Managing My TBR pt. 2

In my first post of managing my TBR I successfully lowered my Goodreads TBR and today I want to do the same, by randomly picking a book and deciding to keep or remove it. However it has been about a month so I’ve lowered my TBR from 544 books to 363! I’m proud of myself but it does mean that I probably won’t get rid of as many as last time.

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Winterwood

♦ Winterwood by Shea Ernshaw

♦ YA Fantasy Romance

Be careful of the dark, dark wood…

Especially the woods surrounding the town of Fir Haven. Some say these woods are magical. Haunted, even.

Rumored to be a witch, only Nora Walker knows the truth. She and the Walker women before her have always shared a special connection with the woods. And it’s this special connection that leads Nora to Oliver Huntsman—the same boy who disappeared from the Camp for Wayward Boys weeks ago—and in the middle of the worst snowstorm in years. He should be dead, but here he is alive, and left in the woods with no memory of the time he’d been missing.

But Nora can feel an uneasy shift in the woods at Oliver’s presence. And it’s not too long after that Nora realizes she has no choice but to unearth the truth behind how the boy she has come to care so deeply about survived his time in the forest, and what led him there in the first place. What Nora doesn’t know, though, is that Oliver has secrets of his own—secrets he’ll do anything to keep buried, because as it turns out, he wasn’t the only one to have gone missing on that fateful night all those weeks ago.

This sounds okay but I’ve heard that it was insta-love which instantly turns me off, and I’m not the biggest fan of a big romance presence in general (well, straight romance anyway). So I think I’ll remove this one!

The Furies

♥ The Furies by Katie Lowe

♥ YA Thriller

In 1998, a sixteen-year-old girl is found dead.

She’s posed on a swing on her boarding school’s property, dressed all in white, with no known cause of death. Whispers and rumors swirl, with no answers. But there are a few who know what happened; there is one girl who will never forget.

One year earlier: a new student, Violet, steps on the campus of Elm Hollow Academy, an all-girl’s boarding school on the outskirts of a sleepy coastal town. This is her fresh start, her chance to begin again in the wake of tragedy, leave her demons behind. Bright but a little strange, uncertain and desperate to fit in, she soon finds herself invited to an advanced study group, led by her alluring and mysterious art teacher, Annabel.

There, with three other girls–Alex, Grace, and Robin–the five of them delve into the school’s long-buried grim history: of Greek and Celtic legends; of the school founder’s “academic” interest in the occult; of gruesome 17th century witch trials. Annabel does her best to convince the girls that her classes aren’t related to ancient rites and rituals, and that they are just history and mythology. But the more she tries to warn the girls off the topic, the more they drawn to it, and the possibility that they can harness magic for themselves.

Violet quickly finds herself wrapped up in this heady new world of lawless power–except she is needled by the disappearance of a former member of the group, one with whom Violet shares an uncanny resemblance. As her friends’ actions take a turn for the darker and spiral out of control, she begins to wonder who she can trust, all the while becoming more deeply entangled. How far will these young girls go to protect one another…or to destroy one another? 

I’m a sucker for dark academia, especially classics and history, and it promises both! I’m not expecting it to be an intense thriller but more of the pace of The Secret History, so hopefully I won’t be too disappointed going in. I think I’m going to give this one a try sometime, so I’ll keep it on my TBR!

Prosper’s Demon

♦ Prosper’s Demon by K J Parker

♦ Fantasy/Horror

In a botched demonic extraction, they say the demon feels it ten times worse than the man. But they don’t die, and we do. Equilibrium.

The unnamed and morally questionable narrator is an exorcist with great follow-through and few doubts. His methods aren’t delicate but they’re undeniably effective: he’ll get the demon out — he just doesn’t particularly care what happens to the person.

Prosper of Schanz is a man of science, determined to raise the world’s first philosopher-king, reared according to the purest principles. Too bad he’s demonically possessed.

Okay, this does sound intriguing and I want to read more horror, but it’s only 77 pages. I don’t really like novellas that much and I can’t see myself buying this just for 77 pages, so I think I’m going to remove it from my TBR but if there are ever any kindle deals then I might reconsider!

On a Sunbeam

♥ On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

♥ Graphic Novel

Throughout the deepest reaches of space, a crew rebuilds beautiful and broken-down structures, painstakingly putting the past together. As new member Mia gets to know her team, the story flashes back to her pivotal year in boarding school, where she fell in love with a mysterious new student. Soon, though, Mia reveals her true purpose for joining their ship—to track down her long-lost love.

It’s a queer, sci-fi graphic novel! What more could you want? It sounds like there’s a dual timeline too so I’m here for that. I’m definitely keeping this on my TBR!

The Joy Luck Club

♦ The Joy Club by Amy Tan

♦ Historical Fiction

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who’s telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters’ futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have never heard these stories, think their mothers’ advice is irrelevant to their modern American lives – until their own inner crises reveal how much they’ve unknowingly inherited of their mothers’ pasts.

I love historical fiction and this sounds very promising. I’ve studied a bit about the American West, Californian Gold Rush and the treatment of Chinese migrants, so I’m even more interested to see what subjects this book explores. I’ve also heard great reviews from my friends on Goodreads so I’m definitely keeping this one!

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That’s it for now! I removed 2 books and kept 3 books. Do you have any of these on your TBR? Feel free to convince me to read a book I removed!

—ella♥

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