A new year and a whole lot more of beautiful, beautiful novels to add to my ever-growing bookshelves. Here is my majorly delayed list of my most anticipated books of 2020!!!
Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGuiness (March)
One of my favourite plot devices in whichever media I’m consuming is survival. Whether it be teens hiding from a serial killer or a lone girl getting lost in the wilderness, I’m pretty much guaranteed to be interested. I’ve still actually never read anything from Mindy McGuiness, and whilst I know she’s an author that divides readers, I cannot see myself disliking this novel. If you’re interested in picking this up when it releases, please be warned that if you have a sensitive stomach towards injuries and gore then I’ve heard that this one may not be for you.
Plot – The world is not tame.
Ashley knows this truth deep in her bones, more at home with trees overhead than a roof. So when she goes hiking in the Smokies with her friends for a night of partying, the falling dark and creaking trees are second nature to her. But people are not tame either. And when Ashley catches her boyfriend with another girl, drunken rage sends her running into the night, stopped only by a nasty fall into a ravine. Morning brings the realization that she’s alone – and far off trail. Lost in undisturbed forest and with nothing but the clothes on her back, Ashley must figure out how to survive despite the red streak of infection creeping up her leg.
Clown in a Cornfield by Adam Cesare (August)
Once again leaning into the whole ‘survival’ thing, Clown in a Cornfield drew me in with it’s gorgeously 80’s horror aesthetic and absurd plot. It’s a rarity to see this genre within young adult literature and I’m ecstatic to see that it’s being pretty heavily pushed by the publisher. My only worry is that because it’s aimed towards teens, it’s not going to be quite as scary/gory as it potentially needs to be. I’m just hoping that Adam Cesare and HarperTeen don’t feel the need to dumb it down. Again, I can’t see myself not enjoying it.
Plot – Quinn Maybrook just wants to make it until graduation. She might not make it to morning.
Quinn and her father moved to tiny, boring Kettle Springs to find a fresh start. But ever since the Baypen Corn Syrup Factory shut down, Kettle Springs has cracked in half. On one side are the adults, who are desperate to make Kettle Springs great again, and on the other are the kids, who want to have fun, make prank videos, and get out of Kettle Springs as quick as they can.
Kettle Springs is caught in a battle between old and new, tradition and progress. It’s a fight that looks like it will destroy the town. Until Frendo, the Baypen mascot, a creepy clown in a pork-pie hat, goes homicidal and decides that the only way for Kettle Springs to grow back is to cull the rotten crop of kids who live there now.
Mark My Words by Muhammad Khan (May)
Nothing gets me quite as excited as a new release from Muhammad Khan and what makes it even nicer is that I’ve had the opportunity to meet him on multiple occasions and he is the loveliest person you can imagine. His books tackle very serious topics from Islamophobia to toxic masculinity but they’re always heartwarming with characters you can’t help but root for. I’d imagine Mark My Words will be no exception and I cannot wait to see what subjects he tackles this time around.
Plot –
Fifteen-year-old Dua Iqbal has always had trouble minding her own business. With a silver-tongue and an inquisitive nature, a career in journalism seems fated. When her school merges with another to form an Academy, Dua seizes her chance and sets up a rival newspaper, exposing the controversial stories that teachers and the kids who rule the school would rather keep buried.
Dua’s investigations are digging up things she shouldn’t get involved with about family, friends and her community and as exams rattle towards her, she needs to make some hard decisions about when to leave things alone. But when she discovers that some kids at school are being blamed for selling drugs when the real perpetrator is right in front of their noses, she can’t keep quiet any longer.
Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (July)
This is actually a little bit of a weird one to have on here because I had previously read Final Girls by the same author and was incredibly disappointed with the execution of such an interesting plot. However, so many people have raved about his latest novel Lock Every Door and I have it sitting on my shelf ready to read (totally didn’t pick it up predominately for the aesthetic…). He seems to be going down more of a gothic horror/thriller route and I am living for it. Fingers crossed I get around to Lock Every Door before this is released in July!
Plot – “What was it like? Living in that house.”
Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into Baneberry Hall, a rambling Victorian estate in the Vermont woods. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a nonfiction book called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon, rivaling The Amityville Horror in popularity—and skepticism.
Today, Maggie is a restorer of old homes and too young to remember any of the events mentioned in her father’s book. But she also doesn’t believe a word of it. Ghosts, after all, don’t exist. When Maggie inherits Baneberry Hall after her father’s death, she returns to renovate the place to prepare it for sale. But her homecoming is anything but warm. People from the past, chronicled in House of Horrors, lurk in the shadows. And locals aren’t thrilled that their small town has been made infamous thanks to Maggie’s father. Even more unnerving is Baneberry Hall itself—a place filled with relics from another era that hint at a history of dark deeds. As Maggie experiences strange occurrences straight out of her father’s book, she starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.
The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler (May)
It’s taken me around four years of being in the book community to finally accept that the fantasy genre is just not my cup of tea. Hence why one of my bestest friends Kate has finally gotten her way and I’m branching out into her favourite genre, contemporary romance. Not only has she spent the last few years gushing to me about her latest reads but she’s also introduced me to so many booktubers who also love the genre. This was talked about by ChelseaDollingReads and as soon as she mentioned the Alaskan setting, I just knew I HAD to read it.
Synopsis – When Graham Barnett named his diner The Tourist Trap, he meant it as a joke. Now he’s stuck slinging reindeer dogs to an endless string of resort visitors who couldn’t interest him less. Not even the sweet, enthusiastic tourist in the corner who blushes every time he looks her way…
Two weeks in Alaska isn’t just the top item on Zoey Caldwell’s bucket list. It’s the whole bucket. One look at the mountain town of Moose Springs and she’s smitten. But when an act of kindness brings Zoey into Graham’s world, she may just find there’s more to the man than meets the eye…and more to love in Moose Springs than just the Alaskan wilderness.
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin (February)
I’m not going to beat around the bush here but this book grabbed my attention with the insanely vibrant and gorgeous cover rather than the synopsis. However, given the subject matter of this thriller, it put me in mind of the real life tragedy of Madeleine McCann and now not only am I excited to have this beautiful book on my shelf, but I’m super intrigued to find out exactly where this novel is going to take its readers.
Synopsis – Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men – employees at the resort – are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.
Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth – not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation.
As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy.
Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano (February)
My boyfriend has a weird obsession with planes that I think must stem from his father and working at an airport for over five years, so when I saw that there was a literary fiction novel about the aftermath of a plane crash, I just knew this was going on not only my to-read list but possibly his too! I think the concept of following the stories of the passengers before the crash and then the aftermath and the affect it has on the sole survivor, Edward, is fascinatingly melancholy and if done right could be one of my favourite books of all time.
Synopsis – One summer morning, a flight takes off from New York to Los Angeles. There are 187 passengers aboard: among them a Wall Street millionaire; a young woman taking a pregnancy test in the airplane toilet; a soldier returning from Afghanistan; and two beleaguered parents moving across the country with their adolescent sons. When the plane suddenly crashes in a field in Colorado, the younger of these boys, 12-year-old Edward Adler, is the sole survivor.
Dear Edward recounts the stories of the passengers aboard that flight as it hurtles toward its fateful end, and depicts Edward’s life in the crash’s aftermath as he tries to make sense of the loss of his family, the strangeness of his sudden fame, and the meaning of his survival. As Edward comes of age against the backdrop of sudden tragedy, he must confront one of life’s most profound questions: how do we make the most of the time we are given?
I’ll Be The One by Lyla Lee (June)
Once again, a love at first cover glance, this book just makes me feel instantly happy. It looks like so much fun and the publishers definitely did a great job promoting this as I keep seeing it EVERYWHERE! I’m not into K-Pop in the slightest and in all honesty, books about fame typically don’t interest me. But this story has fat-rep and I’ve also heard it’s queer too, so I’m definitely aiming on picking this one up when it releases!
Skye Shin has heard it all. Fat girls shouldn’t dance. Wear bright colors. Shouldn’t call attention to themselves. But Skye dreams of joining the glittering world of K-Pop, and to do that, she’s about to break all the rules that society, the media, and even her own mother, have set for girls like her. She’ll challenge thousands of other performers in an internationally televised competition looking for the next K-pop star, and she’ll do it better than anyone else.
When Skye nails her audition, she’s immediately swept into a whirlwind of countless practices, shocking performances, and the drama that comes with reality TV. What she doesn’t count on are the highly fat-phobic beauty standards of the Korean pop entertainment industry, her sudden media fame and scrutiny, or the sparks that soon fly with her fellow competitor, Henry Cho. But Skye has her sights on becoming the world’s first plus-sized K-pop star, and that means winning the competition—without losing herself.
The Recovery of Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (March)
(FYI – this is being released as Darling Rose Gold in the US). I’ve heard multiple people discussing this book now and it’s shot right to the top of my need-to-buy list because it focuses on something that’s always fascinated me – parents faking their children’s chronic illnesses. Now, you may think that’s a bit of a weird thing to be interested in but it all comes down to the psychology of why someone would even think about doing something so wrong, and that’s why I’m intrigued by it. I believe this is going to follow a revenge plot regarding the toxic mother/daughter relationship and I’m super excited to try it out!
For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold. Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.
After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes. Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she’s forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling…And she’s waited such a long time for her mother to come home.
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell (March)
As always this has gradually made it’s way onto this list because of word of mouth. I’ve only heard positive things and given how dark the plot is, I’m interested to see how the author is going to tackle the tricky subject matter of a underage girl being in a relationship with her teacher. It’s a story that I’ve seen done a fair few times, however, I believe this is going to more a tale of the woman looking back on her relationship with said teacher and finally coming to terms with the fact that she was taken advantage of. Also, the UK edition is gorgeous.
Vanessa Wye was fifteen years old when she first had sex with her English teacher. She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn’t abuse. It was love. She’s sure of that.
Forced to rethink her past, to revisit everything that happened, Vanessa has to redefine the great love story of her life – her great sexual awakening – as rape. Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many.
Have you read any of these yet? What are some of your most anticipated releases this year? Let me know down below in the comments!
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