Down the TBR Hole #7

Today’s Monday and if you clicked on this post, you already know what that means. As with any game, let’s start with the rules.

The Rules

•  1. Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf.
•  2. Order on ascending date added.
•  3. Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books.
•  4. Read the synopsis of the books.
•  5. Time to Decide: keep it or should it go

Goodreads Synopsis: When Davy Hamilton’s tests come back positive for Homicidal Tendency Syndrome (HTS)-aka the kill gene-she loses everything. Her boyfriend ditches her, her parents are scared of her, and she can forget about her bright future at Juilliard. Davy doesn’t feel any different, but genes don’t lie. One day she will kill someone.

Only Sean, a fellow HTS carrier, can relate to her new life. Davy wants to trust him; maybe he’s not as dangerous as he seems. Or maybe Davy is just as deadly.

This is another book that kind of reminds me of Kasie West’s Pivot Point. I added a lot of books with these kinds of plots after reading it. Uninvited does sound pretty cool and I’m on the fence about letting it go. It seems like this could be a cool piece on prejudice, if done right.

Verdict: Keep it for now

Goodreads Synopsis: The Countess Elizabeth Bathory Living in exile has never given up on her struggle for eternal youth. So with the aid of the gentleman thief Arsene Lupin, The brilliant Professor Moriarty, the invisible man, and the Phantom of the opera she is able to summon the headless horseman to retrieve, The sarcophagus of one of the greatest emperors to ever rule Egypt, the Frankenstein monster, and The ashes of Count Dracula to achieve her lifelong goal of eternal life. What could possibly stand in her way? In retirement and living out his golden days in a cabin, the once famous and brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes quietly plays a tune on his violin, when a stranger comes knocking at his door in the middle of the night. Chased by blood thirsty vampires, the stranger finds some refuse in Sherlock Holmes cabin and introduces himself and Van Helsing. Van Helsing reveals to Holmes that after the death of Dracula Van Helsing has spent his years chasing the creatures Dracula spawned and his journey has led him to the door of one of history’s greatest detectives. Together Van Helsing and Sherlock Holmes set out to stop the plans Of Elizabeth Bathory and aiding in their mission are none other than Don Diego de la Vega, (Zorro) who has decided to spend his retirement years traveling the world when he meets Holmes and Van Helsing, and assist them in slaying a vampire. Also helping in the crusade is Alan Allan Quatermain, Captain Ahab, and Dr. Henry Jekyll, or Mr. Hyde. Together they must stop the uprising of one of the most evil being that legend has ever created.

Remember the days when the Goodreads synopsis was just one big block of text? Oh, how we have evolved. This book has a lot going on and I don’t think I’m prepared for all those references.

Verdict: Unhaul

Goodreads Synopsis: Harper Price, peerless Southern belle, was born ready for a Homecoming tiara. But after a strange run-in at the dance imbues her with incredible abilities, Harper’s destiny takes a turn for the seriously weird. She becomes a Paladin, one of an ancient line of guardians with agility, super strength and lethal fighting instincts.

Just when life can’t get any more disastrously crazy, Harper finds out who she’s charged to protect: David Stark, school reporter, subject of a mysterious prophecy and possibly Harper’s least favorite person. But things get complicated when Harper starts falling for him—and discovers that David’s own fate could very well be to destroy Earth.

With snappy banter, cotillion dresses, non-stop action and a touch of magic, this new young adult series from bestseller Rachel Hawkins is going to make y’all beg for more

A lot of my favorite reviewers at the time were raving about Rebel Belle, hence it being on my TBR. I’ve passed it at my library a couple times but hadn’t thought to pick it up recently. Now that I’ve read the synopsis again, I think I’ll give this a chance next time.

Verdict: Keep it

Goodreads Synopsis: Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids in the Pacific Northwest. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking. 

Yay, we’re finally starting to get into some contemporaries. I think there was a movie adaptation made for Winger, but I don’t know for sure. This sounds like a fun story.

Verdict: Keep it contemporary

Goodreads Synopsis: Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was the 2013 Goodreads Choice Winner (among other things) and I think the decision’s already been made for me at that point. I have yet to read anything by Neil Gaiman, but I really do want to. Maybe 2020 will be the year I get back into fantasy.

Verdict: Keep

That’s all for this week. I kind of surprised myself. Four books were kept on my TBR and one was unhauled. I really do want to read these and I’m hoping I get to them in the near future.

Are you participating in Down the TBR Hole?

How do you decide what books to keep and what to let go?

What’s on the top of your TBR?

Let me know in the comments, let’s chat!

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