Number of books read: 8
Number of rereads: 0
Number of physical books: 4
Number of ebooks: 0
Number of audiobooks: 4
Number of ARCS: 0
5* reviews: 0
4.5* reviews: 0
4* reviews: 2
February started slowly and I didn’t think I was going to get much read. It has just taken me so long to finish anything this month. I guess that’s mostly down to the book that I read. They didn’t end up being as good as I’d hoped. The kind of books that sound really good but just don’t deliver. On the plus side, I’ve knocked a few long-time members of my TBR off the list and have moved a few more audiobooks into my completed library and out of my not started library. So, what did I read in February?
Synopsis:
Eighteen year old Red and her friends are on a road trip in an RV, heading to the beach for Spring Break.
It’s a long drive but spirits are high. Until the RV breaks down in the middle of nowhere. And as the wheels are shot out, one by one, the friends realise that this is no accident.
There’s a sniper out there. He’s watching them and he knows exactly who they are. One of the group has a secret that the sniper is willing to kill for.
As a game of cat-and-mouse plays out, the group desperately tries to get help. Buried secrets are forced to light and tensions within the group reach deadly levels. Only one thing is for sure. Not everyone will survive the night . . .
Read my review.
LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE BY CELESTE NG
Synopsis:
Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned – from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren – an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .
Read my review.
MS ICE SANDWICH BY MIEKO KAWAKAMI
Synopsis:
A young boy returns obsessively to a supermarket sandwich counter, entranced by the beauty of the woman who works there. Her aloof demeanour and electric blue eyelids make him feel the most intense joy he’s ever known. He calls her Ms Ice Sandwich, and he wants nothing more than to spend his days watching her coolly slip sandwiches into bags.
But life keeps getting in the way – there’s his beloved grandmother’s illness, and a faltering friendship with his classmate Tutti, who she invites him into her private world. Wry, intimate and wonderfully skewed, Ms Ice Sandwich is a poignant depiction of the naivety and wisdom of youth, just as it is passing.
Read my review.
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA BY JULES VERNE
Synopsis:
This Audible Original drama voyages across the seas on board the USS Abraham Lincoln in pursuit of a mysterious monster that has been terrifying unsuspecting ships, in an expedition to hunt this creature down before more people are injured or killed.
Amongst the crew are Professor Pierre Aronnax, who wants to be the first person to identify the creature, believing it to be nothing more than an oversized Narwhal. He’s joined by Ned Land, a Canadian harpoonist, believed to be the best in the world. Brought onto the USS Abraham Lincoln to kill the creature, Ned has a secret – his love was on a previous ship attacked by the monster (as was he) and died deep in the bowels of the ship, and he wants revenge.
Also on board is Constance Boyd, an agent for the fledgling and secret Office of US Naval Intelligence.
After a long search the ship finally encounters the beast, but during the attack our three crew members are thrown into the water. As they cling on for life to their surprise they discover the monster to be an advanced technologic masterpiece, the Nautilus, a submarine unknown to man, commanded by Captain Nemo, played by Adrian Lester OBE (The Day After Tomorrow, Primary Colours, Hustle).
An enigma, a man without a nation, who’s declared war on mankind by attacking ships that cross his path, our story truly begins when we meet Nemo and discover he’s not the monster that he’s made out to be.
Read my review.
ARIADNE BY JENNIFER SAINT
Synopsis:
Ariadne, Princess of Crete and daughter of the fearsome King Minos, grows up hearing stories of gods and heroes. But beneath the golden palace something else stirs, the hoofbeats and bellows echoing from the Labyrinth below. Every year its captive, the Minotaur – Ariadne’s brother – demands blood.
When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne sees in him her chance to escape. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that drawing the attention of the mercurial gods may cost her everything.
In a world where women are nothing more than the pawns of powerful men, will Ariadne’s decision to risk everything for love ensure her happy ending? Or will she find herself sacrificed for her lover’s ambition?
Read my review.
THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS BY ALI HAZELWOOD
Synopsis:
When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman’s carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.
As a third-year Ph.D. 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 on her way to a happily ever after was always going to be tough, scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting woman, 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 he agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire and Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support (and his unyielding abs), their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion.
Olive soon discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Review coming soon.
MERMAID PROJECT: EPISODE 1 BY LEO AND CORINE JAMAR
TBC
Synopsis:
Paris, end of the 21st Century. Inspector Romane Pennac is the only white woman in her station. The world has suffered devastating wars and ecological disasters, and the old powers of Europe and America are now the third world. Yet it is toward the young woman, now a member of a discriminated-against minority, that a couple of devastated parents turn. A mysterious letter has just announced to them that the body of their daughter, recently deceased in New York, isn’t in her coffin…
Review coming soon.
JIMMY CORRIGAN: THE SMARTEST KID ON EARTH BY CHRIS WARE
TBC
Synopsis:
Jimmy Corrigan has rightly been hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever to be published. It won the Guardian First Book Award 2001, the first graphic novel to win a major British literary prize.
It is the tragic autobiography of an office dogsbody in Chicago who one day meets the father who abandoned him as a child. With a subtle, complex and moving story and the drawings that are as simple and original as they are strikingly beautiful, Jimmy Corrigan is a book unlike any other and certainly not to be missed.
Review coming soon.
Yipee ki-yay, motherbooker 
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