Books I Am Reading This Week and Weekly Book Haul- April 26, 2023 #wwwwednesday #ReadersCommunity #BookTwitter #BookLover

Welcome to WWW Wednesday! This meme was formerly hosted by MizB at A Daily Rhythm and revived on Taking on a World of Words. Just answer the three questions below and leave a link to your post in the comments for others to look at. No blog? No problem! Just leave a comment with your responses. Please, take some time to visit the other participants and see what others are reading. So, let’s get to it!

What am I currently reading?
What did I just finish?
What am I reading next?

Birthstone Bookstack

Rules

Mention the creator (me- Leslie @ Books Are The New Black ) and link back to me so I can see your post!
Pick 5+ book covers that match the current month’s Birthstone.
HAVE FUN!
Nominate people if you want!

April’s Birthstone is Diamond:

Today, I will be finishing Nonna Maria and the Case of the Stolen Necklace and starting Scarlet. Nonna Maria started out a bit difficult for me as the tone is very off-putting. Most cozies tend to invite you into their world, but Carcaterra writes in a very direct and dry manner that it took a while for me to get into the flow of.

And I’m very curious about Scarlet by Genevieve Cogman – a vampire reimagining of the Scarlet Pimpernel story, which I will start later today.

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Pages: 275 pages
Publisher: Random House/Bantam
Publication Date: May 2, 2023

Sometimes bad things happen to good people, so good people have to do bad things. Our Queen of Twists, bestselling author of Daisy Darker and Rock Paper Scissors Alice Feeney, returns with another thrilling mystery filled with drama and her trademark surprises. Twenty years after a baby is stolen from a stroller, a woman is murdered in a care home. The two crimes are somehow linked, and a good bad girl may be the key to discovering the truth. Edith may have been tricked into a nursing home, but at eighty-years-young, she’s planning her escape. Patience works there, cleaning messes and bonding with Edith, a kindred spirit. But Patience is lying to Edith about almost everything. Edith’s own daughter, Clio, won’t speak to her. And someone new is about to knock on Clio’s door…and their intentions aren’t good. With every reason to distrust each other, the women must solve a mystery with three suspects, two murders, and one victim. If they do, they might just find out what happened to the baby who disappeared, the mother who lost her, and the connections that bind them. In the style of Daisy Darker and Rock Paper Scissors, Good Bad Girl is a thriller in which nobody can be trusted and the twists come fast and furious.

Genre: Historical Fantasy (reinvents the beloved tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel)
Pages: 364 pages
Publisher: Berkley/Ace
Publication Date: May 9, 2023

Revolution is a bloodthirsty business . . . especially when vampires are involved. It is 1793 and the French Revolution is in full swing. Vampires—usually rich and aristocratic—have slaked the guillotine’s thirst in large numbers. The mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel, a disguised British noble, and his League are heroically rescuing dozens of aristocrats from execution, both human and vampire. And soon they will have an ace up their sleeve: Eleanor Dalton. Eleanor is working as a housemaid on the estate of a vampire Baroness. Her highest aspiration is to one day become a modiste. But when the Baroness hosts a mysterious noble and his wife, they tell Eleanor she is the spitting image of a French aristocrat, and they convince her to journey to France to aid them in a daring scheme. Soon, Eleanor finds herself in Paris, swept up in magic and intrigue—and chaos—beyond her wildest dreams. But there’s more to fear than ardent Revolutionaries. For Eleanor stumbles across a centuries-old war between vampires and their fiercest enemy. And they’re out for blood. . . . Scarlet is the first book in a wildly engaging new series from Genevieve Cogman, which reinvents the beloved tale of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Last Word by Katy Birchall is an enemy-to-lovers rom-com, which is my favorite trope. There is a bit too much bickering in it, but I enjoyed the look at Journalism and sensationalism. It really takes quite a blunt dig at the media and its practices, and I appreciate the whole pulling back the curtain aspect.

Genre: Romantic Comedy
Pages: 376 pages
Publisher: St. Martins Press
Publication Date: May 2, 2023

The Hating Game meets Beach Read in Katy Birchall’s enemies-to-lovers romcom The Last Word, about a young journalist who puts her career (and her heart) on the line when her former work nemesis is hired in her newsroom. Harper Jenkins is at the top of her game. A brilliant, determined journalist with a well-known knack for getting tight-lipped Hollywood stars to open up to her, Harper loves her job as Celebrity Editor at a newspaper’s glossy weekend magazine and has the best contacts in the business. But when her awful boss hires talented reporter Ryan to be the new Features Editor, Harper is furious. Because the two have met before: a decade ago, they were interns at the same publication, where they fell into a whirlwind romance…until Ryan betrayed Harper, and they never spoke again. Thrown together in a busy newsroom, their dynamic is a disaster from the start. They can’t agree on anything and bicker constantly—Ryan can’t bear how chaotic and messy Harper is; Harper finds Ryan’s condescending nature infuriating. They clash over who’s writing what article, and fight over who’s going to which event. Yet as they’re forced to spend more and more time together, Harper realizes she may have misjudged Ryan and can’t help but feel a spark growing between them. Long buried feelings start to resurface and, when they’re thrown together on a romantic press trip abroad, their chemistry comes to a head. But all is fair in love and magazines, and with the news that layoffs across the department are imminent, Harper is left to wonder: who will get the last word?

It’s about time for another psychological thriller, and I’m very intrigued by the blurb for No One Needs to Know by Kindsay Cameron. The publisher describes it as Big Little Lies meets Gossip Girl. That comparison just makes my eyebrows raise because I just can’t imagine it. But I’m curious to find out what that looks like.

Genre: Psychological Thriller
Pages: 306 pages
Publisher: Random House/Bantam
Publication Date: May 9, 2023

When an anonymous neighborhood forum gets hacked, the darkest secrets of New York’s wealthiest residents come to light—including some worth killing for—in this gripping suspense novel from the author of Just One Look. “Big Little Lies meets Gossip Girl in this unputdownable read as smart and witty as it is delectable . . . I raced through it!”—Liv Constantine, author of The Last Mrs. Parrish It was all confidential. Right up to the moment when it wasn’t. UrbanMyth: It was lauded as an alternative to the performative, show-your-best-self platforms—an anonymous discussion board grouped by zip code. The residents of Manhattan’s exclusive Upper East Side disclosed it all, things they would never share with their friends or their spouses: secret bank accounts, steamy affairs, tidbits of juicy gossip. The same people who, as parents, go to astonishing lengths to ensure that their children gain admission to the most prestigious boarding schools and universities. So when a “hacktivist” group breaks into the forum and exposes the real identity of each poster, the repercussions echo down Park Avenue with a force that none could have anticipated. And someone ends up dead. Is the murderer Heather, the outsider who would do anything to get her daughter into the elite’s good graces and into their even better schools? Norah, the high-powered executive failing to balance work with the emotional responsibilities of motherhood? Or Poppy, whose perfect-on-the-outside façade conceals more than her share of secrets? Each of them has something to hide. Each of them will do anything to keep secrets hidden. And each of them just might kill to protect their own.

Quite a mix this week, though no mysteries or thrillers. I did get my first Christmas book by someone who has become one of my favorite authors – Mary Kay Andrews. And I got Mazey Eddings’ first YA romcom/contemporary fiction book. Eddings writes about neurodivergent characters, which I have enjoyed in her adult audience books, so I’m curious how she will write about them in the YA audience format.