Hello and welcome to my blog in the new year! 2018 has only just begun, so let’s take a look at some of the newest releases of the new year! As per usual, I will first be looking at new fiction books being released this month. Other new releases of January 2018 can be found by genre right here on Goodreads.
- The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin
Publication date: January 9th, 2018
If you were told the date of your death, how would it shape your present? It’s 1969 in New York City’s Lower East Side, and word has spread of the arrival of a mystical woman, a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the day they will die. The Gold children—four adolescents on the cusp of self-awareness—sneak out to hear their fortunes. Their prophecies inform their next five decades. Golden-boy Simon escapes to the West Coast, searching for love in ’80s San Francisco; dreamy Klara becomes a Las Vegas magician, obsessed with blurring reality and fantasy; eldest son Daniel seeks security as an army doctor post-9/11, hoping to control fate; and bookish Varya throws herself into longevity research, where she tests the boundary between science and immortality. - Still Me by Jojo Moyes (Me Before You #3)
Publication date: January 30th, 2018
Louisa Clark arrives in New York ready to start a new life, confident that she can embrace this new adventure and keep her relationship with Ambulance Sam alive across several thousand miles. She is thrown into the world of the superrich Gopniks: Leonard and his much younger second wife, Agnes, and a never-ending array of household staff and hangers-on. Lou is determined to get the most out of the experience and throws herself into her job and New York life within this privileged world. Before she knows what’s happening, Lou is mixing in New York high society, where she meets Joshua Ryan, a man who brings with him a whisper of her past. In Still Me, as Lou tries to keep the two sides of her world together, she finds herself carrying secrets–not all her own–that cause a catastrophic change in her circumstances. And when matters come to a head, she has to ask herself Who is Louisa Clark? And how do you reconcile a heart that lives in two places? - Red Clocks by Leni Zumas
Publication date: January 16th, 2018
In this ferociously imaginative novel, abortion is once again illegal in America, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the Personhood Amendment grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo. In a small Oregon fishing town, five very different women navigate these new barriers alongside age-old questions surrounding motherhood, identity, and freedom. Ro, a single high-school teacher, is trying to have a baby on her own, while also writing a biography of Eivør, a little-known 19th-century female polar explorer. Susan is a frustrated mother of two, trapped in a crumbling marriage. Mattie is the adopted daughter of doting parents and one of Ro’s best students, who finds herself pregnant with nowhere to turn. And Gin is the gifted, forest-dwelling homoeopath, or “mender,” who brings all their fates together when she’s arrested and put on trial in a frenzied modern-day witch hunt. - Grist Mill Road by Christopher J. Yates
Publication date: January 9th, 2018
Grist Mill Road is a dark and twisty Rashomon-style narrative which is expertly plotted. The year is 1982, the setting an Edenic hamlet some 90 miles north of New York City. There, among the craggy rock cliffs and glacial ponds of timeworn mountains, three friends—Patrick, Matthew and Hannah— are bound together by a single, terrible, and seemingly senseless crime. Twenty-six years later, in New York City, living lives their younger selves could never have predicted, the three meet again–with even more devastating results. Here is a triple helix of a story structure, a sharp-edged love triangle complete with an Atonement style revelation. Character-driven, gorgeously written and wrenching, it exposes the poisonous resentments, sexual longings, and reservoirs of violence that roil just below the orderly surface of small-town life. - Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
Publication date: January 16th, 2018
Two sisters: Miranda, the older, responsible one, always her younger sister’s protector; Lucia, the vibrant, headstrong, unconventional one, whose impulses are huge and, often, life-changing. When their mother dies and Lucia starts to hear voices, it’s Miranda who must fight for the help her sister needs — even as Lucia refuses to be defined by any doctor’s diagnosis. Determined, impetuous, she ploughs ahead, marrying a big-hearted Israeli only to leave him, suddenly, to have a baby with a young Latino immigrant. She will move with her new family to Ecuador, but the bitter constant remains: she cannot escape her own mental illness. Lucia lives life on a grand scale until inevitably, she crashes to earth. And then Miranda must decide, again, whether or not to step in — but this time, Lucia may not want to be saved. The bonds of sisterly devotion stretch across oceans, but what does it take to break them? Told from alternating perspectives, Everything Here Is Beautiful is, at its core, a heart-wrenching family drama about relationships and tough choices — how much we’re willing to sacrifice for the ones we love, and when it’s time to let go and save ourselves.
So we’ve got book one with a very beautiful cover that doesn’t really relate to the story as far as I can see. I’m not one to reflect on mortality and as this book is more about family dynamics and mortality then it is about the fantastical and magical elements mentioned on the blurb, I’ll pass on this one. Book number 2, sigh! I really liked Louisa Clark in the first book (though that may also be largely due to the way she’s portrayed in the movie), but I hated the second book in the series. And now there is apparently another one. This feels so much like an author milking one story that did well for all it’s worth. But if I found it in a cheap bookstore, I’ll probably buy it and read it anyway… The third book sounds just plain weird and I absolutely can’t identify with any of the themes mentioned on the back. Also: a modern-day witch hunt? Next! Violence and love triangles? Not for me! And then a family drama and about learning when to let go and save yourself, ugh. So let’s recap: 5 books on the not-reading list, but one I’ll probably read anyways because I want to see what the fuss is about. That’s it for this month when it comes to fiction!
Happy reading,
Loes M.