Hey guys! Welcome to another blog post.
Some of you may already know this but for those of you who don't - I'm a huge reader and I love to read. I'm currently reading "Layla" by Colleen Hoover and I'm loving it so far. So, this week, I thought that it would be fun for me to tell you guys about some books on my wishlist that I would love to read. I am also including the summaries of each book.
So, let's get into it.
TW: SA***
"Grown" by Tiffany D. Jackson - When legendary R&B artist Korey Fields spots Enchanted Jones at an audition, her dreams of being a famous singer take flight. Until Enchanted wakes up with blood on her hands and zero memory of the previous night. Who killed Korey Fields? Before there was a dead body, Enchanted's dreams had turned into a nightmare.
"Horror Hotel" by Faith McClaren and Victoria Fulton - When the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang - Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki - visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark, they expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings. Spooky enough to attract subscribers - and ultimately harmless.
"Window Shopping" by Tessa Bailey - Two weeks before Christmas and all through Manhattan, shop windows are decorated in red and green satin.
I'm standing alone in front of the famous Vivant department store, when a charming man named Aiden asks my opinion of the decor.
It's a tragedy in tinsel, I say, unable to lie. He asks for a better idea with a twinkle in his eye. Did I know he owned the place? No. He put me on the spot.
Now I'm working for that man, trying to ignore that he's hot. But as a down on her luck girl with a difficult past, I know an opportunity when I see one - and I have to make it last.
I'll put my heart and soul into dressing his holiday windows. I'll work without stopping.
And when we lose the battle with temptation, I'll trying and remember I'm just window shopping.
"The Seven Husband of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid - Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.
Summoned to Evelyn's luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the'80s and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn's story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique's own in tragic and irreversable ways.
"It Ends With Us" by Colleen Hoover - Sometimes it is the one who loves you who hurts you the most.
Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up - she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn't hurt. Lily can't get him out of her head. But Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his "no dating" rule, she can't help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.
As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan - her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
"Blowback" by James Patterson and Brendan Dubois - US President Keegan Barrett has swept into office on his success as Director of the CIA. Six months into his first term, he devises a clandestine power grab with deadly consequences.
Barrett personally orders CIA agents Liam Grey and Noa Himel to execute his plan, but their loyalties are divided. The CIA serves at the pleasure of the president, yet they've sworn to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
When the threat comes directly from the Oval Office, that's where the blowback begins.
"Carrie Soto is Back" by Taylor Jenkins Reid - Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.
But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.
At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked "the Battle-Axe" anyway. Even if her body doesn't move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.
In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells her most vulnerable, emotional story yet.
"Malibu Rising" by Taylor Jenkins Reid - Malibu: August, 1983. It's the day of Nina Riva's annual end-of-summer party, and the anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together, the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over - especially as the offspring of the legendary singer, Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud - because it is long past time to confess something to the brother from whom he's been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can't stop thinking about promised she'll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own - including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family's generations will all come bubbling to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them...and what they will leave behind.
"Pulse" by Gail McHugh - Unraveling fast, but clinging to hope, Emily risks all she has left on the man that has consumed her every thought and dream since the day they met. Will Gavin take her back? And if so, will their reunion be a collision of two hearts destined to complete one another and rekindle a love that knew no boundaries?
"A Partridge and a Pregnancy" by Willa Nash - There are a lot of places I'd rather spend Christmas Eve morning than a cold, snowy sidewalk outside someone else's home. I'd kill to be sitting beside a fireplace, drinking cocoa, wearing flannel pajamas and reading a book.
Instead, I'm here, standing in front of my one-night-stand's house, working up the courage to ring the doorbell and tell him I'm pregnant.
I hate that term - one-night-stand. It sounds so cheap and sleezy. Tobias Holiday is neither of those things. He's handsome and caring. Witty and charismatic. And once, a long time ago, he was mine.
Our one-night reunion was only supposed to be a hook up. A fling with an old lover. A parting farewell before I moved to London and put my feelings for him an ocean away. How exactly am I supposed to explain that to Tobias that I'm having a baby? His baby? Maybe I could sing it. He always loved the silly songs I made up in the shower.
Three French hens, two turtle doves.
And a partridge and a pregnancy.
"Three Bells, Two Bows, and One Brother's Best Friend" by Willa Nash - I pride myself in being grounded. Sure, I've had my share of childhood fantasies. Winning an Oscar. Winning the lottery. Winning an Olympic medal for an athletic talent I have yet to discover. But the only fantasy I ever thought might actually happen was winning my brother's best friend.
Heath Holiday.
My crush on him has ebbed and flowed over the years, but the day I started working for his construction company was the day I smothered it for good. Sort of. Mostly. It was on my to-do list. Making it a priority would've been easier had he not arrived at his family's annual Christmas party looking ridiculously handsome in a suit.
Then he kissed me. We stepped into an alternate universe and he kissed me. I assumed the next day I'd just be Guy's little sister again. The office newbie. Our kiss forgotten. Except he keeps showing up at my house. With gifts.
A gold bracelet carrying three jingling bells. Two dainty jeweled earrings, each shaped as a bow. And finally, he brought himself.
One brother's best friend, asking if I can keep a secret.
"Tampa" by Alissa Nutting - Celeste Price, a smoldering 26-year-old middle-school teacher in Florida, unrepentantly recounts her elaborate and sociopathically determined seduction of a 14-year-old student.
"My Dark Vanessa" by Kate Elizabeth Russell - 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher.
2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of SA by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager - and who professed to only worship her - maybe be far different from what she has always believed?
Alternating between Vanessa's present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Though-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolesence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of The Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.
"The Naughty, the Nice, and the Nanny" by Willa Nash - One week with one little girl - an angel, according to my staffing agency. Acting as the short-term nanny for a single dad should have been an easy way to make some extra cash. Until I show up for my first day and face off with a demon disguised as a seven-year-old girl wearing a red tutu and matching glitter slippers.
Oh, and her father? My temporary boss? Maddox Holiday. The same Maddox Holiday I crushed on in high school. The sam Maddox Holiday who didn't even know I existed. And the same Maddox Holiday who hasn't set foot in Montana for years because he's been too busy running his billionaire empire.
Eduring seven days is going to feel like scaling the Himalayas in six-inch heels. Toss in the Holiday family's annual soiree, and Christmas Eve nightmares really do come true. But I can do anything for a week, especially for this paycheck, even if it means wrangling the naughty, impressing the nice, and playing the nanny.
"Darling Venom" by Parker S. Huntington - I wasn't supposed to be on that roof on Valentine's Day.
Neither was Kellan Marchetti, the school's designated freak.
We met on the verge of ending our lives.
Somehow, the tattered strings of our tragedies tangled and tightened into an unlikely bond.
We decided not to take the plunge and agreed to check on each other every Valentine's Day until school ended.
Same time.
One roof.
Two restless souls.
We kept our promise for three years.
On the fourth, Kellan made a decision, and I was left to deal with the consequences.
Just when I thought our story ended, another one began.
They say all love stories look the same and taste different.
Mine was venomous, disgraceful, and written in scarlet scars.
My name is Charlotte Richards, but you can call me Venom.
"Reminders of Him" by Colleen Hoover - After serving five years in prison for a tragice mistake, Kenna Rowan returns to the town where it all went wrong, hoping to reunite with her four-year-old daughter. But the bridges Kenna burned are proving impossible to rebuild.
"Almond" by Sohn Won-Pyung - Almond tells the story of Yunjae, a young boy born with a difference. Yunjae has a brain condition called Alexithymia that makes it hard for him to feel emotions like fear, anger, and empathy. The condition is attributes to the lack development of the amygdalae in the brain, responsible for emotional regulation.
"Nightb****" by Rachel Yoder - An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck.
"Daisy Jones and the Six" by Taylor Jenkins Reid - A gripping novel about the whirlwind rise of an iconic 1970s rock group and their beautiful lead singer, revealing the mystery behind their infamous break up.
Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the real reason why they split at the absolute height of their popularity...until now.
Daisy is a girl coming of age in LA, in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go-Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it's the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she's twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she is getting the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things.
Another band getting noticed is The Six, led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camilla finds out she's pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild on the road.
Daisy and Billy cross paths when a producer realizes the key to supercharged success is to put the two together. What happens next will become the stuff of legend.
"On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born - a history whoes epicenter is rooted in Vietnam - and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one's own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
"Ugly Love" by Colleen Hoover - Tate Collins forms an undeniable mutual attraction with airline pilot Miles Archer, and the pair attempt to define a set of rules that will prevent them from falling in love.
"A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" by Holly Jackson - Five years ago, Andie Bell, a girl in Pippa's village, was murdered by her boyfriend Sal Singh, but the body was never found. Pippa suspects in wasn't an open and shut case, and chooses to make a study of it for her final year project at school.
"Good girl, Bad Blood" by Holly Jackson - Pip is not a detective anymore. With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her. But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing.
"As Good As Dead" by Holly Jackson - Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She's used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can'thelp noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you're the one who disappears?
"Archer's Voice" by Mia Sheridan - When Bree Prescott arrives in the sleepy, lakeside town of Pelion, Maine, she hopes against hope that this is the place where she will finally find the peace she so desperately seeks. On her first day there, her life collides with Archer Hale, an isolated man who holds a secret agony of his own. A man no one else sees.
"The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas - Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighbourhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer.
"November 9" by Colleen Hoover - Fallon meets Ben, an aspiring novelist, the day before her scheduled cross-country move. Their untimely attraction leads them to spend Fallon's last day in LA together, and her eventful life becomes the creative inspiration Ben has always sought for his novel.
"Lakesedge" by Lyndall Clipstone - There are monsters in the world.
When Violeta Graceling arrives at haunted Lakesedge estate, she expects to find a monster. She knows the terrifying rumors about Rown Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem.
There are monsters in the woods.
As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably drawn...
There's a monster in the shadows, and now it knows my name.
Now, to save Rowan-and herself-Leta must confront the darkness in her past, including unraveling the mystery of her connection to the Lord Under.
"All I Want for Christmas" by Maggie Knox - When Sadie and Max are selected as contestants on the framed reality singing show Starmaker, each thinks they've finally gotten their big Nashville break. But then they're paired up for duet week and stun the world with their romantic onstage chemistry. With fans going wild for #Saxie the network demands that they remain a duo on and offstage, or exit the competition. Faking a relationship until their final performance in the Starmaker holiday special shouldn't be too hard, except for one small problem - Sadie and Max can't stand each other.
But with their dreams just within reach, they agree to the ruse. Will their fake relationship be exposed before they can win? Or will an unexpected trip to Banff spark real feelings by the Christmas finale?
"Book Lovers" by Emily Henry - Heavily pregnant Libby cravesrest and time away from responsibility - and her cramped New York City apartment - before the birth of her third child, and she's excited to immerse herself in the storybook small-town life that Once in a Lifetime made famous, even if the town has seen better days.
"It" by Stephen King- This story follows the experiences of seven children as they are terrorized by an evil entitiy that exploits the fears of its victims to disguise itself while hunting its prey.
"Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens - For years, rumors of the "Marsh Girl" haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet fishing village. Kya Clark is barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when the popular Chase Andrews is found dead, locals immediately suspect her.
But Kya is not what they say. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life's lessons from the land, learning the real ways of the world from the dishonest signals of fireflies. But while she has the skills to live in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world - until the unthinkable happens.
In Where the Crawdads Sing, Owens juxtaposes an exquisite ode to the natural world against a profound coming of age story and haunting mystery.
"Carrie" by Stephen King - Set primarily in the then-future year of 1979, it revolves around the eponymous Carrie White, a friendless, bullied high-school girl from an abusive religious household who uses her newly discovered telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who torment her.
I also want to read every book in the Shatter Me series by Tahereh Mafi. There are a lot more books on my wishlist but it would not be possible to talk about all of them because this blog is long enough already. This is probably the longest blog I've ever done. So, if you'd like to see more of the books that are on my wishlist, you can check out my Amazon wishlist (https://www.amazon.ca/hz/wishlist/ls/3LMQ0EPAS4FJD?ref_=wl_share) or my Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/60616251-brianna-blake) .
So, that's it for this week's blog post. Before I sign off, I want to give a massive shoutout to my amazing boyfriend, Isaac. I love you so much!
Tomorrow, I will post my DWTS Michael Buble night recap. Until then,
~Brianna.
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