My Expanding Bookshelf

This month is quite a nice sized TBR, and I'm off work until the 5th so I'm hoping I'll be able to get a great headstart.

Title: Obsidio Series: The Illuminae Files #3 Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff Published: 13th March 2018, Rock the Boat Pages: 620 Source: Bought Format: Paperback Rating: 4/5 Kady, Ezra, Hanna and Nik narrowly escaped with their lives from the attacks on Heimdall station and now find themselves crammed with 2,000 refugees on the container ship, Mao. With the jump station destroyed and their resources scarce, the only option is to return to Kerenza - but who knows what they'll find seven months after the invasion? Meanwhile, Kady's cousin, Asha, survived the initial BeiTech assault and has joined Kerenza's ragtag underground resistance. When Rhys - an old flame from Asha's past - reappears on Kerenza, the two find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. With time running out, a final battle will be waged on land and in space, heroes will fall and hearts will be broken.

Title: Gemina Series: The Illuminae Files #2 Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff Published: 20th October 2016, Rock the Boat Pages: 659 Source: Bought Format: Paperback Rating: 4/5 Hanna Donnelly is the station captain's pampered daughter and Nik Malikov is the reluctant member of a notorious crime family. Together they struggle with the realities of life aboard the galaxy's most boring space station, blissfully unaware that Kady Grant and the Hypatia are headed right toward Heimdall with news of the Kerenza invasion.

                          Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl . This week's topic is the best books I read in 2021.

Title: The Love Hypothesis Series: The Love Hypothesis Author: Ali Hazelwood Published: 14th November 2021, Berkley Pages: 373 Source: Bought Format: Paperback Rating: 5/5 As a third-year PhD candidate. Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships - but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees. That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor - and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford's reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive's career on the Bunsen burner, Adma surprised her again with his unyielding support and eve...

Title: Gilded Series: Gilded Author: Marissa Meyer Published: 2nd November 2021, Faber & Faber Pages: 512 Source: Netgalley Format: Ebook Rating: 4/5 All magic comes at a price, but love was never part of the bargain... The look he was giving her. Serilda had never been looked at like that before... The intensity. The heat. The raw astonishment. He was going to kiss her. Cursed by the god of lies, a miller's daughter has developed a talent for storytelling - but are all of her tales as false as they appear? When one of Serilda's stories draws the attention of the devastating Erlking, she finds herself swept away into a world of enchantment, where ghouls prowl the earth, and ravens track her every move. The king locks Serilda in a castle dungeon and orders her to spin straw into gold, or be killed for lying. In despair, Serilda unwittingly summons a mysterious young man to her aid. And he agrees to help her, for a price. But love wasn't meant to be part of the ba...

  The Bout of Books readathon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly Rubidoux Apple. It’s a weeklong readathon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 3rd and runs through Sunday, January 9th in YOUR time zone. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are reading sprints, Twitter chats, and exclusive Instagram challenges, but they’re all completely optional.  For all Bout of Books 33 information and updates, be sure to visit the  Bout of Books  blog.  - From the Bout of Books team

                          Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl . This week's topic is books I hope Santa brings and includes books that I have discovered this year. I've always kept my Amazon wishlist private and for my own use, not even my family know I have one, but this time I thought I'd give it a share just to show some of the other books I have on my radar to buy this year that aren't included in this list.

Title: How to Stop Time Author: Matt Haig Published: 6th July 2017, Canongate Books Pages: 325 Source: Library Format: Hardback Rating: 5/5 A love story across the ages - and for the ages - about a man lost in time, the woman who could save him, and the lifetimes it can take to learn how to live. Tom Hazard has a dangerous secret. He may look like an ordinary 41-year-old, but owing to a rare condition, he's been alive for centuries. Tom has lived history - performing with Shakespeare, exploring the high seas with Captain Cook, and sharing cocktails with Fitzgerald. Now, he just wants an ordinary life.  So Tom moves back to London, his old home, to become a high school history teacher - the perfect job for someone who has witnessed the city's history first hand. Better yet, a captivating French teacher at his school seems fascinated by him. But the Albatross Society, the secretive group which protects people like Tom, has one rule: never fall in love. As painful memories...

    The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly of  Caffeinated Reviewer . It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

                          Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl . This week's topic is books on my winter TBR.

  The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly of  Caffeinated Reviewer . It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

So, ahead of tomorrow's Top Ten Tuesday post, Books on My Winter TBR, this is a follow-up to the  Books on My Autumn TBR  post to see how I managed. I started actually planning my monthly TBR around that time so it will be interesting to see how successfully this was...

Title: Final Girls Author: Riley Sager Published: 13th July 2017, Ebury Digital Pages: 354 Source: Netgalley Format: Ebook Rating: 4/5 FIRST THERE WERE THREE. The media calls them the Final Girls - Quincy, Sam, Lisa - the infamous group that no one wants to be part of. The sole survivors of three separate killing sprees, they are linked by their shared trauma. THEN THERE WERE TWO. But when Lisa dies in mysterious circumstances and Sam shows up unannounced on her doorstep, Quincy must admit that she doesn't really know anything about the other Final Girls. Can she trust them? Or... CAN THERE ONLY EVER BE ONE? All Quincy knows is one thing: she is next.

                          Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl . This week's topic is a freebie so I'm going to go with books I want to re-read by this time next year.

Title: Battle Royale Author: Koushun Takami Published: 1st April 2014, Haikasoru Pages: 647 Source: Bought Format: Paperback Rating: 5/5 Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided with arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan - where it became a runaway best seller - Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world.

                                  The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly of  Caffeinated Reviewer . It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

Title: Illuminae Series: The Illuminae Files Author: Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff Published: 22nd October 2015, Rock the Boat Pages: 602 Source: Bought Format: Paperback Rating: 5/5 Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the worst thing she'd ever been through. That was before her planet was invaded. Now, with enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra are forced to fight their way onto one of the evacuating craft, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit. But the warship could be the least of their problems. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their biggest threat; and nobody in charge will say what's really going on. As Kady plunges into a web of data hacking to get to the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: Ezra. Told through a fascinating dossier of hacked documents - including emails, schematics, military files, IMs, med...

I've decided to start a monthly post to show what I'm planning to read and post each month. It'll be a bit of accountability, but I'm not going to stress out if I don't read or post everything. But I love planning things anyway so I've no idea why I haven't done this before...  This month is quite a big TBR, but I'm off work at the start of the month and from Christmas Eve onwards so I'm hoping I'll be able to squeeze in a bit more reading and blogging time.