July 2021 - The Open Book

A Dragonbird in the Fern

July 27, 2021 Kym 3

When an assassin kills Princess Jiara’s older sister Scilla, her vengeful ghost is doomed to walk their city of glittering canals, tormenting loved ones until the murderer is brought to justice. While the entire kingdom mourns, Scilla’s betrothed arrives and requests that seventeen-year-old Jiara take her sister’s place as his bride to confirm the alliance between their countries.

Marrying the young king intended for her sister and traveling to his distant home is distressing enough, but with dyslexia and years of scholarly struggles, Jiara abandoned any hope of learning other languages long ago. She’s terrified of life in a foreign land where she’ll be unable to communicate.

Then Jiara discovers evidence that her sister’s assassin comes from the king’s own country. If she marries the king, Jiara can hunt the murderer and release her family from Scilla’s ghost, whose thirst for blood mounts every day. To save her family, Jiara must find her sister’s killer . . . before he murders her too.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

Dangerous Play

July 21, 2021 Kym 3

A fierce team of girls takes back the night in this propulsive, electrifying, and high-stakes YA debut from Emma Kress

Zoe Alamandar has one goal: win the State Field Hockey Championships and earn a scholarship that will get her the hell out of Central New York. She and her co-captain Ava Cervantes have assembled a fierce team of dedicated girls who will work hard and play by the rules.

But after Zoe is sexually assaulted at a party, she finds a new goal: make sure no girl feels unsafe again. Zoe and her teammates decide to stop playing by the rules and take justice into their own hands. Soon, their suburban town has a team of superheroes meting out punishments, but one night of vigilantism may cost Zoe her team, the championship, her scholarship, and her future.

Perfect for fans who loved the female friendships of Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie and the bite of Courtney Summer’s Sadie.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

One Tiger One Teen

July 19, 2021 Kym 5

“We’d put a circus tiger in a horse trailer and when its sedative wore off it turned into a real tiger.” Kip Kellogg’s not kidding.

It’s two weeks before the start of his senior year of high school and releasing a live tiger in the halls was supposed to be the teenager’s ultimate senior class prank.

Things had been going so great, because capturing a live tiger does wonders for a young man’s confidence. His newfound boldness has him skirting around the edges of falling in love with Marie, a girl who on the surface counts as mysterious and exotic because she goes to a different high school, though she does have a few scars on her heart that the new romance may or may not make it past.

But tigers are notoriously uncooperative – and the horse trailer doesn’t hold it for long. The police won’t help; as Dripping Springs Tigers alumni, they think the report of a tiger on the loose in the Texas Hill Country west of Austin is the actual senior prank.

So Kip and his tiger theft conspirators enlist the help of Kip’s grandfather to hunt down – or maybe capture – the tiger. Kip respects the danger of the animal, but something deep inside him knows this tiger should be brought back alive. When the team returns with proof, but not a dead tiger, the news spreads like a bar fight and soon every hunter with a box of ammo is in on the adventure to save Texas from the tiger problem.

Marie joins the action, and good thing because soon it’s down to just the teen couple to capture or destroy the tiger before any of the yahoos get themselves killed.

Kip narrates the tale, but being a typical 17-year-old boy, he leaves out one critical detail in the telling – and his internal and external problems come to a head at the adventure’s climax as Kip tries to handle his life’s first big problem like the man he hopes to become.

One Tiger One Teen is a fun action/adventure and coming of age novel that cuts to the heart of growing better as a person. It will engage teens as a prescriptive tale about how to approach life and will captivate adults as a descriptive journey through those emotions and hopes of self-improvement that are not exclusive to the young.

Fast-paced writing, strong on story and action, with doses of teenage humor and realistic dialogue makes this novel an ideal gift if you’re looking for young adult books for boys who don’t like to read; and its fresh storytelling style will fire up seasoned book lovers who are looking for an exciting, new, young adult fiction voice.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

Flash Fire (The Extraordinaries #2)

July 13, 2021 Kym 3

Flash Fire is the explosive sequel to The Extraordinaries by USA Today bestselling author TJ Klune!

Nick landed himself the superhero boyfriend of his dreams, but with new heroes arriving in Nova City it’s up to Nick and his friends to determine who is virtuous and who is villainous. Which is a lot to handle for a guy who just wants to finish his self-insert bakery AU fanfic.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads. […]

Falling

July 12, 2021 Kym 2

You just boarded a flight to New York.

There are one hundred and forty-three other passengers onboard.

What you don’t know is that thirty minutes before the flight your pilot’s family was kidnapped.

For his family to live, everyone on your plane must die.

The only way the family will survive is if the pilot follows his orders and crashes the plane.

Enjoy the flight.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot #1)

July 9, 2021 Kym 3

Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers’s delightful new series gives us hope for the future.

It’s been centuries since the robots of Earth gained self-awareness and laid down their tools.
Centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
Centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.
They’re going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers’ new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

Curses

July 7, 2021 Kym 3

Curses is the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ retelling I’ve been waiting for.”–Marissa Meyer, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“A unique and twisty magical romp!”–Tamora Pierce, New York Times bestselling author

Merit Cravan refused to fulfill her obligation to marry a prince, leading to a fairy godling’s curse. She will be forced to live as a beast forever, unless she agrees to marry a man of her mother’s choosing before her eighteenth birthday.

Tevin Dumont has always been a pawn in his family’s cons. The prettiest boy in a big family, his job is to tempt naïve rich girls to abandon their engagements, unless their parents agree to pay him off. But after his mother runs afoul of the beast, she decides to trade Tevin for her own freedom.

Now, Tevin and Merit have agreed that he can pay off his mother’s debt by using his con-artist skills to help Merit find the best match . . . but what if the best match is Tevin himself?
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]

Finding Chika: A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

July 6, 2021 Kym 3

” Mitch Albom has done it again with this moving memoir of love and loss. You can’t help but fall for Chika. A page-turner that will no doubt become a classic.” –Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club and The Art of Memoir

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tuesdays With Morrie comes Mitch Albom’s most personal story to date: an intimate and heartwarming memoir about what it means to be a family and the young Haitian orphan whose short life would forever change his heart.

Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince.

With no children of their own, the forty-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says, “No one in Haiti can help you with.”

Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost.

Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed—a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.
-Excerpt taken from Goodreads […]