#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR.
Taking a (brief) break from Blogmas due to other stuff going on meaning I can’t be hitting a post a day right now. I will still have Blogmas posts through December, they just won’t be every day. Anyway! #5OnMyTBR. This week’s topic was siblings, which is a fun one, and I managed to find five books that feature siblings in different ways.
(To note: I have been kind of loose with the way ‘siblings’ is used here…)
#5OnMyTBR December 9th: Siblings
Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age: Adult
Format: Paperback
Published: November 5th, 2019
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with six directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion. The next items?
• Enjoy a drunken night out.
• Ride a motorcycle.
• Go camping.
• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
• And… do something bad.
But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.
Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.
But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…
Against the Boards by Cynthia Gunderson
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
Published: September 7th, 2023
Emma can’t fall for a player.
But Tyler’s game is proving difficult to ignore.
Fate takes a slap shot at Emma’s heart when she finds a driver’s license outside a grocery store belonging to none other than Tyler Bowen. The center for her brother’s hockey team with looks that scream plenty of scoring off the ice.
Her overprotective brother warns her to stay away, but after a particularly patronizing comment, Emma decides to break free from the defense. Sean has always tried to control her relationships, and at twenty-nine, she’s had enough.
Emma convinces Tyler to mess with Sean and pretend they’re in a relationship for just one night. Little does she know that Tyler has a surprise in his playbook. He needs Emma’s assistance to face a formidable his father, the ultimate player of hearts.
It was supposed to be all fun and games, but when the photography studio Emma works for is sold unexpectedly and Tyler’s dad offers her a job, she realizes she may have glided too far into enemy territory.
In ‘Against the Boards,’ the stakes are higher than a sudden-death overtime.
Can she deliver the ultimate power play and skate away unscathed, or will love prove to be the most unpredictable game of all?
Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel
Genre: Horror – Thriller
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
Expected Publication: February 4th, 2025
For fans of Jordan Peele’s films, Stranger Things, and The Other Black Girl, Listen To Your Sister is a laugh-out-loud, deeply terrifying, and big-hearted speculative horror novel from electrifying debut talent Neena Viel.
Twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together. Jamie, full of good-natured sixteen-year-old recklessness, is usually off fighting for what matters to him or getting into mischief, often at the same time. Dre, their brother, promised he would help raise Jamie–but now the ink is dry on the paperwork and in classic middle-child fashion, he’s off doing his own thing. And through it all, The Nightmare never stops haunting Calla: recurring images of her brothers dying that she is powerless to stop.
When Jamie’s actions at a protest spiral out of control, the siblings must go on the run. Taking refuge in a remote cabin that looks like it belongs on a slasher movie poster rather than an AirBNB, the siblings now face a new threat where their lives–and reality–hang in the balance. Their sister always warned them about her nightmares. They really should have listened.
The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste
Genre: Fantasy
Age: Young Adult
Format: Hardback
Published: April 30th, 2024
In a country divided between humans and witchers, Venus Stoneheart hustles as a brewer making illegal love potions to support her family.
Love potions is a dangerous business. Brewing has painful, debilitating side effects, and getting caught means death or a prison sentence. But what Venus is most afraid of is the dark, sentient magic within her.
Then an enemy’s iron bullet kills her mother, Venus’s life implodes. Keeping her reckless little sister Janus safe is now her responsibility. When the powerful Grand Witcher, the ruthless head of her coven, offers Venus the chance to punish her mother’s killer, she has to pay a steep price for revenge. The cost? Brew poisonous potions to enslave D.C.’s most influential politicians.
As Venus crawls deeper into the corrupt underbelly of her city, the line between magic and power blurs, and it’s hard to tell who to trust…Herself included.
Medusa’s Sister by Lauren J.A. Bear
Genre: Fantasy
Age: Adult
Format: ebook
Published: August 8th, 2023
A vivid and moving reimagining of the myth of Medusa and the sisters who loved her.
The end of the story is only the beginning…
Even before they were transformed into Gorgons, Medusa and her sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were unique among immortals. Curious about mortals and their lives, Medusa and her sisters entered the human world in search of a place to belong, yet quickly found themselves at the perilous center of a dangerous Olympian rivalry and learned—too late—that a god’s love is a violent one.
Forgotten by history and diminished by poets, the other two Gorgons have never been more than horrifying hags, damned and doomed. But they were sisters first, and their journey from sea-born origins to the outskirts of the Parthenon is a journey that rests, hidden, underneath their scales.
Monsters, but not monstrous, Stheno and Euryale will step into the light for the first time to tell the story of how all three sisters lived and were changed by each other, as they struggle against the inherent conflict between sisterhood and individuality, myth and truth, vengeance and peace.
If you’ve read any of these and want to share your thoughts, please do – feel free to link me to your reviews. And if you have any recommendations you want to throw my way, I’d love to hear them!
Unwrapping Words 