Hello, hello! I haven’t done a TBR for a while so I thought I’d share with you all what I’m planning to read on my upcoming family holiday in Southeast Asia. I’m off to the Singapore Formula One and a cruise round Thailand and Malaysia with my mum, stepdad and two brothers – sadly my husband couldn’t get the time off work, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me!

If you’ve been here before, you’ll know I’m a huge fantasy fan, so it might surprise you to see the stack of contemporaries I plan to take away with me. I’ve been desperate to read more YA contemporary as so many amazing sounding books have been released this year.

Here are the books I’ll be packing next month for my holiday…

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

I’m dying to read this and will probably start at the airport or on the drive down, light permitting. I ordered it a few months ago but I’ve been trying to catch up with library books so it’s still sitting on my shelf giving me the eye.

If you haven’t read, or even heard of THUG, firstly, where have you been?! Secondly, it’s inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, and has been on the NY Times best seller list for 22 weeks. Twenty two! Everyone I know who’s read it absolutely raves about it, so I need to catch up and read this pronto.

It’s about a teenage girl called Starr who’s in the car when her friend is pulled over and then shot and killed by police. It’s a pretty heartbreaking, gut-wrenching read by all accounts so I’ll read this one first and then follow it up with some lighter, more easy-reading style novels to ease the pain. Oh, the joys of reading for pleasure!

One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus

I see this book everywhere online and it sounds like such a fun, thrilling mystery that I picked it up as soon as I saw it in Waterstones. It’s billed as a cross between The Breakfast Club and Gossip Girl, with a good, old-fashioned murder mystery thrown in – how awesome does that sound?

I’m hoping this will break me out of the THUG book hangover and give me a good whodunnit to mull over while I’m sunning on the beach with a cocktail.

Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon

I bought this book for my best friend’s birthday and with the movie coming out soon she let me borrow it when she was done (I’ll give it back soon, I promise!).

It sounds like a nice light-hearted read, even with the heavy subject matter of living life in a bubble, allergic to everything. I get the impression it’s more about the budding romance between the MC and her cute, new next-door neighbour, and learning to live life to the full even when the odds are against you.

The Scarecrow Queen by Melinda Salisbury

OK, so I couldn’t go away and not take at least one fantasy book… This is the last in the Sin Eater’s Daughter trilogy and it’s been sitting on my bookcase for months waiting for it’s moment to shine.

This series incorporates a few fairy tales, including the Pied Piper of Hamelin and the Sleeping Prince (both German in origin, funnily enough), but it gives them a fresh spin and sets them in a new fantasy world where the people have all but forgotten that fairy tales are real. This is one series where the second book was just as good, if not better than the first, so I’m really excited to see where book three takes us.

And that’s it for my holiday reading list, four books might not seem like many to some of you, or it might seem like a lot! I’m a pretty slow reader, but they’re all relatively slim and I can get through a book in two or three days on holiday, especially as the flights to Singapore will be about 16 hours in total!

What’s on your TBR this summer? Have you read any of these? Let me know what you thought in the comments, and recommend any other YA contemporaries you think I’ll love!

Lyndsey

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Earlier this month, we spent a fabulous week in Turkey, at the Sensatori hotel in Fethiye. Yes, in April. Right in the middle of Camp Nano. No, I didn’t write a single word while we were away, I relaxed and recharged my batteries after a crazy few months.

I did, however, read a few books.

First up was The Song Rising by Samantha Shannon. You might remember I attended an event at Waterstones in Orchard Square, Sheffield, where I met Samantha and got a signed copy of the book.

I haven’t done a review of this one yet, as it’s part of a longer series and I haven’t reviewed the first two I’m going to wait and review the whole series at the end. If you haven’t read The Bone Season though, I highly recommend it! It’s billed as adult fantasy, but Paige, the MC, is nineteen so it’s sort of on the cusp of YA, NA and adult, and if you like any kind of fantasy you’ll probably love this.

It’s set in a future version of London with an alternative history since the 1800s, resulting in a neo-Victorian, steampunk kind of world where clairvoyance is real, and illegal. An oppressive, anti-clairvoyance regime has taken power in London and several other cities across the world, and as a result a vast underworld of clairvoyants now exists in the shadows.

If that sounds like your cup of tea then pop down to your local independent bookstore or library and grab a copy, you won’t regret it.

Next, I read Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence, and you can check out my book review here. This one was a recommendation from Cait @ Paper Fury, whose taste in books is exemplary. I absolutely loved this book and can’t wait to read the rest of the Broken Empires trilogy, I’ve already put them on hold at the library.

It’s set in a medieval sort of fantasy world, where a teenage prince is on a mission to take revenge on the man who murdered his mother and younger brother years earlier. It’s really dark and stabtastic, so if that’s your bag you’ll definitely love this series.

Also, Mark Lawrence retweeted me and replied, so my life has been made.

@lyndleloo Very many thanks! He’s actually 14 for 95% of the book, but yeah, pretty young.

Red Sister is entirely unconnected, so also a good start.

— Mark Lawrence (@Mark__Lawrence) April 26, 2017

Finally, I also listened to the audio book of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, my review of which you can read here.

It’s an absolutely enchanting, beautifully written book about a circus that is only open at night, real magic posing as illusions, and two star-crossed lovers locked in a lifelong competition with the circus as their stage.

So those are the books I managed to finish this month, what with work and Camp NaNoWriMo. Today’s the last day of Camp and I’m still 6k words away from winning, so it’s looking unlikely, but tomorrow is a Bank Holiday, so if I stay up late and write until midnight I might just make it. It would be the most I’ve written in a day – if we’re not counting last minute essays for Uni! I am the queen of cutting it fine on deadline day.

I’m now listening to the audio book of The Dream Thieves, book two in The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater. I’m really enjoying this series so far, it’s got a great ensemble cast of characters and a really intriguing sense of suspense throughout.

In a nutshell, Gansey is on the hunt for a dead Welsh king whose body is rumoured to be buried in Henrietta on a ley line, and if you wake him he will grant you one wish. The rest of the gang all have their own motivations for helping Gansey in his search, and they’re not the only ones looking. It’s a very moody, intense read, with lots of humour thrown in, and some pretty strange goings-on.

I’m also reading Black Ice by Becka Fitzpatrick, a YA thriller, which is something I don’t have much experience in. I’ve only read a few pages so far, but I’m hoping it’ll be a fun read.

So, that’s everything I read in April on my holiday in Turkey, and what I’m currently reading! What have you guys been reading this month? Let me know in the comments.

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Lyndsey