BUGS. Blech. However, it is (apparently) autumn now and that means all the things I like.
Hot chocolate. Knitting weather. Cool breezes bringing me the scent of apples (I live across the street from a farm). It’s my most wonderful time of the year and boy do I have a TBR to fill all that glorious time.
Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee
Release date: 5 October 2017
Bells Broussard thought he had it made when his superpowers manifested early. Being a shapeshifter is awesome. He can change his hair whenever he wants, and if putting on a binder for the day is too much, he’s got it covered. But that was before he became the country’s most-wanted villain.
After discovering a massive cover-up by the Heroes’ League of Heroes, Bells and his friends Jess, Emma, and Abby set off on a secret mission to find the Resistance. Meanwhile, power-hungry former hero Captain Orion is on the loose with a dangerous serum that renders meta-humans powerless, and a new militarized robotic threat emerges. Everyone is in danger. Between college applications and crushing on his best friend, will Bells have time to take down a corrupt government?
Sometimes, to do a hero’s job, you need to be a villain.
C.B. Lee wrote a fantastic book that I reviewed on my old blog. Not Your Hero was a diverse, fun, exciting read that kicked out the Sidekick series. This book, Not Your Villain, sounds like it might even top its predecessor. The main character is genderfluid (THANK YOU!) and is a the country’s most wanted villain.
Are all villains bad, though? That’s debatable. I mean, the Dregs from Six of Crows are technically criminals and loads of people love them. I’m curious to see what Bells will be like in this book.
Protected by Claire Zorn
Release date: 3 October 2017
I have three months left to call Katie my older sister. Then the gap will close and I will pass her. I will get older. But Katie will always be fifteen, eleven months and twenty-one days old.
Hannah’s world is in pieces and she doesn’t need the school counsellor to tell her she has deep-seated psychological issues. With a seriously depressed mum, an injured dad and a dead sister, who wouldn’t have problems?
Hannah should feel terrible but for the first time in ages, she feels a glimmer of hope and isn’t afraid anymore. Is it because the elusive Josh is taking an interest in her? Or does it run deeper than that?
In a family torn apart by grief and guilt, one girl’s struggle to come to terms with years of torment shows just how long old wounds can take to heal.
This is going to be a heart breaker from the sound of things. Protected deals with grief, loss, and Hannah’s future after years of dealing with both and a family that seems too broken to ever put back together. I’m usually pretty good with painful books, so we’ll see how this goes. ;_;
Slider by Pete Hautman
Release date: 12 September 2017
Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete Hautman.
David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he’ll have to do better: he’s going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the world’s greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his mom’s credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater weren’t enough, he’s also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don’t, so they just label him Mal). And don’t even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.
I have to admit, the premise of a kid training for an eating contest sounds hilarious and is probably why I picked this up in the first place. There are hints of deeper meaning though, especially in regards to the main character’s brother who is autistic, but his family doesn’t believe he is? Or they don’t use that label? I’m not sure what that’s going to be like; here’s hoping the rep will be good.
Greetings From Witness Protection by Jake Burt
Release date: 3 October 2017
Nicki Demere is an orphan and a pickpocket. She also happens to be the U.S. Marshals’ best bet to keep a family alive. . . .
The marshals are looking for the perfect girl to join a mother, father, and son on the run from the nation’s most notorious criminals. After all, the bad guys are searching for a family with one kid, not two, and adding a streetwise girl who knows a little something about hiding things may be just what the marshals need.
Nicki swears she can keep the Trevor family safe, but to do so she’ll have to dodge hitmen, cyberbullies, and the specter of standardized testing, all while maintaining her marshal-mandated B-minus average. As she barely balances the responsibilities of her new identity, Nicki learns that the biggest threats to her family’s security might not lurk on the road from New York to North Carolina, but rather in her own past.
From the look of the cover this looks like it will be fairly comedic. I have so many questions, though, that are going to have to be answered! How did Nicki get a job with US Marshals? What did this family do to require witness protection? Who exactly is Nicki?
Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
Release date: 3 October 2017
Love grows such strange things.
For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They’ve also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.
The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he’s even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.
Anna-Maria McLemore has written some beautiful books and her premise for this one sounds like something out of a fairy tale. Not all fairy tales are good, though, and it sounds like some tears and hard decisions will make an appearance. Family curses are always such an interesting plot point. Can they be lifted? Should they be lifted? What will happen when the main characters are faced with that decision? So many facets to this story. 😀
Kid Authors: True Tales of Childhood from Famous Writers by David Stabler
Release date: 10 October 2017
The series that includes Kid Presidents, Kid Artists, and Kid Athletes now chronicles the lives of Kid Authors! Here are true tales of famous writers, from long before they were famous–or even old enough to drive. Did you know:
– Sam Clemens (aka Mark Twain) loved to skip school and make mischief, with his best friend Tom, of course!
– A young J. R. R. Tolkien was bitten by a huge tarantula–or as he called it, -a spider as big as a dragon.-
– Toddler Zora Neale Hurston took her first steps when a wild hog entered her house and started chasing her!
The diverse and inclusive cast includes Roald Dahl, Beverly Cleary, J. K. Rowling, Langston Hughes, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, Stan Lee, and many more.
I’m most curious to learn about these authors because all I usually read about is what they were like when they started writing, which is usually as adults. What kind of past brought writing to them? Were there stories in their past that influenced their works? It helps that more than a few of the featured authors are some of my favorites.
The Midnight Dance by Nikki Katz
Release date: 17 October 2017
When the music stops, the dance begins.
Seventeen-year-old Penny is a lead dancer at the Grande Teatro, a finishing school where she and eleven other young women are training to become the finest ballerinas in Italy. Tucked deep into the woods, the school is overseen by the mysterious and handsome young Master who keeps the girls ensconced in the estate – and in the only life Penny has never known.
But when flashes of memories, memories of a life very different from the one she thinks she’s been leading, start to appear, Penny begins to question the Grand Teatro and the motivations of the Master. With a kind and attractive kitchen boy, Cricket, at her side, Penny vows to escape the confines of her school and the strict rules that dictate every step she takes. But at every turn, the Master finds a way to stop her, and Penny must find a way to escape the school and uncover the secrets of her past before it’s too late.
There have been a lot of dancing books on my TBR lately. That, and the fact that the synopsis for this put me in the mind of The Phantom of the Opera, makes The Midnight Dance a tantalizing story.
Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
Release date: 22 August 2017
A magically inspiring tale of a man who is reincarnated through many lifetimes so that he can be with his one true love: Death herself.
What if you could live forever—but without your one true love? Reincarnation Blues is the story of a man who has been reincarnated nearly 10,000 times, in search of the secret to immortality so that he can be with his beloved, the incarnation of Death. Neil Gaiman meets Kurt Vonnegut in this darkly whimsical, hilariously profound, and wildly imaginative comedy of the secrets of life and love. Transporting us from ancient India to outer space to Renaissance Italy to the present day, is a journey through time, space, and the human heart.
I’ve heard of people going to extreme lengths to be with their true love, but this book takes it to another level! Reincarnation is one thing to be with your love (Fallen, The Fountain), but the main character here is in love with Death! Does she love him back? Is immortality a possibility so they can be together? What kind of consequences will there be for such a journey? And how does he remember all of his lives?!
A Thousand Rooms by Helen Jones
Release date: 20 October 2016
You don’t wake up expecting to die…
Katie is thirty-two, single, and used to work in advertising. She’s also dead. A lost soul hitching rides with the dying, trying to find her way to… wherever she’s supposed to be.
And whoever she’s supposed to be with.
Heaven, it seems, has a thousand rooms. What will it take to find hers?
I went through a chick-lit phase earlier this year and came into possession of a lot of titles to read, this being one of them. It sounds like it’ll be fun. I don’t expect an in-depth search of afterlife theories or anything. How many rooms is Katie going to get through and are they anything like the ones in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey? Those were weird. O.O
My New Crush Gave to Me by Shani Petroff
Release date: 31 October 2017
Charlotte “Charlie” Donovan knows what she wants for Christmas: Teo Ortiz. He’s a star athlete, in the National Honor Society, invited to every party, and contributes to the school paper (where Charlie is co-editor). Basically, he’s exactly the type of guy Charlie’s looking for. The only problem—he barely knows she exists.
But Charlie has a plan: Rig the paper’s Secret Santa and win his heart with five perfect gifts. Enter J.D. Ortiz—Teo’s cousin, and possibly the most annoying person on the planet. He’s easy going, laid back, unorganized, and spontaneous—the exact opposite of Charlie (and Teo). But he knows what Teo wants, so she’s stuck with him.
Yet the more time Charlie spends with J.D. the more she starts to wonder: Does she really know what, or rather who, she wants for Christmas?
Christmas movies and books are usually a surefire comfort read. This one sounds kind of funny in a semi-hate-to-love sort of way.
Are any of these books on your autumn tbr? Which one do you think you might add if it isn’t already on your radar?
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The Hermit Librarian 
