August Book Club!!

(photo cred: Andy Cox)

Hello!

I really have been in a funk of not reading lately, maybe it's because I'm so crazy busy, but I really just think I haven't been making it a priority. This led to me deciding that for the month of August I am going to read one book a week! A little crazy, yes, but it's not like any of these are going to be really long, we're talking 200-400 pages!

My second thought was I want you all to join me! Even if you just pick one book to read and finish by the time the post comes out! I really would love to have some conversations about these books and make this more of a virtual book club! So here's the deal. I will be writing a review/random thoughts post each Saturday on the books below until 9/5. Your job is to either read each one along with me or pick 1 to read by the date I will post each review so we can talk about it! :)

I tried to pick a variety of books so you can choose what sounds like the most interesting to you! I did end up with 2 crime mysteries because, I'm a sucker for them and they're typically pretty fast reads.
Yeah, this might be a little high school assignment like but, I really think with all the Netflix binge watching that happens, we could all probably squeeze some more book time into our life!

1. Midwinter Blood by Mons Kallentoft- Review/Discussion Post 8/8

(Photo Cred: Andy Cox)

"WHEN THE ICE MELTS, WHAT REMAINS?
Meet Malin Fors. Be careful, though, she’s addictive. Thirty-four years old, blond, single, divorced with a teenaged daughter, Fors is the most driven superintendent who has ever worked at the police force in her small, isolated town. And the most talented. In her job, she is constantly moving through the borderland between life and death. Her path in life is violent and hazardous.
It is the coldest February in recent memory. In the early hours of a particularly frigid night, the body of an obese man is found hanging from lone oak tree in the middle of a withered, windswept plain. Malin Fors is called to the scene.Together with her colleagues of the Violent Crime Squad at Linköping Police Department, they must find out who the man in the tree is, and how he got there. Their manhunt in the frigid wake of a ruthless killer brings Malin Fors to the brink, and into some of the darkest corners of the human heart. The first in a series of four books, Midwinter Blood will keep readers coming back for more, again and again."

2. The September's of Shiraz by Dalia Sofer- Review Post 8/15

(Photo Cred: Andy Cox)

"In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by his disappearance, his family must reconcile a new world of cruelty and chaos with the collapse of everything they have known.
As Isaac navigates the tedium and terrors of prison, forging tenuous trusts, his wife feverishly searches for him, suspecting, all the while, that their once-trusted housekeeper has turned on them and is now acting as an informer. And as his daughter, in a childlike attempt to stop the wave of baseless arrests, engages in illicit activities, his son, sent to New York before the rise of the Ayatollahs, struggles to find happiness even as he realizes that his family may soon be forced to embark on a journey of incalculable danger.
A page-turning literary debut, The Septembers of Shiraz simmers with questions of identity, alienation, and love, not simply for a spouse or a child, but for all the intangible sights and smells of the place we call home."

3. Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys- Review Post 8/22

No this book has nothing to do with 50 shades of gray, hahaha, I only start with this because it took literally showing Andy the description for him to believe me!

(Photo Cred: Andy Cox)

"Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously--and at great risk--documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives.Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart"

4. The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler-Review Post 8/29

(Photo Cred: Andy Cox)

"The frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a gruesome triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there’s only one surviving witness—the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. Whoever committed the crimes wanted this boy to die: he’s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. Desperate for information, Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes.
It’s the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again—ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl.
An international sensation, The Hypnotist is set to appear in thirty-seven countries, and it has landed at the top of bestseller lists wherever it’s been published—in France, Holland, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark. Now it’s America’s turn. Combining the addictive power of the Stieg Larsson trilogy with the storytelling drive of The Silence of the Lambs, this adrenaline-drenched thriller is spellbinding from its very first page."

5. The Beach by Alex Garland- Review Post 9/5

(Photo Cred:Andy Cox)

"After discovering a seemingly Edenic paradise on an island in a Thai national park, Richard soon finds that since civilized behavior tends to dissolve without external restraints, the utopia is hard to maintain. (Nancy Pearl)"

Well, that's a lot of books so I am going to stop typing this to go read some of the first one! Let me know in a comment, on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram what books you are also going to be reading!

Love you all and have a great week :)