One thing bookstagram taught me very quickly is that buying books can be extremely expensive. I was hearing about all these amazing books and I craved the aesthetics. Posting a pretty book cover to my page just seemed like the appropriate way to enter bookstagram. But during the lockdowns last year, my bank account really paid the hard way.
I spoke about my ‘eBook’ experience during a post last year. I even admitted I only read the same genre on my kindle. Romance and Contemporary Fiction. I really wasn’t using my kindle to my advantage.
My kindle has allowed me to try out so many new authors and genres. And, I feel like a whole new reading experience has been unlocked.
I wanted to share the many books I’ve downloaded onto my kindle that I just can’t wait to read. Ranging from Contemporary Fiction to Thrillers, I’m so excited to get round to them all.
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His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
Pitched as Crazy Rich Asians set in West Africa – I had to pick up this book as soon as I could.
Afi Tekple is a young seamstress living in a small town in Ghana with her widowed mother. Afi’s future doesn’t seem to hold much excitement. Until, that is, she is offered a life-changing opportunity – a proposal of marriage from the wealthy family of Elikem Ganyo.
She barely knows Elikem, but that seems a small price to pay for a marriage that could offer her family financial security, as well as the key to the glitzy city lifestyle she’s always wanted. But when Afi arrives in Accra, she realises that her fairy-tale ending might not be all that she’d hoped for. Now she must balance the often conflicting roles of wife, daughter, niece and sister-in-law, without losing sight of herself.
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
I’ve seen so many mixed reviews about this Thriller that I’ve decided this has to be one I try for myself! Aiming to read in June!
Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee; a girl who inherited her mother’s bright blue eyes and her father’s jet-black hair. Her parents are determined that Lydia will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue – in Marilyn’s case that her daughter become a doctor rather than a homemaker, in James’s case that Lydia be popular at school, a girl with a busy social life and the centre of every party. But Lydia is under pressures that have nothing to do with growing up in 1970s small town Ohio. Her father is an American born of first-generation Chinese immigrants, and his ethnicity, and hers, make them conspicuous in any setting.
When Lydia’s body is found in the local lake, James is consumed by guilt and sets out on a reckless path that may destroy his marriage. Marilyn, devastated and vengeful, is determined to make someone accountable, no matter what the cost. Lydia’s older brother, Nathan, is convinced that local bad boy Jack is somehow involved. But it’s the youngest in the family – Hannah – who observes far more than anyone realises and who may be the only one who knows what really happened.
When No One Is Watching – Alyssa Cole
This is pitched as Rear Window meets Get Out – erm hello? I have to read this! I’ve also seen mixed reviews but trying to keep an open mind…hoping to read in June
Sydney Green is Brooklyn born and raised, but her beloved neighborhood seems to change every time she blinks. Condos are sprouting like weeds, FOR SALE signs are popping up overnight, and the neighbors she’s known all her life are disappearing. To hold onto her community’s past and present, Sydney channels her frustration into a walking tour and finds an unlikely and unwanted assistant in one of the new arrivals to the block—her neighbor Theo.
But Sydney and Theo’s deep dive into history quickly becomes a dizzying descent into paranoia and fear. Their neighbors may not have moved to the suburbs after all, and the push to revitalize the community may be more deadly than advertised.
When does coincidence become conspiracy? Where do people go when gentrification pushes them out? Can Sydney and Theo trust each other—or themselves—long enough to find out before they too disappear?
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey
I’m so excited to read this – apparently it’s based on Caribbean folklore! Plus, it won the Costa Book Awards last year so it sounds amazing!
March 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch, at the start of the rainy season. A fisherman sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch but attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect. Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, has been swimming the Caribbean Sea for centuries. And she is entranced by this man David and his song.
The Switch by Beth O’Leary
I recently read The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary and absolutely loved it. It was such a heartwarming read and just what I needed at the time. I’m so excited to get into Beth’s other books!
After blowing a big presentation at work, Leena takes a two-month sabbatical and escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen . . . A life swap seems the perfect solution.
But with a rabble of unruly OAPs to contend with, as well as the distractingly handsome local schoolteacher, Leena learns that switching lives isn’t straightforward. In London, Eileen is a huge hit with her new neighbours, and with the online dating scene. But is her perfect match nearer to home than she first thought?
All The Lonely People by Mike Gayle
I haven’t actually read ‘Half A World Away’ but I’ve seen positive reviews about it. I’m really excited to try this new novel by Mike Gayle. It sounds great.
In phone calls to his daughter in Australia, widower Hubert Bird paints a picture of the perfect retirement, packed with fun and friendship.
But Hubert Bird is lying.
Something has made him turn his back on people, and he hardly sees a soul.
So when his daughter announces she’s coming to visit, Hubert faces a race against time: to make his real life resemble his fake life before he’s found out.
Along the way Hubert renews a cherished friendship, is given a second chance at love and even joins an audacious community scheme. But with the secret of his earlier isolation lurking in the shadows, is he destines to always be one of the lonely people?
10 Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World – Elif Shafak
This sounds positively amazing – it was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2019. It came onto my radar when I saw an amazing review of it on Bookstagram just as Amazon were doing their monthly deals. I can’t wait to read it!
For Leila, each minute after her death recalls a sensuous memory: spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the birth of a yearned-for son; bubbling vats of lemon and sugar to wax women’s legs while men are at prayer; the cardamom coffee she shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each fading memory brings back the friends she made in her bittersweet life – friends who are now desperately trying to find her . . .
Will I get round to them all in the next few months alongside my physical tbr? I honestly wish I could tell you but I have no idea.
All I do know is that it’s a weird and wonderful selection of books.
And that’s the beauty of trying so many different genres, authors and stories.
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