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September 20, 2015

Celebrate Contemporary #3: Leigh's Anticipated 2016 Titles


For our third Celebrate Contemporary post, we have Leigh who blogs over at the Little Book Star. She has an awesome blog and some awesome reading tastes as well! Today she is going to share with us her top ten most anticipated contemporary releases of 2016. She also included the summary of each book and a little snippet of why she is excited for each one. I hope you find some new books from this post to get excited over! Be sure to check out her blog and follow her over on her Twitter which can be found here.


Leigh (Little Book Star)


Leigh is a 19 year old college student majoring in Computer Science. Besides reading, she also loves to travel, go to theme parks, watch horror films, play the piano, and spend time with her shih tzu, Yoshi. She's been blogging for 3 years and will stay that way until books become extinct
😉.


Leigh's Most Anticipated 2016 Contemporary Releases


Leigh: Hi everyone! My name is Leigh and I am a book blogger over at Little Book Star. Ever since I started book blogging, I saw that I leaned more towards contemporary books. 


This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp

Goodreads Summary:

"10:00 a.m.
The principal of Opportunity, Alabama's high school finishes her speech, welcoming the entire student body to a new semester and encouraging them to excel and achieve.

10:02 a.m.
The students get up to leave the auditorium for their next class.

10:03
The auditorium doors won't open.

10:05
Someone starts shooting.

Told over the span of 54 harrowing minutes from four different perspectives, terror reigns as one student's calculated revenge turns into the ultimate game of survival."

Leigh's Thoughts: 

I already read this a couple months back and it was really good! I love the thrill and suspense of the story. The way the summary's written definitely caught my eye, and it's the reason why I had to read it immediately. I have not read a book where there is a shooting at a school so it was a fresh read for me.



Firsts by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Goodreads Summary: 

"Seventeen-year-old Mercedes Ayres has an open-door policy when it comes to her bedroom, but only if the guy fulfills a specific criteria: he has to be a virgin. Mercedes lets the boys get their awkward, fumbling first times over with, and all she asks in return is that they give their girlfriends the perfect first time- the kind Mercedes never had herself.

Keeping what goes on in her bedroom a secret has been easy- so far. Her absentee mother isn’t home nearly enough to know about Mercedes’ extracurricular activities, and her uber-religious best friend, Angela, won’t even say the word “sex” until she gets married. But Mercedes doesn’t bank on Angela’s boyfriend finding out about her services and wanting a turn- or on Zach, who likes her for who she is instead of what she can do in bed.

When Mercedes’ perfect system falls apart, she has to find a way to salvage her reputation and figure out where her heart really belongs in the process. Funny, smart, and true-to-life, FIRSTS is a one-of-a-kind young adult novel about growing up."

Leigh's Thoughts:

Honestly, that summary makes me want to read this book now. It's so intriguing and I've never read anything like that! It's crazy how the main character, Mercedes would allow virgin guys into her room and have sex just so the guys can call themselves "experienced" if they have sex with their girlfriends. Like, wtf that's so weird.



This is Where the World Ends by Amy Zhang

Goodreads Summary:

The heart-wrenching new novel about best friends on a collision course with the real world, from the author of Falling into Place.

Janie and Micah, Micah and Janie. That’s how it’s been ever since elementary school, when Janie Vivian moved next door. Janie says Micah is everything she is not. Where Micah is shy, Janie is outgoing. Where Micah loves music, Janie loves art. It’s the perfect friendship, as long as no one finds out about it.

But when Janie is date-raped by the most popular guy in school—a guy she’s had a crush on for years—she finds herself ostracized by all the people she thought were her friends. Now only Micah seems to believe she’s telling the truth. But when even Micah expresses doubt about whether or not she was “asking for it,” it leads to disastrous consequences, and Janie Vivian goes missing.

Using a nonlinear writing style and dual narrators, Amy Zhang’s astonishing second novel masterfully reveals the circumstances surrounding Janie’s disappearance.

Leigh's Thoughts: 

I bet this read is going to be very emotional. I don't think I've read a story about the MC being date-raped, so I'm really looking forward to reading this.



How It Ends by Catherine Lo

Goodreads Summary:

How it begins…

"You're in my English class, right?"
I almost checked behind me to make sure she wasn't talking to someone else.

How it unravels…

“You can be my best friend without being my only friend."
Her words were knives raked along my skin. I could hear the goodbye in every syllable.

How it Ends.

Why should I keep her secrets when she didn't keep mine? All it would take was one little click and a carefully worded message.

How it Ends is an honest, heart-wrenching tale of a friendship from first meeting to breakup. Told through alternating points of view, it is about two best friends’ tumultuous sophomore year of bullying, boys and backstabbing and what can happen when friends choose assumptions and fear over each other.
 

Leigh's Thoughts: 

Oh my goodness I need this book in my hands NOW! I love stories that tells how two people met, fell in love, then fell apart. It's so sad to think that the person you trusted the most is going to be a stranger again.



The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner

Goodreads Summary:

"Dill has had to wrestle with vipers his whole life—at home, as the only son of a Pentecostal minister who urges him to handle poisonous rattlesnakes, and at school, where he faces down bullies who target him for his father’s extreme faith and very public fall from grace.
 
He and his fellow outcast friends must try to make it through their senior year of high school without letting the small-town culture destroy their creative spirits and sense of self. Graduation will lead to new beginnings for Lydia, whose edgy fashion blog is her ticket out of their rural Tennessee town. And Travis is content where he is thanks to his obsession with an epic book series and the fangirl turning his reality into real-life fantasy.
 

Their diverging paths could mean the end of their friendship. But not before Dill confronts his dark legacy to attempt to find a way into the light of a future worth living."

Leigh's Thoughts: 

How effing cool is that!? The MC wrestles vipers his whole life! Umm, this book needs to be in my hands right now. I know I'm going to fly through this one for sure! 



Summer of Sloane by Erin L. Schneider

Goodreads Summary:

"Warm Hawaiian sun. Lazy beach days. Flirty texts with her boyfriend back in Seattle.

These are the things seventeen-year-old Sloane McIntyre pictured when she imagined the summer she’d be spending at her mom’s home in Hawaii with her twin brother, Penn. Instead, after learning an unthinkable secret about her boyfriend, Tyler, and best friend, Mick, all she has is a fractured hand and a completely shattered heart.

Once she arrives in Honolulu, though, Sloane hopes that Hawaii might just be the escape she needs. With beach bonfires, old friends, exotic food, and the wonders of a waterproof cast, there’s no reason Sloane shouldn’t enjoy her summer. And when she meets Finn McAllister, the handsome son of a hotel magnate who doesn’t always play by the rules, she knows he’s the perfect distraction from everything that’s so wrong back home.
But it turns out a measly ocean isn’t nearly enough to stop all the emails, texts, and voicemails from her ex-boyfriend and ex-best friend, desperate to explain away their betrayal. And as her casual connection with Finn grows deeper, Sloane’s carefree summer might not be as easy to find as she’d hoped. Weighing years of history with Mick and Tyler against their deception, and the delicate possibility of new love, Sloane must decide when to forgive, and when to live for herself."

Leigh's Thoughts: 

I'm really looking forward to the author's descriptions of Hawaii. I've never been there but I hope I get a great visualization of the different places and beaches through her writing. I'm also hoping that the romance is good! 



The Last Boy and Girl in the World by Siobhan Vivian

Goodreads Summary:

Aberdeen is drowning. 

Keeley Hewitt always has a joke to crack. Except there is nothing funny about her life right now. Her hometown of Aberdeen has always been known for flooding, but after one last terrible storm, the entire town has been told they must evacuate by the end of the summer--for good.

How will she say goodbye to everything and everyone she has ever known?

Most of the Aberdeen residents happily take the generous payout and look forward to starting over someplace new. But Keeley's dad isn't swayed by the overtures of officials or the sheriff's threats. He refuses to evacuate their family, and Keeley goes from being the funny girl in school to the last girl in Aberdeen.

As the town empties out, two boys compete for her heart. One is a boy she's had a crush on forever and the other is one she thinks she could fall in love with. But the water is rising higher and higher, and Keeley is faced with losing everything she's ever known, and the promise of things she's only ever wished for.

Leigh's Thoughts: 

So the book title is definitely misleading, but I'm curious how the story will play out. For sure there is a love triangle here because it says 2 boys compete for her heart. Hopefully it's a great love triangle, though.



Love & Gelato by Jenna Evans Welch

Goodreads Summary:

"A summer in Italy turns into a road trip across Tuscany in this sweeping debut novel filled with romance, mystery, and adventure.

Lina is spending the summer in Tuscany, but she isn’t in the mood for Italy’s famous sunshine and fairy-tale landscape. She’s only there because it was her mother’s dying wish that she get to know her father. But what kind of father isn’t around for sixteen years? All Lina wants to do is get back home.

But then Lina is given a journal that her mom had kept when she lived in Italy. Suddenly Lina’s uncovering a magical world of secret romances, art, and hidden bakeries. A world that inspires Lina, along with the ever-so-charming Ren, to follow in her mother’s footsteps and unearth a secret that has been kept from Lina for far too long. It’s a secret that will change everything she knew about her mother, her father—and ever herself.

People come to Italy for love and gelato, someone tells her, but sometimes they discover much more."

Leigh's Thoughts: 

Yes to Italy! I'm so excited to get a "tour" of the country through the author's writing. Plus, doesn't the title sound so cute!?



The Mystery of Hollow Places by Rebecca Podos

Goodreads Summary: 

"All Imogene Scott knows of her mother is the bedtime story her father told her as a child. It's the story of how her parents met: he, a forensic pathologist, she, a mysterious woman who came to identify a body. A woman who left Imogene and her father when she was a baby, a woman who was always possessed by a powerful loneliness, a woman who many referred to as troubled waters.

When Imogene is seventeen, her father, now a famous author of medical mysteries, strikes out in the middle of the night and doesn't come back. Neither Imogene's stepmother nor the police know where he could've gone, but Imogene is convinced he's looking for her mother. She decides to put to use the skills she's gleaned from a lifetime of her father's books to track down a woman she's never known, in order to find him and, perhaps, the answer to the question she's carried with her for her entire life. 

Rebecca Podos' debut is a powerful, affecting story of the pieces of ourselves that remain mysteries even to us - the desperate search through empty spaces for something to hold on to."

Leigh's Thoughts: 

I really love it when contemporary books has a mystery/suspense involved! Mysteries are what most likely motivate me to finish a book so I'm definitely looking forward into reading this book.



Bookishly Ever After by Isabel Bandeira

Goodreads Summary: 

"In a perfect world, sixteen-year-old Phoebe Martins’ life would be a book. Preferably a YA novel with magic and a hot paranormal love interest. Unfortunately, her life probably wouldn’t even qualify for a quiet contemporary. But when Phoebe finds out that Dev, the hottest guy in the clarinet section, might actually have a crush on her, she turns to her favorite books for advice. Phoebe overhauls her personality to become as awesome as her favorite heroines and win Dev’s heart. But if her plan fails, can she go back to her happy world of fictional boys after falling for the real thing?"

Leigh's Thoughts: 

This is definitely "judging a book by its cover" because it's just so dang pretty. I'd totally buy this book because of the gorgeous cover. #sorrynotsorry

Leigh: So this concludes my "2016 YA Contemporary book releases I'm most looking forward to"! Thank you so much Jacquelyn for having me on your blog. I had so much fun doing this! I don't normally go to Goodreads to look for 2016 book releases, but it was awesome browsing through Goodreads and see the books being released next year. 

Why Does Leigh Love Contemporary?

I asked Leigh why she loves contemporary and she said,
"What I love about this genre is that I can relate so much with the characters' experiences. I also like reading heavy contemporary books because they just move me and I always learn something new."

Thanks so much to Leigh for being apart of Celebrate Contemporary!

Are you excited for any of these books? If so, which ones? Which 2016 contemporaries are you looking forward to? 

1 comment:

  1. every single book on this list sounds SO GOOD. some i had already heard of but most were totally new to me as i suck at keeping up with releases and now i'm going to kill myself waiting for all these because they're so far away! i love books set in other places so i can do some armchair travelling so love + gelato and summer of sloane are definitely on my list of books to check out. thanks for this wonderful list leigh!

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