Roadtrip & Reading :)

For the next week, I’ll be driving a car across the United States. My little brother and dad and some of their friends are on Week Two (a week each year) of their seven year bike trip across the United States. Me? Nah. I’m just going to be their driver this year.

During this week-long driving experience, I’ll be catching up on a lot of reading!

Here is a peek at some books I’m really excited about devouring… There’s quite a bit of literary diversity here. 🙂

1. I’m Nobody: The Lost Pages by Alex Marestaing

Emily meets Caleb, Caleb meets Iris, and a broken world feels better.

Agoraphobic Caleb Reed is about to step outside for the first time in seven years, meet indie filmmaker Iris Elliott…and “definitely” not give his heart away. It’s all because of the notes, the weird and wonderful notes he keeps finding on his front porch, notes signed by someone claiming to be long dead poet Emily Dickinson. Caleb’s parents think he’s losing his mind, but he knows they’re wrong. Something’s going on outside – something strange, something terrifying …something beautiful.

Read the EPIC Award nominated novel that critics are saying is “fresh”, “powerful” and “unlike anything” they’ve read. I’m Nobody: The Lost Pages is a triumphant tale of friendship over fear and one that you’ll definitely not want to put down. (A London Book Festival Honorable Mention Winner)

Check it out here.

2. The Summer of Shambles (An Ondine Novel) by Ebony McKenna

15-year-old Ondine is struggling to fit in at Psychic Summercamp and doubts she possesses any of her family’s magical abilities. She resolves to leave, determined to follow her own path and be a normal teenager. Whatever normal is in a place like Brugel.

On the way home Ondine is shocked when her pet ferret Shambles starts talking – in a cheeky Scottish accent no less! He is in fact a young man trapped in a witch’s curse. When he briefly transforms into his human self, Ondine is smitten. If only she can break the spell for good, Shambles can be handsomely human on a full-time basis.

During the summer, these two misfits uncover a plot to assassinate a member of the royal family and discover a secret treasure that has remained hidden for decades. This attracts the attention of the arrogant Lord Vincent, and Ondine can’t help being drawn in by his bad-boy charm.

With so many demands on Ondine’s attentions – and affections – normal has never seemed so far away.

The Summer of Shambles is the first in the four-part ONDINE series. Fans of The Princess Bride or the Confessions of Georgia Nicolson series will love this delightfully quirky fairytale.

Check it out here.

3. The Mine by John A. Heldt

In May 2000, Joel Smith is a cocky, adventurous young man who sees the world as his playground. But when the college senior, days from graduation, enters an abandoned Montana mine, he discovers the price of reckless curiosity. He emerges in May 1941 with a cell phone he can’t use, money he can’t spend, and little but his wits to guide his way. Stuck in the age of swing dancing and a peacetime draft, Joel begins a new life as the nation drifts toward war. With the help of his 21-year-old trailblazing grandmother and her friends, he finds his place in a world he knew only from movies and books. But when an opportunity comes to return to the present, Joel must decide whether to leave his new love in the past or choose a course that will alter their lives forever. THE MINE is a love story that follows a humbled man through a critical time in history as he adjusts to new surroundings and wrestles with the knowledge of things to come.

Check it out here.

4. Buffalo (a novella) by Elliot Warren

Tom Ladlow is not safe, stuck by stringy nerves and caged inside a skull, his monstrous, tenacious mind twists and contorts his thoughts into nightmares and creates big, fat, ugly mountains out of mole hills.

Whilst branded with bi-polar and dosed up on Prescription medicines, Tom’s mum dies and he finds himself in the ‘comforting‘ vice of a psychiatrist, robot type human who he disregards by joining a martial arts gym.

Once he moves into his mums old flat in East London he falls for his next door neighbour, Lilly, only Lilly has problems of her own.

Hooked on Vicodin, Tom begins to have strong conceptions of his purpose on this depraved little planet and starts to believe he can help people close to him, in a real-life, superhero kind of way.

Check it out here.

5. Divide by Jessa Russo

From senior class president to dejected social outcast, with just the flick of a match.

After accusations of torching her ex-boyfriend’s home are followed by the mysterious poisoning of her ex-best friend, seventeen-year-old Holland Briggs assumes her life is over. And it is. But not in the way she thinks.

As Holland learns the truth about her cursed fate—that she is descended from the Beast most have only ever heard of in fairytales—she unites with an unlikely ally, good-looking newcomer Mick Stevenson.

Mick knows more about Holland’s twisted history than she does, and enlightening as it is to learn about, his suggestion for a cure is unsettling at best. Holland must fall in love with Mick in order to break the spell, and save their future generations from repeating her cursed fate. Having sworn off love after the betrayals of her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend, this may be difficult to accomplish.

Complicating things further for Holland and Mick, time runs out, and Holland’s change begins way before schedule. With Holland quickly morphing into a dangerous mythical creature, Mick struggles to save her.

Should they fail, Holland will be lost to the beast inside her forever.

Check it out here.

NOTE: All five books were given to me to read/review by their authors/publishers and will be given honest and unbiased reviews.