TBR: August 2022

The Drowned Woods

The Girls Are Never Gone
What Once Was Mine
Mirror, Mirror
Court of Lions
Just Pretending
Queen of the Unwanted
Steelstriker
Rage and Ruin
War Storm

Buddy Read
- N/A

I think I have a good list going this month. I’m excited because if I actually get around to most of these I’ll be crossing off a few series off my list (finishing series I’ve started is one of my goals for the year). With that in mind, I made sure to add Just Pretending to my list. This one is a cute contemporary YA hockey romance. I loved the whole series. They’re pretty quick reads too if you’re looking to finish something fast.

Three other series I’ll be wrapping up (hopefully) this month are the Red Queen, Mirage, and Skyhunter series. As you probably know, I’ve been reading War Storm exclusively lately. My number one priority is getting through this chunky book, haha. It’s long but I’m really enjoying it and I’m a little over halfway at the moment. I’m also going to be reading Court of Lions from the Mirage series. It’s been a loooooong time since I read the first book so I’m definitely going to have to look back at my review and hunt down some plot summaries to refresh my memory. And the last one is a book that I keep putting on my TBR but never quite get to because I put it off until later in the month. This time, however, I’ll be jumping into Steelstriker right after I finish War Storm so I make sure I get to it this month!

And even though the books in the Twisted Tales series can be read as standalones, I’m going to count them as continuing a series. Plus, I just love retellings in general ❤ The two retellings from the series I decided to add this month are Mirror, Mirror (Snow White) and What Once Was Mine (Rapunzel). In the Snow White one, the Evil Queen poisoned the prince and took over the kingdom and now Snow White is trying to take it back. In the Rapunzel one, her hair hurts people instead of healing them so she’s locked away to protect everyone from her powers.

Then I have two series that I’ll be continuing. One is Rage and Ruin, which is the sequel to Storm and Fury (which I just finished recently and enjoyed for the most part). There was definitely a lot to unpack at the end of the first book so I’m expecting some trouble between Trinity and Zayne in the romance department. The other book is Queen of the Unwanted from The Women’s War series. I really loved the concept of this series. It’s basically a feminist fantasy series where a spell goes wrong and makes it so that women can only get pregnant if they actually consent/want the child (among other effects) which completely throws off the men in their society who are used to doing whatever they want. For the men who need heirs to secure the positions, this threatens their entire way of life. For women, it gives them more power and leverage, but also puts them in even more danger. Such an interesting premise and I’m excited to see where the story goes next!

And lastly, I have two standalones that I added to my list. I received both through NetGalley actually (even though I noticed after the fact that one of them is in fact not an ARC because it was released last year). The first is The Drowned Woods, which is set to be released this August 16th. I requested this one because I read The Bone Houses by the same author and absolutely loved the book. But anyway, back to The Drowned Woods! It’s supposed to be set in the same world as The Bone Houses, but it focuses on all-new characters. It’s about a girl with the power to locate water. During the war, a prince forced her to use her powers to find his enemy’s wells so he could poison them. Years later, she and a her old handler come together to get their revenge against the prince.

The second book book is The Girls Are Never Gone, which was released last September. It’s a paranormal/horror, LGBTQ, YA book about a girl who runs a paranormal podcast but is secretly a skeptic. When she goes to investigate the site of a supposed drowning odd things start happening and people start getting hurt. She starts to question the things she thought were impossible as she tries to solve the murder. I love the idea of this! I’m a huge fan of those paranormal investigation shows so this is perfect for me.

I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on this month’s TBR and hopefully you found something new you might want to check out yourself!