The WINNER of last week’s “lows” vote was… *drumroll*

DAISY JONES & THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid!

As promised, I’ll now add this book to my “top-TBR” shelf on Goodreads to remind me to read it within the next 18 months.

Rules:

• Link back to the original post at Howling Libraries
• Sort your Goodreads TBR shelf by date added, ascending
• Find 5 titles to purge from your TBR (the “lows”) OR find 5 titles that are at the BOTTOM of your TBR—books you want to read someday, just not right now!
• Post those 5 books in the list, with a brief explanation
• Next, sort your Goodreads TBR shelf by date added, descending
• List the last 5 (or more!) books you added to your TBR, with a synopsis or your brief summary of why you added it (the “highs”)

(books that are LOW on my TBR (BUT NOT BEING REMOVED)—vote in the comments for which one I should move UP on my list and I’ll read it within 18 months!)

• Emma in the Night — Wendy Walker [adult mystery]
  • This is one I just bought on a whim from the clearance rack at a bookstore a while back, knowing nothing about it. Mysteries are hit-and-miss for me but this one involves a dysfunctional family, which I find intriguing…
• The Dragon’s Rebel — Jacqueline Rohrbach [adult fantasy/romance]
  • A newly crowned king visits enemy lands and falls for a male concubine who the people claim is “cursed” and unholy. This is only on my “lows” because I think I can’t borrow it anywhere and will have to buy it, and I’m trying not to buy books right now… buuut it sounds so good I’m kinda hoping it wins lol.
    ✨ m/m rep! ✨
• We Contain Multitudes — Sarah Henstra [YA contemporary]
  • Two English class-mates are partnered in a pen pal assignment that leads to romance, but they must overcome their family secrets and homophobic bullying in the school if they want to make it work. I wanted to read this because I love epistolary romances, but I’m not sure now that it actually is that, and I’ve heard very sketchy things about the rep…
    ✨ m/m rep! ✨
• Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day — Seanan McGuire [adult paranormal]
  • Genuinely couldn’t tell you why, despite how much I love Seanan and the fact that I’ve owned this novella for years, I still haven’t read it?! I just keep forgetting I have it. Maybe if it wins, it’ll motivate me to finally pick it up! All I know is that its main character is a grieving ghost who can’t move on (I think?).
• The Jumbies — Tracey Baptiste [MG horror/fantasy]
  • A spooky Haitian MG folklore retelling? Yo, sign me up. I don’t know why I haven’t picked up a copy of this one yet!

I’m so sorry in advance for how long this is about to be, because I added a lot of books to my TBR this week… this actually isn’t even all of them, but the list was originally almost twice this long!

• Girls Save the World in This One — Ash Parsons [YA horror/humor]
  • Pitched as Clueless meets Shaun of the Dead. That’s literally all I needed to know.
• Time of Our Lives — Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka [YA romance]
  • Juniper can’t wait to leave home, while Fitz can’t stomach the idea of moving away from his mother with her early-onset Alzheimer’s. Sparks fly when the two meet during their college tour in Boston, but hard decisions must be made.
• Be Not Far From Me — Mindy McGinnis [YA contemporary]
  • While hiking with friends, Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl, and her own drunken rage sends her off into the woods, where she gets lost and injured and has to find her way out of the woods alone. (I love survival books!)
• Ink in the Blood — Kim Smejkal [YA fantasy]
  • A world where queerness is super normalized and religious servants ink magical spells into people’s skin. BRING IT
    ✨ queer, trans, nonbinary, m/m, f/f, bi rep, and more! ✨
• Medusa — Jessie Burton [YA fantasy]
  • A Medusa story retelling that ACTUALLY FOCUSES ON HER TRAUMA instead of vilifying her?! Brb while I weep FOREVER

• Horrid — Katrina Leno [YA horror]
  • I didn’t love her last book, You Must Not Miss, but I did LOVE the creepy elements in it, so I’m freakin’ PUMPED that Leno’s writing full-fledged horror next!!!
• Don’t Call the Wolf — Aleksandra Ross [YA fantasy]
  • An own-voice Polish-inspired fantasy story about DRAGONS!
    ✨ own-voice Polish rep! ✨
• Twisted — Marla Meyers [adult horror; available on KU]
  • An elderly woman believes a ghost is haunting her, while her daughter just thinks it’s dementia. 🙁
• Flowers in the Gutter — K.R. Gaddy [YA nonfic graphic novel]
  • A nonfic GN about the Edelweiss Pirates, a group of teens who fought the Nazis. Bad. ASS.
• Echoes Between Us — Katie McGarry [YA romance]
  • A girl who sees ghosts due to a tumor in her brain and a boy with an adrenaline addiction that draws him to her. I’m gonna be honest… I’m probably not going to love this, but I’m still morbidly curious?

• The Fire Never Goes Out — Noelle Stevenson [adult nonfic graphic novel]
  • Noelle’s writing a memoir!
    ✨ own-voice queer rep! ✨
• The Other F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce — Angie Manfredi [YA nonfic anthology]
  • An anthology of essays by fat MG/YA authors ???
    ✨ own-voice fat rep! ✨
• Archimancy — J.A. White [MG paranormal]
  • A boarding school full of ghosties. 😀
• Ghost Squad — Claribel A. Ortega [MG paranormal]
  • It’s like if the Ghostbusters team was a couple of middle school girls of color and their witchy grandma! ?
    ✨ own-voice Dominican rep! ✨
• Stand Up, Yumi Chung! — Jessica Kim [MG humor/contemporary]
  • Yumi is a Korean-American girl dealing with bullies as she prepares for her dream of becoming a stand-up comedian someday.
    ✨ own-voice Korean rep! ✨

• Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business — Lyla Lee [MG contemporary]
  • This is pitched as Fresh Off the Boat meets Junie B. Jones and that’s all I needed, really.
    ✨ own-voice Korean rep! ✨
• Tristan Strong Punches a Hole in the Sky — Kwame Mbalia [MG fantasy]
  • A 7th-grader grieving the loss of his best friend gets sucked into an adventure with black American gods and Anansi. WOW. I feel like this book has broken my heart without even reading it, somehow.
    ✨ own-voice black rep! ✨
• How to Make Friends with the Sea — Tanya Guerrero [MG contemporary]
  • After his parents’ divorce, Pablo’s mom moves them to the Philippines, where Pablo’s fear of the ocean (among many other things) ruins his life until they take in an orphaned little girl named Chiqui.
    ✨ anxiety rep & own-voice Filipino rep! ✨
• From the Desk of Zoe Washington — Janae Marks [MG contemporary]
  • When Zoe’s incarcerated father contacts her for the first time, she learns he might have been wrongfully imprisoned and sets out on a mission to clear his name.
    ✨ own-voice black rep! ✨
• Gloom Town — Ronald L. Smith [MG horror]
  • Rory and his friend Isabella have to stop Rory’s boss, an inhuman shadow-stealer with an army of evil entities at his side, from taking over the world.
    ✨ own-voice black rep! ✨

Descriptions for all items below this point can be found in the latest Stacking the Shelves post!

• Sea Witch Rising — Sarah Henning [YA fantasy; unsolicited finished copy sent for review]
• The Lightning Thief: The Graphic Novel — Rick Riordan [MG fantasy; digital library loan]
• The Unsuitable — Molly Pohlig [adult gothic; eARC]
• The Easy Part of Impossible — Sarah Tomp [YA contemporary; eARC]
• Rules for Being a Girl — Katie Cotugno [YA contemporary; eARC]
• All Your Twisted Secrets — Diana Urban [YA thriller; eARC]

• Hex: A Novel — Rebecca Dinerstein Knight [adult contemporary; eARC]
• Follow Me to Ground — Sue Rainsford [adult fantasy; eARC]
• Never Have I Ever with a Duke — Darcy Burke [adult historical romance; eARC]
• The Intuition Journal — Jo Chun Yan [adult nonfic; eARC]
• The Ritual Yearbook — Theresa Cheung [adult nonfic; eARC]
• 10-Minute Declutter — Skye Alexander [adult nonfic; eARC]

• Monster, She Wrote — Lisa Kroger [adult nonfic; finished copy sent for review]
• Child of the Ghosts — Jonathan Moeller [YA paranormal; kindle freebie]
• Dead of Night — C.M. Saunders [adult horror; kindle freebie]
• I Just Want You to Be Happy — Amy Cross [adult horror; kindle freebie]
• Girl’s Best Friend — R.J. Roles [adult horror; kindle freebie]

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Which book from my “lows” do you think I should add to my “top-TBR” shelf?

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