Cleaning Up My TBR With a Giveaway (US Only) – Down the TBR Hole #24

Posted June 1, 2019 by Lisa Mandina in giveaway / 7 Comments

This meme was started by Lost in a Story.  Here is how it works:

  • Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
  • Order on ascending date added.
  • Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
  • Read the synopses of the books
  • Decide: keep it or should it go?

Because I have so many to do, I’m going to try to do this weekly, and do 10 at a time.

1.   The Deadly Sister by Eliot Schrefer:

From the author of
School for Dangerous Girls, another suspenseful stunner about a girl who
helps her sister escape from a murder charge – and then falls for the
murder victim’s brother.

Abby Goodwin is sure her sister Maya
isn’t a murderer. But her parents don’t agree. Her friends don’t agree.
And the cops definitely don’t agree. Maya is a drop-out, a stoner, a
girl who’s obsessed with her tutor, Jefferson Andrews…until he ends up
dead. Maya runs away, and leaves Abby following the trail of clues.
Each piece of evidence points to Maya, but it also appears that
Jefferson had secrets of his own. And enemies. Like his brother, who
Abby becomes involved with…until he falls under suspicion.
Is Abby getting closer to finding the true murderer? Or is someone leading her down a twisted false path?
 

My thoughts:
I’ve wanted to read something by this author for a while, but just don’t know that this will be the one.

Verdict: Toss

2.  The Mark by Jen Nadol:

Sixteen year old
Cassandra Renfield has seen the mark since forever: a glow around
certain people as if a candle were held behind their back.

The
one time she mentioned it to someone else, the mark was dismissed as a
trick of the light. So Cassie has kept quiet, considering its rare
appearances odd, but insignificant. Until the day she watches a man die.
Mining her memories, Cassie realizes she can see a person’s imminent
death. Not how or where, only when: today.

Cassie searches her
past, her philosophy lessons, even her new boyfriend for answers,
answers, always careful to hide her secret. How does the mark work? Why
her?

Most importantly: if you know today is someone’s last, should you tell them?

My thoughts:  
Sounds like a lot of other books that were popular around the time I added this to my TBR. 

Verdict: Toss

3.  Primacy by J.E. Fishman:

A New Species of Suspense

Tens
of thousands of monkeys and apes suffer in animal testing labs. If just
one of them could speak, what might it say and whose interests would it
threaten?

Researcher Liane Vinson thinks she can handle her
promotion to the primate lab at Pentalon, the world’s biggest and most
secretive animal testing facility. Going along to get along, she’ll
ignore both the vitriol of animal rights protestors outside the front
gates and the cold calculus that her bosses use to distance themselves
from their subjects behind closed doors.

But when Liane discovers
that one of her favorite apes, a young bonobo called Bea, has
shockingly developed the ability to speak, all her doubts awaken–doubts
about right and wrong, about following the rules, and about sacrificing
individuals to the supposedly greater good.

She’d spare the
unique being the knife if she could, but only Axel Flickinger,
Pentalon’s cold-hearted CEO, holds the power of life and death within
the closely monitored laboratory. If there’s any chance of rescuing Bea,
Liane will need to involve her neighbor, Mickey Ferrone, a rough-hewn
veterinarian with his own grievances.

Soon, at risk of life and
limb, Liana and Mickey must challenge forces almost beyond their
comprehension: a malevolent corporation, a venal federal government, and
animal rights movement that’s lost its way–and all of our assumptions
about man’s primacy in nature.

My thoughts:  
There was a time when this was the exact type of book I would go “ape” over. Not sure it’s one I’d ever get around to again.

Verdict:  Toss

4.  Destined by Jessie Harrell:

When Psyche receives a
prophecy gone horribly wrong, she learns that even the most beautiful
girl in Greece can have a hideous future. Her fate? Fall in love with
the one creature even the gods fear.

As she feels herself
slipping closer into the arms of the prophecy, Psyche must choose
between the terrifyingly tender touch she feels almost powerless to
resist and the one constant she’s come to expect out of life: you cannot
escape what is destined.
 

My thoughts:
This is another one that just sounds so much like the type of books I was reading at the time. Nothing new.

Verdict:  Toss

5.   We All Wore Stars: Memories of Anne Frank from Her Classmates by Theo Coster and Marjolijn De Jager:

In 1941, Theo Coster
was a student at the Amsterdam Jewish Lyceum, one in a class of 28
Jewish children that the Nazis had segregated from the rest of the Dutch
population. Among Theo’s fellow students was a young Anne Frank, whose
diary would later become one of the most important documents of the
Holocaust. In this remarkable group portrait, Coster and five of his
fellow classmates gather their personal stories and memories of Anne.
The accounts collected here do not just help us to rediscover Anne
Frank. They also stand on their own as remarkable stories of ingenuity
and survival during the Holocaust–from Albert Gomes de Mesquita, who
hid in ten different towns across Europe–to Hannah Goslar, who
experienced the horrors of Bergen-Belsen but also made a miraculous
reconnection with Anne days before her death.



  
My thoughts:
I’m always really fascinated by anyone else that was alive during the holocaust and survived, and their connections to Anne Frank definitely keep my wanting to learn more.

Verdict: Keep

6.  Anne Frank Remembered:  The Story of the Woman Who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies and Alison Leslie Gold:

For the millions moved by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl,
here at last is Miep Geis’s own astonishing story. For more than two
years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis.
Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their
lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the
victims.

She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope.

It seems as if we are never far from Miep’s thoughts….Yours, Anne

From
her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she
places a small, red-orange, checkered diary — Anne’s legacy — in Otto
Frank’s hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and
shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking
beauty.

My thoughts:
As with the book above, one I want to read more about.

Verdict: Keep

7.  The Candidates by Inara Scott:

Dancia Lewis has a secret problem: whenever she sees someone threaten a person she cares about, it’s a disaster. Cars
skid. Structures collapse. Usually someone gets hurt. So Dancia does
all she can to avoid getting close to anyone, hoping to suppress her
powers and stay under the radar. But when recruiters from the
prestigious Delcroix Academy offer her a scholarship, she accepts. After
all, it’s a school for diplomats’ kids and prodigies, not B students
with uncontrollable telekinetic tendencies. Or is it?

This captivating debut, the first in a series, puts a paranormal twist on private school.

My thoughts:  
Doesn’t sound that unique, so probably  not something I’ll get to.

Verdict: Toss

 8.  Breadcrumbs by Anne Ursu:

Once upon a time, Hazel
and Jack were best friends. They had been best friends since they were
six, spending hot Minneapolis summers and cold Minneapolis winters
together, dreaming of Hogwarts and Oz, superheroes and baseball. Now
that they were eleven, it was weird for a boy and a girl to be best
friends. But they couldn’t help it – Hazel and Jack fit, in that way you
only read about in books. And they didn’t fit anywhere else.

And
then, one day, it was over. Jack just stopped talking to Hazel. And
while her mom tried to tell her that this sometimes happens to boys and
girls at this age, Hazel had read enough stories to know that it’s never
that simple. And it turns out, she was right. Jack’s heart had been
frozen, and he was taken into the woods by a woman dressed in white to
live in a palace made of ice. Now, it’s up to Hazel to venture into the
woods after him. Hazel finds, however, that these woods are nothing like
what she’s read about, and the Jack that Hazel went in to save isn’t
the same Jack that will emerge. Or even the same Hazel.

Inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Breadcrumbs is a story of the struggle to hold on, and the things we leave behind.

My thoughts:
As much as I love a fairy tale retelling, I don’t know if I’ll ever get to this one.

Verdict: Toss

9.  The Last Blind Date by Linda Yellin:

A fun, charming memoir about a woman who falls in love, packs her bags, and starts over in the city that eats its young.

My thoughts:
There was a time when I actually cared about dating, but now that I’ve pretty much completely given up on ever having another date, I just don’t really care to even read about it anymore.

Verdict:  Toss

10.  Ghost Trackers #1 by Jason Hawes, Grant Wilson, Tim Waggoner:

In this spine-tingling
new series, the stars of TV’s GHOST HUNTERS introduce readers to a team
of paranormal investigators who reunite to defeat a sinister force they
unleashed long ago. . . .

For fifteen years, Amber, Drew, and
Trevor have barely been able to recall — let alone explain — what
happened the terrifying night they decided to explore the old, abandoned
Lowry House. According to local legend, the house was cursed by a dark
past and inhabited by evil. It burst into flames on the night of their
visit, leaving the friends traumatized and nearly dead with only vague
memories of the frightening events they had witnessed inside. Now, on
the eve of their high school reunion, they have gathered to reopen their
investigation and figure out, once and for all, what took place that
fateful night . . . before the supernatural entity they escaped
threatens to overtake them again.

My thoughts:
Now I didn’t actually watch this one, but I still am interested in  maybe reading this one.

Verdict: Keep

Final Thoughts:
Tossing all but 3 again this week!  Sorry this post is a little late, I had no internet a few days this week!  I also think I’m going to start pointing out how many books are on my Want to Read list on Goodreads each week. So you can see that I may have dropped some, but you can also see how many I’ve added during the week as well.  This week, after taking these 7 off, I have more than the 3,188 books listed  last week, I added so many more that I now have 3,191.  Oops.

Have
you read any
of these?  Would you suggest I keep any I’m tossing?  And if you’re
inspired to do this on your blog, please feel free to join in and share a
link in the comments, since it’s not really catching on, I’m not going
to waste time with the link up this week.  It will also get you an extra
entry into my giveaway at
the bottom of this post.    
 

 

Giveaway:
Once
again this is a US only giveaway, unless you are International and see a
book here you really want and would be willing to pay for the
difference in the shipping through Paypal or some other way.  This week
I’m upping the prize, you get to pick any two books from the pictures
below, as
long as they don’t get traded away, or picked by last week’s winner,
and I will pick a surprise book from the piles to add to your choice. 
Here are your choices:
 
 
 

2018 ARCs:

2017 ARCs:

2014-2015 ARCs:

And, surprise!  I am adding in my early 2019 ARCs now.  You can pick one of your two choices from the picture below, the other book you pick needs to come from the pictures above.


Once again I’m going to let you pick two, along with me throwing in a surprise third book!  Just enter the Rafflecopter below. 

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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7 responses to “Cleaning Up My TBR With a Giveaway (US Only) – Down the TBR Hole #24

  1. Wow good on you for being able to clear out so many. With summer coming up that's going to be a big goal for me. I'm hoping to completely wipe out my Maybe pile on Goodreads which has about 146 books. Thank you for sharing!!!

    Sharrice @Reese's Reviews

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