July Book Haul

 

 

Hey guys!

 

As you can see from the post banner, I have done a book haul this month. And yep, I did get a lot of books! There are 12 books total, 5 of which I got for free (through work experience and a competition on Goodreads). I'll be reading some of the books this summer, but the rest will have to wait until after I finish uni!

 

 

1. Nineteen Minutes - Jodi Picoult

 

 

Jodi Picoult, bestselling author of My Sister's Keeper and The Tenth Circle, pens her most riveting book yet, with a startling and poignant story about the devastating aftermath of a small-town tragedy.

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens--until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes--or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show--destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Nineteen Minutes asks what it means to be different in our society, who has the right to judge someone else, and whether anyone is ever really who they seem to be.

 

 

I found this book in one of my local charity shops for only £1 so I knew I had to buy it. My Sister's Keeper is one of my favourite books and Nineteen Minutes is the next book I want to read by Jodi Picoult.

 

 

2. Sister, Missing - Sophie McKenzie

 

 

It's two years after the events of Girl, Missing and life is not getting any easier for sixteen-year-old Lauren, as exam pressure and a recent family tragedy take their toll. Lauren's birth mother takes Lauren and her two sisters on holiday in the hope that some time together will help, but a few days into the holiday one of the sisters disappears, under circumstances very similar to those in which Lauren was taken years before. Can Lauren save her sister, and stop the nightmare happening all over again?

 

 

I read Girl, Missing years ago and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd read the sequel too. I bought this book off Amazon.

 

 

3. Perfect Chemistry - Simone Elkeles

 

 

When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created 'perfect' life is about to unravel before her eyes. She's forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she's worked so hard for: her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect.

Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brittany into his life, he thinks nothing of it. But soon Alex realizes Brittany is a real person with real problems, and suddenly the bet he made in arrogance turns into something much more.

 

I just love the premise of Perfect Chemistry. I like stories about star-crossed lovers - erm, Romeo and Juliet, anyone?!  

 

 

4. How To Build A Girl - Caitlin Moran

 

 

What do you do in your teenage years when you realize what your parents taught you wasn't enough? You must go out and find books and poetry and pop songs and bad heroes—and build yourself.

It's 1990. Johanna Morrigan, fourteen, has shamed herself so badly on local TV that she decides that there's no point in being Johanna anymore and reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde—fast-talking, hard-drinking gothic hero and full-time Lady Sex Adventurer. She will save her poverty-stricken Bohemian family by becoming a writer—like Jo in Little Women, or the Brontës—but without the dying-young bit.

By sixteen, she's smoking cigarettes, getting drunk, and working for a music paper. She's writing pornographic letters to rock stars, having all the kinds of sex with all the kinds of men, and eviscerating bands in reviews of 600 words or less.

But what happens when Johanna realizes she's built Dolly with a fatal flaw? Is a box full of records, a wall full of posters, and a head full of paperbacks enough to build a girl after all?

Imagine The Bell Jar—written by Rizzo from Grease. How to Build a Girl is a funny, poignant, and heartbreakingly evocative story of self-discovery and invention, as only Caitlin Moran could tell it.

 

 

I read Caitlin Moran's column in The Times on a regular basis so I thought I'd try one of her books. I chose this one as it's quite recent and I like the fact that it's a coming-of-age novel.

 

 

5. The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance - Kirsty Greenwood

 

 

Jessica Beam is a girl who knows how to party. Only lately she's been forgetting to turn up for work on time. Or in clean clothes. Down on her luck, out of a job and homeless, Jess seeks the help of her long-lost grandmother.

Things aren't going well for Matilda Beam, either. Her 1950s Good Woman guide books are out of print, her mortgage repayments are staggering and her granddaughter wears neon Wonderbras!

When a lifeline from a London publisher arrives, the pair have an opportunity to secure the roof over their heads – by invigorating the Good Woman guides and transforming modern, rebellious Jess into a demure vintage lady.

The true test of their make-over will be to capture the heart of notorious London playboy Leo Frost and prove that Matilda’s guides still work. It's going to take commitment, nerves of steel and one seriously pointy bra to pull this off...

 

 

When I saw The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance on the piles of free books in the office I knew I had to have it. The cover looks so fun and the premise sounds like something I'd enjoy.

 

 

6. The Invention of Wings - Sue Monk Kidd

 

 

Hetty "Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty-five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

 

 

As I really enjoyed The Secret Life of Bees, I thought I'd try another book by Sue Monk Kidd. I also bought The Invention of Wings from Amazon. I was going to purchase it back in February but decided to wait until I was back in London as I already had enough books to bring back from York!

 

 

7. The Miniaturist - Jessie Burton

 

 

Set in seventeenth century Amsterdam-a city ruled by glittering wealth and oppressive religion-a masterful debut steeped in atmosphere and shimmering with mystery, in the tradition of Emma Donoghue, Sarah Waters, and Sarah Dunant.

"There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed…"

On a brisk autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives in Amsterdam to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt. But her new home, while splendorous, is not welcoming. Johannes is kind yet distant, always locked in his study or at his warehouse office-leaving Nella alone with his sister, the sharp-tongued and forbidding Marin.

But Nella's world changes when Johannes presents her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. To furnish her gift, Nella engages the services of a miniaturist-an elusive and enigmatic artist whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in eerie and unexpected ways . . .

Johannes' gift helps Nella to pierce the closed world of the Brandt household. But as she uncovers its unusual secrets, she begins to understand-and fear-the escalating dangers that await them all. In this repressively pious society where gold is worshipped second only to God, to be different is a threat to the moral fabric of society, and not even a man as rich as Johannes is safe. Only one person seems to see the fate that awaits them. Is the miniaturist the key to their salvation . . . or the architect of their destruction?

Enchanting, beautiful, and exquisitely suspenseful, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.

 

 

Okay, I'll admit that I was attracted to this book due to its cover rather than its premise. However, the blurb does sound quite interesting and different to the books I usually read. I also like the fact that it's set in Amsterdam - most of the books I read take place in either America or England.

  

 

8. I'll Give You The Sun - Jandy Nelson

 

 

Jude and her twin brother, Noah, are incredibly close. At thirteen, isolated Noah draws constantly and is falling in love with the charismatic boy next door, while daredevil Jude cliff-dives and wears red-red lipstick and does the talking for both of them. But three years later, Jude and Noah are barely speaking. Something has happened to wreck the twins in different and dramatic ways . . . until Jude meets a cocky, broken, beautiful boy, as well as someone else—an even more unpredictable new force in her life. The early years are Noah's story to tell. The later years are Jude's. What the twins don't realize is that they each have only half the story, and if they could just find their way back to one another, they’d have a chance to remake their world.

This radiant novel from the acclaimed, award-winning author of The Sky Is Everywhere will leave you breathless and teary and laughing—often all at once.

 

 

 I was also drawn to this book by its cover and the fact that it's recommended to fans of John Green. I'll Give You the Sun is another book I got from work. I wasn't planning on reading this for a while, but since it's free there was no harm in getting it a little early! Plus, it means I now have no excuse not to read this! I've also got The Sky Is Everywhere on my TBR list so I'll be reading two books by Jandy Nelson next summer!

 

 

9. Emma 

 

 

 The best-selling and beloved author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series now gives us his charming take on Jane Austen with this modern-day retelling of Emma.
The summer after she graduates from university, Emma Woodhouse returns home to the village of Highbury, where she will live with her health-conscious father until she is ready to launch her interior-design business and strike out on her own. In the meantime, she will do what she does best: offer guidance to those less wise than she is in the ways of the world. Happily, this summer brings many new faces to Highbury and into the sphere of Emma's not always perfectly felicitous council: Harriet Smith, a naïve teacher's assistant at the ESL school run by the hippie-ish Mrs. Goddard; Frank Churchill, the attractive stepson of Emma's former governess; and, of course, the perfect Jane Fairfax. This modern-day Emma is wise, witty, and totally enchanting, and will appeal equally to Alexander McCall Smith's multitude of fans and to the enormous community of wildly enthusiastic Austen aficionados.

 

 

I have yet to read the original Emma but I'd quite like to read this book after. I've read a few of the books in the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency and they're quite good.

 

 

10. Solace of the Road - Siobhan Dowd

 

 

 Memories of mum are the only thing that make Holly Hogan happy. She hates her foster family with their too-nice ways and their false sympathy. And she hates her life, her stupid school, and the way everyone is always on at her. Then she finds the wig, and everything changes. Wearing the long, flowing blond locks she feels transformed. She’s not Holly anymore, she’s Solace: the girl with the slinkster walk and the supersharp talk. She’s older, more confident—the kind of girl who can walk right out of her humdrum life, hitch to Ireland, and find her mum. The kind of girl who can face the world head-on.

So begins a bittersweet and sometimes hilarious journey as Solace swaggers and Holly tiptoes across England and through memory, discovering her true self and unlocking the secrets of her past.

 

 

This looks like quite an interesting read. I've been meaning to read it for ages - I don't know why I never did.

 

 

11. The Looking Glass House - Vanessa Tait

 

 

Vanessa Tait, great-granddaughter of the Alice who inspired Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, tells the fascinating story of the childhood classic's strange beginnings through the eyes of a naïve and deceived governess.

What happened before Alice fell down the rabbit hole?

Oxford, 1862. As Mary Prickett takes up her post as governess to the daughters of the Dean of Christ Church, she is thrust into a strange new world. Mary is poor and plain and desperate for change but the little girls in her care see and understand far more than their naïve new teacher. And there is another problem: Mary does not like children, especially the precocious Alice Liddell.

When Mary meets Charles Dodgson, the Christ Church mathematics tutor, at a party at the Deanery, she wonders if he may be the person to transform her life. Flattered by his attentions, Mary begins to believe that she could be more than just an overlooked, dowdy governess.

One sunny day, as Mary chaperones the Liddells on a punting trip, Mr Dodgson tells the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. But Mary is determined to become Mr Dodgson's muse ­ and will turn all the lives around her topsy-turvy in pursuit of her obsession.

 

 

This is another book I got from work. The Looking Glass House looks like an intriguing book. It's written by the great-granddaughter of the girl who influenced Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland. The Looking Glass House has mixed reviews but I'm going to give it a shot.

 

 

12. Black Rabbit Hall - Eve Chase



 

At  Black  Rabbit  Hall  nothing  much  ever  happens  ­-  time  seems  to  move  slower  at  this  idyllic  holiday  home  in  Cornwall.  Until the  worst  thing  happens  and  for  the  Alton  children  time  feels  like  it's  stopped  altogether.  As  they  run  wild,  lost  in  grief  and confusion,  an  outsider,  Caroline  Shawcross,  and  her  dark,  angry  son  Lucian  enter  their  lives,  changing  them  forever.

In  the  present  day,  Lorna  Smith  is  searching  for  her  perfect  wedding  venue  and  is  inexplicably  drawn  to  the  now  crumbling  Black  Rabbit  Hall,  unaware  that  her  own  history  is  locked  up  in  those  derelict  walls...

 

 

I entered a few competitions on Goodreads recently and I wasn't really expecting to win anything, so I was so surprised when a copy of Black Rabbit Hall came through the post. Unfortunately, it's in hardback form so I might have to swap it for paperback before I start reading it.

 

 

 

 So those are the books I've bought (and received!) recently! Probably one of the biggest book hauls I'll ever do!! What books have you got in the last month? Have you read any of the books I have mentioned? Let me know your thoughts!

 

 

Hasta luego!

 

 

Serena