I’ve seen these posts around, but have never been looking for something to post in that sweet spot where I don’t have a post planned, but also have time to get something like this together. I also have started tracking the books I acquire so that helps.
Stacking the Shelves is a weekly post hosted by Reading Reality and you can see all the details about Stacking the Shelves on their page. Basically Stacking the Shelves is a weekly thing where you share all the books (electronic or physical) that you have acquired that week.
As a disclaimer, the shelves in the header photo are not mine. I took this photo at Mostly Books in Tucson. I adored this small independent bookstores and will be back!
eBooks!!
My Darling Duke by Stacy Reid
I saw a romance author tweet about this one & I had an amazon credit so I “bought” it. It was on sale for 99 cents & I’ll link the amazon page in case it is still on sale when you are reading this.
Synopsis: Miss Katherine Danvers is a desperate wallflower. Her family is on the brink of financial ruin, and it is up her to save her mother and sisters from a life of indignities. So she transforms herself into the incomparable Kitty Danvers, the fiancée of the enigmatic and reclusive Alexander Masters, Duke of Thornton—once dubbed the mad, bad, and dangerous catch of the Season.
Ten years ago, society and the woman Alexander Masters loved called him a monster, after a tragic accident left him scarred and confined to a wheelchair. His heart exists in cold, lonely exile, until he learns he has a fiancée—a deceptive, clever, and utterly intriguing woman he’s never met. Miss Danvers will now learn the consequences of engaging herself to the beast, for Alexander is determined to make her his. Soon, they are involved in a chase, a clash of wills, and though he once vowed to never love again, he burns for the enchanting Miss Danvers. And denying his heart may cost him an exquisite love that happens only once in a lifetime.
Dukes, Actually by Erica Ridley
I love Erica Ridley’s Wild Wynchester Series so I read her newsletter. She shared that this one was free so I downloaded it right away. We will not talk about how many times she has done this and I have yet to read one of her non Wynchester books. Erica, I’m sorry! Anyways. Here is the amazon link in case it is still on sale when you are reading.
Synopsis: The Duke of Azureford isn’t the arrogant, aloof lord his peers perceive him to be. Yes, he’s awkward, but he has a plan to fix it. In order to woo a respectable lady, he must learn how to flirt. The completely inappropriate girl next door would make a perfect instructor, but a terrible duchess. So why can’t he walk away?
Incorrigible hoyden Miss Carole Quincy likes fast carriages, carom billiards, and the beautiful, buttoned-up Duke of Azureford. She’d be delighted to help him out of his shell and into her arms. Who cares if they’re just pretending to flirt? The heady, breath-taking, soul-consuming feeling inside her runaway heart surely can’t be love…
physical books!!
We Made it All Up by Margot Harrison [releases July 12, 2022]
Thanks so much to the publisher for sending me an ARC of this one! I read the word “fanfic” in the synopsis and was sold. I hope to read it soon!
Synopsis: Celeste is the talk of the town when she moves to Montana from Montreal, but the only friend she makes is Vivvy, the heir to the town’s name and a social pariah. Inspired by a passion-fueled school incident, they begin writing a love-story fan fic between the popular guy and the school stoner, one that gradually reveals Celeste’s past. While their bond makes Celeste feel safe and alive again, Vivvy keeps prodding Celeste to turn fantasy into reality. When they finally try, one drunken night on a dark mountainside, Celeste is the one who ends up kissing golden boy Joss. And Joss ends up dead.
Celeste doesn’t remember the end of that night and can’t be sure she didn’t deliver the killing blow. Could she still be that scared of getting close to a boy? Secrets are hard to keep in a small town, and even Vivvy seems to suspect her. Exploring the winding passages of the cave where Joss died, Celeste learns he had his own dark secrets, as does Vivvy. The town isn’t as innocent as it appears.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
I found this one in a little free library that has popped up right by my work. I’ve heard good things about this one and can’t wait to read this one.
Synopsis: For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question ‘What makes a life worth living?’
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Airchronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.
What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir.
Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.'” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.
This is Not the Real World by Anna Carey [releases May 24, 2022]
This is the sequel to This is Not the Jess Show and you can see my thoughts on that one on my bookstagram.
*thanks to the publisher for sending me a finished copy of this one!*
Synopsis of book one since book two is spoiler-y: Black Mirror meets My So-Called Life in this fast-paced, timely YA thriller about separating fact from fiction–and how far we’ll go to create our own version of reality.
Like any other teenager, Jess Flynn is just trying to get through her junior year without drama … but drama seems to keep finding her. Between a new crush on her childhood best friend, overprotective parents cramping her social life, and her younger sister’s worsening health, the only constant is change–and her hometown of Swickley, which feels smaller by the day.
Swickley is getting weirder by the day, too. Half the population has been struck down by a mysterious flu. Conversations end awkwardly when Jess enters the room. And then one day, a tiny, sleek black device–with an apple logo on it–falls out of her best friend’s backpack and lands at Jess’s feet.
I really liked putting together this post since I got to talk about books that I probably won’t mention until I read. Maybe this will motivate me to read them quicker? Seems unlikely.
What’s the most recent book you’ve purchased?
xoxo, Tree
Words About Words 