Don’t Forget Me – Victoria Stevens

I was disappointed. I guessed the big “secret” quite easily — the letters gave it away. Was that intentional? The book was just so angsty and melodramatic. Listen, life happens. Death happens. Time goes on.

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Hazel Clarke is no stranger to heartbreaks, and being sent to live with a father she’s never met is the latest in a string of them. Even the beauty of eastern Australia isn’t enough to take her mind off her mother and the life she had to leave behind in England. But when Hazel meets the friendly, kindhearted Red and his elusive twin, Luca, she begins the slow process of piecing together a new life—and realizes she isn’t the only one struggling with loss. As friendships deepen and love finds its way in, Hazel also learns that when you truly love someone, they are always in your heart.

This sparkling debut novel is a touching testament to coming of age, falling in love, and finding home in unexpected places.

Pachinko – Min Jin Lee

Beautiful, luminous, and complex. What does it mean to be discarded by your birthplace? To not belong anywhere? To get lost in the gutters? I’ve always been intrigued by different generations, and the “Silent Generation” is one that never gets enough attention. They were lost to war, and left behind. They were overshadowed by the roaring 20’s and the baby boomers after them.

Synopsis

Pachinko follows one Korean family through the generations, beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan.

So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the indifferent arc of history. Through desperate struggles and hard-won triumphs, its members are bound together by deep roots as they face enduring questions of faith, family, and identity.

A Torch Against the Night – Sabaa Tahir

“Elias and Laia are running for their lives.” Well, that sentence sums up the majority of this book. To be fair, I read An Ember in the Ashes in 2015, and it’s now 2018. So it took some time for me to delve back into this world and these characters. But when the punches and twists come, watch out! Amazing.

Synopsis

Elias and Laia are running for their lives. After the events of the Fourth Trial, Martial soldiers hunt the two fugitives as they flee the city of Serra and undertake a perilous journey through the heart of the Empire.

Laia is determined to break into Kauf—the Empire’s most secure and dangerous prison—to save her brother, who is the key to the Scholars’ survival. And Elias is determined to help Laia succeed, even if it means giving up his last chance at freedom.

But dark forces, human and otherworldly, work against Laia and Elias. The pair must fight every step of the way to outsmart their enemies: the bloodthirsty Emperor Marcus, the merciless Commandant, the sadistic Warden of Kauf, and, most heartbreaking of all, Helene—Elias’s former friend and the Empire’s newest Blood Shrike.

Bound to Marcus’s will, Helene faces a torturous mission of her own—one that might destroy her: find the traitor Elias Veturius and the Scholar slave who helped him escape…and kill them both.

The Gatekeepers – Jen Lancaster

Um, TW: suicide, because obviously. I never thought I’d be the person to post one, but information on the Werther Effect had me convinced. This book shook me up — and from both perspectives. I think the scariest thing is that I am totally on the trajectory of becoming Stephen’s parents. I want my future kids to excel. But I’m also going to be a management consultant, and that sometimes requires travelling Monday to Thursday. I’m okay with the lifestyle now, because I’m young. But I think about my co-workers, who are right beside me working from 6 am to 1 am straight. What impact does that have on the children?

Synopsis

Anyone passing through North Shore, IL, would think this was the most picture-perfect place ever, with all the lakefront mansions and manicured hedges and iron gates. No one talks about the fact that the brilliant, talented kids in this town have a terrible history of throwing themselves in front of commuter trains, and that there’s rampant opioid abuse that often leads to heroin usage.

Meet Simone, the bohemian transfer student from London, who is thrust into the strange new reality of the American high school; Mallory, the hyper-competitive queen bee; and Stephen, the first generation genius who struggles with crippling self-doubt. Each one is shocked when lovable football player Braden takes his own life and the tragedy becomes a suicide cluster. With so many students facing their own demons, can they find a way to save each other—as well as themselves?

Inspired by the true events that happened in the author’s home town.

Far From the Tree – Robin Benway

WHEW. What a read. This was a deep suckerpunch to the gut. Did I cry? Heck yeah, I cried. I cried BUCKETS. Every other chapter, I felt like there was something new and tragic and beautiful. This wasn’t a book for levity. But hey, my sinuses got SUPER clear after getting through this one.

Synopsis

A contemporary novel about three adopted siblings who find each other at just the right moment.

Being the middle child has its ups and downs.

But for Grace, an only child who was adopted at birth, discovering that she is a middle child is a different ride altogether. After putting her own baby up for adoption, she goes looking for her biological family, including—

Maya, her loudmouthed younger bio sister, who has a lot to say about their newfound family ties. Having grown up the snarky brunette in a house full of chipper redheads, she’s quick to search for traces of herself among these not-quite-strangers. And when her adopted family’s long-buried problems begin to explode to the surface, Maya can’t help but wonder where exactly it is that she belongs.

And Joaquin, their stoic older bio brother, who has no interest in bonding over their shared biological mother. After seventeen years in the foster care system, he’s learned that there are no heroes, and secrets and fears are best kept close to the vest, where they can’t hurt anyone but him.