On Bee's Bookshelf

Hello again bookworms!  I hope you've all had a wonderful Summer full of the best summer reads - I've definitely had a few! As usual, a lot of these books were advance requests so the dates will be in the future but you should definitely check them out once they're released. I started reading for the wonderful publisher called Europa Editions who specialise in translating and reprinting wonderful stories from different languages all over the world into English so I've got to read some amazing books I'd never have discovered before!                                Heartbreak Incorporated - Alex de Campi ⭐⭐⭐ Genre: Fantasy/Mystery | Released: 22/06/2021  The Bookshop of Forgotten Dreams - Emily Blaine  ⭐⭐⭐ Genre: Romance | Released: 18/06/2021 The Wedding Dress - Dani Atkins ⭐⭐⭐ Genre: Romance | 05/08/2021 Love Life - Nancy Peach ⭐⭐⭐ Genre: Romance | Released: 02/08/2021 You Will Never Be Fo...

  Genre: Dystopian Fiction | Fantasy | Speculative Fiction Release Date: Expected 19th October 2021 Publisher: HQ THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.  CW: Sexual Assault, Violence, Abortion, Pregnancy, Implied underage sexual activity.  "They said a great depression would never happen again. I don't know what was so fucking great about it, but it happened a second time." The United States have collapsed. The men in charge have led the world into economic and social collapse, and ran away to let the womyn pick up the pieces. Schools have stopped, there's not enough food being produced and the power is running out.   Miranda has lost everything -  her job, her husband and even her home. And she can only think of one place she and her Daughter Emma might survive - Femlandia. Isolated colonies exclusively for womyn who live outside the influence of men in a seemingly idyllic paradise. And she wants to believe that, but considering everything she knows about th...

  Genre: Thriller | Domestic Thriller | Adult Fiction Released: Expected 8th September 2021 Publisher: Bookouture  CW: Bullying, Cheating, Suicide, Underage Relationships.  Six weeks ago, she lost her husband as he left for a skiing trip he was destined to never return from. Now, everything has fallen apart. He was never going to finish that bloody book he was always writing, they were never going to have couples night with their best friends again, their son would never get to see him again.  But tonight, everything is perfect. Or at least, it looks perfect. She's just got home from work at the local GP surgery, the table is set, dinner is cooking, and her son is talking to him happily in the other room. But he isn't her husband. She doesn't know why he's here, why he won't go away, and just how he managed to get so much leverage over her, she's going to figure it out but for now she'll play along. Because there's one thing she knows - everyone lies, ev...

  Genre: Literary Fiction | Adult Fiction | Contemporary Fiction Release Date: Expected 17th September 2021 Other versions available now.  Seven has ambition, he has hopes. He dreams of one day becoming a sucessful writer but his hope is slowly wearing thin. He's jumping between dead-end jobs to try and support his aging family, trying to navigate the confusing world of dating and sex, and a stubborn and somewhat troublesome group of friends who encourage all sorts of bad habits.  When he meets Cynthia, Seven beings to feel that spark of hope once again. He has a brand new energy, someone to be there and support him, someone to love even. But it doesn't take long for it to go bad - but he is determined to hold onto that hope just for a bit longer.  Thorn is one of those stories that is about nothing at all, but everything at the same time . No dramatic twists, no daring adventures, nobody being swept of their feet - just a brutally honest rendition of true life on pa...

  Genre: Young Adult | Romance | Fiction Release Date: Expected 30th September 2021 Publisher: Wise Wolf Books CW: Parental Neglect, Domestic Violence, Abuse, Anxiety, Mental Illness. Jeanette isn't happy with her life. Her whole world currently revolves caring for her agoraphobic and hoarding mother and it doesn't leave much time for friends or dreams. She's spent her life dreaming of going off to university and studying Musical Theatre, of finally having friends she can confide about her life in - and then she meets Jack.  Jack seems to be very happy. He has friends, is applying for football scholarships and is everything Jeanette wants to be. But it's all a front - his mother is violent and only wants him to play sports because of her failed tennis career but all he wants to do is play music. Then he meets Marcia, the love of his life. But she won't meet him - because Marcia isn't real.  Jeanette knows its wrong to pretend to be someone else - but she doesn...

  Genre: General Fiction | Domestic Fiction Release Date: Expected 2nd September 2021 Publisher: Aria & Aires  CW: Alcoholism, Muggings, Graphic Farm Scenes, Mentions of Death, Mentions of Adoption. Maggie is used to being alone, she's even grown to like it sometimes or so she tells herself. After ten years, it's just the way things are. She's been getting by with just her farm and books in the local library for company - until a quiet teenage boy walks in and leaves with a bag full of romance novels. A boy who thinks she's funny. Not funny for an old woman, just funny.  Tom escapes to the library too, to get away from his strained home life with his Dad and bleak future he has planned for him - until he catches the attention of a seventy-two year old librarian named Maggie, who for some reason, he trusts. They may seem like the most unlikely friends, but for some reason they seem to be the only person can really talk to these days - so when the library needs help ...

Genre: Romance Release Date: Expected 19th August 2021 Fifteen years ago today, Noelle and her best friend wrote down their hopes and dreams for their future selves - and of all the things she imagined she'd be doing right now it wasnt being stuck with a dead car and a dead phone on a snowy, closed motorway in the middle of nowhere. But as she's sitting in the cold and reminiscing on all the things she didn't do in the last decade and a half, she finds Sam and they spend the most perfect eight hours stuck in time together until they drive off back to their own lives. She never expected to see Sam again, but when suddenly appears back in her life again and again she feels like this is a sign. But nothing in her life is ever that simple, especially not romance.  Eight Perfect Hours was a sweet, chaotically funny story about destiny and love - Noelle and Sam had that type of meet-cute we all dream of having and you had no doubt you were at the start of a whirlwind romance. I l...

  Genre: Literary Fiction | Adult Fiction  Release Date: Expected 2nd September 2021 Publisher: Random House UK | Cornerstone Originally published in 2009 Christopher Flinders didn't have a charmed life. He grew up in a less than pleasant neighbourhood with a family who's only ambitions were to keep their heads down and not make a fuss. So they weren't too supportive when he decided to drop out of university to chase his dreams of finally writing his first novel.  But that didn't matter, as he was soon taken under the wing of his new mentor and sucessful editor, Owner and his charming wife Diana. He was close to finally achieving everything - and then a string of poor decisions destroy everything causing him to flee his broken life back to the quiet countryside to live in anonymous mediocrity.  And he would've stayed there, if not for a curious academic who reaches out and starts asking questions about Owen. Now he has to face the events he's spent twenty years ...

  Genre: Domestic Thriller | Crime Thriller | Mystery Release Date: Expected 18th August 2021 Publisher: BooksGoSocial "A small town ... a prominent family ... a secret. Only two people know the truth, and their silence will have murderous consequences." Anna Goddard knows the weight behind her name. Being a Goddard has meant always being perfect, maintaining the perfect appearance no matter the cost. But she knows her family is far from how they portray themselves to the world, and when she starts to suspect there's more than she knows going on beneath the surface she starts to dig. But digging always leaves you dirty.  With the help of her new sweetheart, a quiet but charming librarian and historian Michael, she starts to uncover the darker secrets of her family - and now she's going to need them if they're going to survive the fallout of what she's let loose. Silent Pretty Things was a clever, slow-paced domestic thriller with plenty of tension, packed full...

  Genre: Is Lemony Snicket a Genre?  Release Date: Expected 2nd September 2021 Publisher: Oneworld Publications | Rock The Boat  It all starts with breakfast; tea with honey, toast with cheese, a sliced pear, an egg. After breakfast, Mr Snicket finds a lone scrap of paper informing him he'd had poison for breakfast. But rather than patiently waiting for his demise, he decides to investigate where this unwanted ingredient could have come from and sets off to track down some tea and honey ...   In that trademark Lemony Snicket style, which is almost a genre of its own at this point, Poison for Breakfast, is a delightfully absurd story for curious readers of any age . Full of the trademark expressions and prose I've come to love and expect, a strangely familiar sense of foreboding and a unique twist, this didn't fail to live up the reputation of Mr Snicket. A quick read, this was the perfect length. Especially seeing as instead of a story, per se, this is more like...

  Genre: Dystopian | Science Fiction | Speculative Fiction Released: 27th April 2021 Publisher: Doubleday Canada  CW: Death, Illness, Infant Death, Fertility.  Only men carry the virus. Only women can save us.  The year is 2025. In a Glaswegian Hospital, Dr Amanda Maclean gets a call like the countless others that day - a young man who came in with a mild fever. It should've been simple treatment, but he was dead within hours.  There's barely any time to figure out the cause before this mystery virus ravages its way through the hospital, infecting every man it crosses. This isn't like anything the world has seen before, and even though Dr Maclean tries to raise the alarm it's too late - the Illness has started spreading like wildfire across the globe, leaving women to try and find their way in the ashes of civil unrest and decimation left behind.  Is this the end of the world, or the start of a new one?  " I've noticed when people talk about 'people' t...

  Genre: Romance | Romantic Comedy | Contemporary Romance  Release Date: Expected 12th October 2021 Publisher: Lake Union Publishing Ved has everything - he's gorgeous, tall, wealthy, successful and he's getting married to Disha - a beautiful and equally as wealthy woman. There's only one problem - his overbearing mother pressured him into this marriage and he's actually gay.  Ved tries to commit himself to following through with his wedding for his family, and even finds Disha to be a wonderful friend, but then he meets Carlos. A handsome American businessman visiting Mumbai for a few weeks who is everything he didn't dare to dream about. Now, instead of getting ready for his own engagement party, Ved is falling in love. And he needs to decide whether he's ready to risk everything for a chance to finally be himself. The Other Man takes place just before Homosexuality was finally decriminalized in India, where arranged marriages are still commonplace and even e...

  Genre: Science Fiction | Young Adult | Fiction Release Date: Expected 19th August 2021 Publisher: Penguin Random House Childrens UK  South London, 2020.  A young boy called Esso gets hit by a car and the impact is life-changing. Not his injuries, he'll recover from those, but during his accident he is transported to The Upper World. Here, he catches a horrifying glimpse of a not-so-distant future fifteen years from now. London looks the same, but feels different, more dangerous. And then he sees Rhia, a lonely young girl in foster care trying to navigate struggles that feel all too familiar to him.  Now, he's only got a few days to figure out how to escape the future he's seen and stop the single bullet that will not only destroy his life, but of this girl he won't even meet for another fifteen years.  The Upper World was the perfect blend of science, unnerving realism and something just slightly magical that gave it it's uniquely otherworldly quality. Learnin...

  Genre: Non-Fiction | Memoir | Short Story Release Date: Expected 13th January 2022 Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic  Sticker is part of the Object Lessons collections from Bloomsbury Academic, a series of short books teaching about the hidden lives of ordinary objects. Like many, I have vivid memories of growing up that include stickers - the ones annoyingly stuck to the fruit in my lunchbox, the ones over my school books, the ones that come with sweets, the ones I wasn't meant to stick to the wall but did anyway - and they still appear in my adult life. They somehow remain a constant and despite their age hold an important part in popular physical media.  In stickers, Hoke creates a memoir using twenty different stickers to mark different phases in his life from infancy to adulthood - exploring growing up in a disabled family, racial segregation, queer childhood and living in a heavily facist and neo-nazi environment that fell victim to fatal terrorist attacks, extreme r...

Genre: General Fiction | Adult Fiction  Release Date: Expected 4th November 2021 Publisher: Headline Review  Katy and Rachel aren't just twin sisters. They really are best friends, or at least they used to be. Now, it's not just distance that's coming between them. Each of them thinks the other has crafted the perfect life without them - Rachel thinks Katy is a sucessful socialite working in London as an event planner and Katy thinks Rachel has the perfect countryside life with the perfect marriage and the perfect home in their childhood cottage. But both of them are very wrong. The grass is always greener on the other side, and our sisters have spent years jealous of the life the other has created. But when they swap homes for a week when Rachel says she has a work conference to attend, they both finally get to see each others lives for the first time in years, and maybe they'll find out they have more in common than they thought.  "Just because a family doesn...

"Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world." In this collection of twenty short books, Penguin Classics bring new and old voices together to talk about the ideas that have changed the way we think about the living Earth. From the basic science to the in depth philosophies of life, these stories bring a rounded view about the world we live in and the inevitable climate disaster we face if we do not change.  The Green Ideas collection is set for release on 26th August 2021.  This Can't Be Happening - George Monbiot ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ In this collection of short essays and speeches spanning ...

Genre: Fiction | Literary Fiction | New Adult Fiction Release Date: Expected 16th September 2021 Publisher: Picador | Pan Macmillan Translated from Japanese "First things first, Grandpa's gone. The tale that follows is pretty outrageous, but he knows that one fact is absolutely real." Rinato Natsuki was perfectly average. He didn't speak very much or have many friends. He didn't do particularly well or bad at school. He was as normal as could be. But after the death of his beloved Grandfather, Rinato is left devastated and faced with a bleak future - closing Natsuki books, the perfect sanctuary he'd spent years in with his Grandfather and moving far away to live with his aunt who he's only recently met. But then a curious thing happens - a tabby cat called Tiger appears in the store and asks for his help. He needs someone who truly understands books to help him rescue trapped books from people who have misunderstood and mistreated them. And so the pa...

The Skylight - Louise Candlish ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Simone thinks she knows everything about the beautiful couple downstairs. She can see right through their skylight from her bathroom window, and there's no harm in watching is there? But Simone was wrong - she doesn't know them at all. One day, there's someone under the skylight who shouldn't be and she's mad. Very mad. But after all this time watching, she knows exactly how to get even.  Thick with tension and static, the mystery is always hanging just over our heads until it crashes down spectacularly. Simone was captivating in a curiously chilling way from the first pages. Full of brilliantly clever little twists and just enough backstory which is so hard to achieve in short stories - this manages to be engrossing for each of it's 89 pages. Saving The Day - Katie Fforde  ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Allie isn't very happy - her job at the supermarket sucks and honestly so does her boyfriend, Ryan. She needs a change but doesn't know where ...

  Genre: Fiction | Romance Release Date: 21st July 2021 Publisher: Aria & Aries CW: Racism, Death.  Juliana makes her living as a spanish TV extra, although her only connection to her heritage is some bad spanish lessons and cloudy memories of her Mother from years ago.  So when her slighly eccentric uncle Arturo asks her to come and look after his uninhabited Andalusian home for three months, she jumps at the chance to go and learn more about where she came from. But when he reveals the house will be hers if she just completes ten little and slightly strange tasks, she's got the opportunity to not only learn the truth about her roots, but maybe finally put down some of her own.  From family rivalries to problematically handsome neighbours, Julianas journey wasn't just ticking boxes on some list - it was a deep dive into her family history and the lies that have been hovering around her entire life. This was a very beautiful story about finding all the little thi...

  Genre: Thriller | Mystery | Psychological Thriller | Adult Fiction Release Date: Expected 19th August 2021  Publisher: HQ CW: Fertility Issues, Adoption, Death, Car Accidents, Alcohol.  Adam Wright is  a sucessful screenwriter with facial blindness and a definite preference of books over people (don't we all?) His wife, Amelia, is fully aware that faces aren't the only things he can't see. On the surface, they're a perfect couple, but after years of marriage the cracks are starting to show in their foundations.  For their anniversary, Amelia surprises Adam with a weekend alone in the Scottish Highlands; secluded, remote, quiet and perfect for what they have planned. But no sooner than they manage to load their bags and dog into the converted chapel, something changes and their romantic trip is anything but. It's not just a failing marriage they've been holding onto for the last decade, but secrets. And those secrets could prove fatal.  Told through both o...