What We're Reading: August 2024

"Fourteen competitors are invited to an abandoned theme park in a challenge of Hide-and-Seek. The last contestant to be found will win $50,000. Mack has been hiding her whole life - she's alive today because she knew where to hide. Her sister wasn't as lucky. With a traumatic past and nowhere to go, Mack enters the competition hoping to turn her life around with the prize money. When the fellow competitors begin to disappear, the remaining contestants grow suspicious of what happened to those that were "found" only to reveal a far more sinister result. In a game that was based around individuality, they will have to team up to survive. Hide was a lot of fun with a supernatural twist. Told from a third-person omniscient point of view, White encompasses the thoughts, feelings, and emotions of each character while still keeping Mack in the spotlight. She sews everyone's stories together seamlessly and reveals the plot fluidly. This book was exciting and interesting from exposition to resolution. Fans of Rachel Harrison, T. Kingfisher, and Grady Hendrix will enjoy Hide." - Mackenzie N., Library Headquarters

"Wren and Lewis are in their first year of marriage when Lewis gets a complicated medical diagnosis. Within a year he is going to transform into a Great White Shark. Lewis and Wren each handle the diagnosis differently, hiding thoughts and feelings from one another, desperately trying to make sense of how different their worlds will be in just a years time. As Lewis reaches each stage of his transformation Wren is bombarded with this overwhelming finality, yet Lewis sees it as rebirth. A new chapter of a strange new life. The story shifts between characters and through multiple timelines, weaving in Wrens past and future. Its a beautiful story of grief and love, how we feel about life and what we perceive as living. Its hard to put into words how deeply moving and unique this story is. Its bizarre, heart-wrenching, and lovely. I would recommend it to anyone who might want to read a book that's different from the everyday plot. I honestly don't know if I have read anything that it compares to. I know it sounds bizarre, but give it a chance. It's worth the read." - Sarah J., Busch Annapolis Library

"Marilyn Monroe needed singing lessons to prepare for an important movie role. She could only think of one person to help her, someone whose voice and style she admired and fangirled over - Ella Fitzgerald. She reached out to Ella for help. Ella turned her down. She was not a teacher, but began a conversation with Marilyn, anyway. Over the years they shared about their lives, loves, careers and struggles. The two bonded and formed a friendship that would last for decades. While many of the conversations, topics and situations in this novel are fictional, the friendship was not. Ella and Marilyn were close friends in real life - supporting, advising, and celebrating each other. I'm not regularly a fan of historical fiction, but I am a fan of both Fitzgerald and Monroe. Their stories, and the way they are written, made me feel like I was reading their diaries and hearing their innermost thoughts. I enjoyed this intimate look at these larger-than-life superstars, who wanted to succeed, but also just wanted be loved and respected by those closest to them. Download the audiobook on Libby. The two narrators portraying Ella and Marilyn were wonderful to listen to." - Darnice J. Maryland City at Russett

"Bovalino was able to weave the readers into this emotional story about a teen girl, Leah, who is burdened with caring for her baby brother - the child that made her parents grow apathetic toward her. After a frustrating evening of his continuous crying and in a moment of desperation, she offers him to the mysterious Lord of the Wood. In their quiet, devout town, the citizens live in fear of The Lord of the Wood, an entity that is master of the wood and will come take those that are offered to it. After Leah wishes her brother be taken, her little brother is soon found to be missing and Leah is forced by her mother, the pressure of the town and church and her own guilt to go into the woods to retrieve him. However, the Lord of the Wood is not as one would expect She promises to make him a song in exchange for her baby brother. Leah will have to come to face her past, her emotions, her future, and the secrets of Winston to save her little brother, but she will mostly have to learn how to forgive herself to make things right. This story was so beautifully written with deep reflections of who we are as people. Some of our mistakes are our biggest strengths and some of the truths we've grown up with turn out to be a monstrous lie twisted by greed and hatred. If you're a fan of Labyrinth, The Twisted Ones, or other folk horror, you'll enjoy My Throat an Open Grave." - Mackenzie N., Library Headquarters

"Set in the same mid-century universe as We Could Be So Good, Sebastian's latest tells the story of Mark, a reporter still reeling from the death of his partner, and Eddie, an up-and-coming baseball player having a bad streak of luck. Mark is assigned to write a series of stories on Eddie and the two quickly become close friends, and then much more. Sometimes Cat Sebastian's books don't have any real conflict...and I find I don't actually mind. This is just a sweet story of people falling in love, being kind to one another and helping one another to heal. I didn't miss the drama one bit." - Stephanie P., Library Headquarters