The Song of Achilles

By: Madeline Miller
Location: FIC MIL
Genre: Historical Fiction Fantasy LGBGT

“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw.


Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper - despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Lost in a Book

By: Jennifer Donnelly
Location: FIC DON
Genre: Beauty and the Beast retelling

WHAT  GREAT QUOTES!!!

“Reading became my sanctuary,” Belle continued. “I found so much in those books. I found histories that inspired me. Poems that delighted me. Novels that challenged me…” Belle paused, suddenly self-conscious. She looked down at her hands, and in a wistful voice, said, “What I really found, though, was myself.” 

"Mirrors only show us what we are. Books show us what we can be."

Smart, bookish Belle, a captive in the Beast’s castle, has become accustomed to her new home and has befriended its inhabitants. When she comes upon Nevermore, an enchanted book unlike anything else she has seen in the castle, Belle finds herself pulled into its pages and transported to a world of glamour and intrigue. The adventures Belle has always imagined, the dreams she was forced to give up when she became a prisoner, seem within reach again.
The charming and mysterious characters Belle meets within the pages of Nevermore offer her glamorous conversation, a life of dazzling Parisian luxury, and even a reunion she never thought possible. Here Belle can have everything she has ever wished for. But what about her friends in the Beast’s castle? Can Belle trust her new companions inside the pages of Nevermore? Is Nevermore’s world even real? Belle must uncover the truth about the book, before she loses herself in it forever.  

Epic Crush of Genie Lo

By: F. C. Yee
Location: FIC YE
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Mythology 
Series: The Epic Crush of Genie Lo #1

"How is this a debut novel? It's so good in every way: hilarious, imaginative, filled with memorable characters, and a plot that never stops moving. If you're a fan of Journey to the West, you need this. If you're a fan of fierce and flawed heroines, you need this. If you're a fan of books that will make you laugh, you need this."

"This is perfect  for Percy Jackson’s fans. If you love Riordan’s mythology series about demigods saving the day with a little bit of romance, then you’re going to devour."  Sue


Genie Lo is one among droves of Ivy-hopeful overachievers in her sleepy Bay Area suburb. When she’s not crushing it at volleyball, Genie is typically working on how to crack the elusive Harvard entry code. But when her hometown comes under siege from hellspawn straight out of Chinese folklore, her priorities are dramatically rearranged. Enter Quentin Sun, a mysterious new kid who becomes Genie’s guide to battling demons. While Genie knows Quentin only as an attractive transfer student, in another reality he is Sun Wukong, the mythological Monkey King incarnate. Suddenly, acing the SATs is the least of Genie’s worries. 

This epic debut draws from Chinese mythology, features a larger-than-life heroine, and perfectly balances the realities of Genie’s grounded Bay Area life with the absurd supernatural world she finds herself commanding.

"It is deliriously comical. It would make you laugh, it’s one of the most heartwarming and the funniest YA to this date. The characters are wild, and outrageous. Readers will fall in love with Genie’s resiliency, and Quentin’s charming personality. They’re both spectacular as individual characters, but even more so as a team." Sue- Goodreads

The Supervillain

By: Danielle Banas
Location: FIC BAN
Genre: Superheroes, Fantasy, Romance, 

Never trust a guy in spandex.

As witty as it is heartpounding, this fresh take on the beloved superhero genre is all about finding your own way to shine even when it seems everyone else around you is, well. . .super.

In Abby Hamilton's world, superheroes do more than just stop crime and save cats stuck in trees--they also drink milk straight from the carton and hog the television remote. Abby's older brother moonlights as the famous Red Comet, but without powers of her own, following in his footsteps has never crossed her mind.

That is, until the city's newest vigilante comes bursting into her life.

After saving Abby from an attempted mugging, Morriston's fledgling supervillain Iron Phantom convinces her that he's not as evil as everyone says, and that their city is under a vicious new threat. As Abby follows him deeper into their city's darkest secrets, she comes to learn that heroes can't always be trusted, and sometimes it's the good guys who wear black.

 The Supervillain and Me is a hilarious, sweet, and action-packed young adult novel by debut author Danielle Banas that proves no one is perfect, not even superheroes.



"There is  plenty of romantic tension, which will satisfy even die-hard fans of the genre. Recommended as an additional purchase where adventurous romances are popular." --School Library Journal

"Action, comedy, romance, you name it, this book has got it!" --KayleyKing, 

With the Fire on High

By: Elizabeth Acevedo
Location: FIC ACE
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, FOOD!

This Book is HOT this year, rave reviews all over the place!

“And sometimes focusing on what you can control is the only way to lessen the pang in your chest when you think about the things you can't.” 

With her daughter to care for and her abuela to help support, high school senior Emoni Santiago has to make the tough decisions, and do what must be done. The one place she can let her responsibilities go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness. Still, she knows she doesn’t have enough time for her school’s new culinary arts class, doesn’t have the money for the class’s trip to Spain — and shouldn’t still be dreaming of someday working in a real kitchen. But even with all the rules she has for her life — and all the rules everyone expects her to play by — once Emoni starts cooking, her only real choice is to let her talent break free.

"This was such a great read. So rich and vibrant, I felt like I could smell and taste each dish that Emoni made. She was an easy to character to love and root for and I enjoyed watching her journey throughout her senior year as a teen mom struggling to put herself first for once. Overall, I think this book was just as beautiful as the cover is" Hailey

The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily

By: Laura Creedle
location: FIC 
Genre: Young Adult, Mental Health  

'This was a very interesting, thought provoking, and emotional read. There was much more depth than I expected and I really liked that because it made the story seem more raw and real. Brooke

This hilarious, heartbreaking story of human connection between two neurodivergent teens creates characters that will stay with you long after you finish reading


A YA debut called "rich and thoughtful" by Booklist, The Love Letters of Abelard and Lily follows the budding romance of two unbelievably lovable neurodivergent teens. This funny, heartwarming story about human connection from a truly exciting talent is perfect for fans of Eleanor and Park and Marcelo in the Real World.

When Lily Michaels-Ryan ditches her ADHD meds and lands in detention with Abelard, she’s intrigued—he seems thirty seconds behind, while she feels thirty seconds ahead. It doesn't hurt that he’s brilliant and beautiful.

When Abelard posts a quote from The Letters of Abelard and Heloise online, their mutual affinity for ancient love letters connects them. The two fall for each other. Hard. But is it enough to bridge their differences in person?  
     

“I'm learning that my brain will invent catastrophic scenarios that bear absolutely no relationship to reality because, like Heloise, I am too much accustomed to misfortune to expect any happy turn.” 

To All The Boys I've Loved Before Series

By:Jenny Han
Location FIC HAN
Genre:  Romance

“I didn't fall for you, you tripped me!” 

― Jenny Han, To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“When someone's been gone a long time, at first you save up all the things you want to tell them. You try to keep track of everything in your head. But it's like trying to hold on to a fistful of sand: all the little bits slip out of your hands, and then you're just clutching air and grit.” 

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that something good may come out of these letters after all.

"...Someday, I'll reread this trilogy and swoon over it again. I'm going to miss all the characters and I'm incredibly satisfied with the ending. If you haven't started this trilogy, I highly recommend it. Thank you very much Jenny Han for sharing their story to us and making them part of our lives...forever. " Emi- Goodreads

Devoted

By: Jennifer 
Location: FIC MAT
Genre: I am Esther USA Styles. 

A novel that could come out of Gloriavale!

An empowering, feminist coming-of-age story about self-discovery, from the author of MOXIE 

A list of quotes gives a great summary of this book

"He'll want a women who submits to his authority." 

"Why do Mom and Dad believe in doctors for our bodies and not for our minds? After all, our brains are part of our bodies."

"Why did God give me a brain if he didn't want me to use it to learn about anything I wanted to learn about?" 

"But why? Because a bunch of men who chose to interpret the Bible in a super-specific super-ridiculous say decide that to love God and Jesus you can never be sad or mad or angry?" 
"If I'm not supposed to notice his looks, I'm not sure why God made him so noticeable."
"My body that belonged to me and wasn't just something to cover up so I didn't tempt men." 


Rachel Walker's family and community have turned away from the world.

Every part of Rachel's life is controlled, from what she reads to where she goes and what she wears. Her parents dictate how her life must be: marriage, modesty, children and obedience to her future husband. But when a former member of her community, a girl who escaped, moves back to her small Texas town, Rachel's world turns upside down.

She realises that her life is her own. But can she find the courage to fight for it?

"This novel caused me to experience a myriad of emotions, from frustration over Rachel's family restricting her (when Rachel wasn't doing anything wrong), to Rachel's desire to pursue her dreams, to her ability to keep her faith regardless of negative influences. Thus, Devoted ends on a triumphant note: the Christian community isn't demonized, Lauren isn't hailed as a hero just for losing her faith, and Rachel doesn't become a wild child. It was a perfectly balanced story, deep with rich emotion that avoids being sappy or overdone, with realistic characters that weren't tropes. In short, this YA novel really impressed me with how it deftly, and respectfully, handled what could have been a touchy subject. And for that, I give Mathieu a great deal of credit." Nicole

Summer Bird Blue

By: Akemi Dawn Bowman
Location: FIC BOW
Genre: Contemporary, LGBGT

“Some people are meant to be forever, like Lea and me. And other people come into your life for a reason— you help each other figure shit out and come to terms with complicated feelings that you can't process on your own.” 

Rumi Seto spends a lot of time worrying she doesn’t have the answers to everything. What to eat, where to go, whom to love. But there is one thing she is absolutely sure of—she wants to spend the rest of her life writing music with her younger sister, Lea.

Then Lea dies in a car accident, and her mother sends her away to live with her aunt in Hawaii while she deals with her own grief. Now thousands of miles from home, Rumi struggles to navigate the loss of her sister, being abandoned by her mother, and the absence of music in her life. With the help of the “boys next door”—a teenage surfer named Kai, who smiles too much and doesn’t take anything seriously, and an eighty-year-old named George Watanabe, who succumbed to his own grief years ago—Rumi attempts to find her way back to her music, to write the song she and Lea never had the chance to finish. 

"okay. I cried. and I rarely cry over any book

Akemi always writes the most beautiful, personal, meaningful, hard-hitting stories and this is just another one of them." May

The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna

By: Juliet  Grames
Location: FIC GRA
Genre: Historical Fiction, Italy

"This is the story of Mariastella Fortuna the Second, called Stella, formerly of Ievoli, a mountain village of Calabria, Italy, and lately of Connecticut, in the United States of America. Her life stretched over more than a century, and during that life she endured much bad luck and hardship. This is the story how she never died."

Hundred-year-old Stella Fortuna sits alone in her house in Wethersfield, Connecticut, crocheting blankets and angrily ignoring her sister, Tina, who lives across the street. The sisters, once the best of friends, have not spoken for thirty years, not since The Accident—the eighth time Stella nearly died.

But what unspeakable betrayal made Stella turn on her sister? Born in a mountaintop village in southern Italy, Stella and Tina had grown up in abject poverty in the years between the two World Wars, abandoned by their father, who had left to seek his fortune in L’America, and forced to drop out of school after first grade to work in the olive groves. Tough, vivacious, and fiercely loyal, the inseparable sisters were foils for each other, Stella precocious and charismatic, Tina obedient and hard-working. But as Stella suffered ever more serious near-death experiences—beginning in their childhood with the time she was burned by frying oil (“the eggplant attack”)—the girls’ beloved mother, Assunta, became convinced her eldest daughter was cursed, a victim of the Evil Eye or a malevolent ghost. But what was really trying to kill Stella Fortuna, eight (or maybe seven) different times?

"It’s one of those stories that as an emotional reader you’ll never let go.

The Seven Or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna is a sprawling epic, an intuitive, nuanced expression of the female condition, of life battles won and lost, it is without doubt one of the best books I’ve read maybe even ever.

I hit every range of feeling possible at various points of reading this so therefore I have absolutely no choice but to highly recommend it. Beautiful, complex, heart breaking and real." Liz Goodreads

Contagion and Deception

By: Teri Terry
Location: FIC TER
Genre: Sci Fi 
 Series: Dark Matter #1 and #2





Callie is missing. 

Her brother Kai is losing hope of ever seeing her again. Then he meets Shay, a girl who saw Callie the day she disappeared, and his hope is reignited. 

Their search leads them to the heart of a terrifying epidemic that is raging through the country. 

Can Kai and Shay escape death and find Callie?

An epidemic is sweeping the country.
You are among the infected. There is no cure, and you cannot be permitted to infect others. You are now under quarantine. 
The 5% of the infected who survive are dangerous and will be taken into the custody of the army.

As the epidemic spreads, survivors are being hunted like witches, for the authorities fear their strange new powers.

Kai is desperate to trace Shay, who tricked him and disappeared. Meanwhile, Shay is searching for the truth behind the origins of the epidemic ... but danger finds them wherever they go. Can they outrun the fire?

 

Internment

By: Samira Ahmed
Location: FIC AHM
Genre:Fiction- Dystopia

“That whole freedom-of-speech thing? That right to petition your government? Yeah, doesn’t exist so much inside an internment camp.” 
― Samira Ahmed, Internment

"Internment is an important story and one I encourage everyone to read if you want a look into the terrifying future that is only a few steps away from the current climate in the US. Because truth be told, this book is closer to reality than it is to dystopia." Fadwa

Rebellions are built on hope.

Set in a horrifying near-future United States, seventeen-year-old Layla Amin and her parents are forced into an internment camp for Muslim American citizens.

With the help of newly made friends also trapped within the internment camp, her boyfriend on the outside, and an unexpected alliance, Layla begins a journey to fight for freedom, leading a revolution against the internment camp's Director and his guards.

Heart-racing and emotional, Internment challenges readers to fight complicit silence that exists in our society today.

"Internment is a timely and politically urgent young adult novel which explores life as Muslim-American in the not too distant future. It's an all too real tale of division and hurt between communities but also hope. Islamophobia and racism are at the heart of it all, and I think the reason it's been causing such a stir is because people realise that it isn't too far from becoming our reality. This is a stark warning, a call to action, and an order to stand up, be counted and resist the bigotry, racism, xenophobia and corruption simmering below the surface.

It's an intense, authentic tale of hope and resistance with a compelling and wholly engaging narrative. You can tell that Ahmed Is passionate about these topical issues and it really packs a punch with its messages and encouragement. In fact, part of the narrative is playing out right now in the US with the use of intern camps. It's a very clever way of informing and mobilising youngsters - using fiction as a device to spread the word about what could happen if we're not careful. " Lou

The Missing Files

By: Scott Bainbridge
Location: FIC BAI
Genre: Missing People in NZ- Crime, whodunit, where are they?

The names of the people who are in the contents page are known to me, Mona Blades, Iraena Asher, John Beckenridge etc etc. Where are they, what happened to them,  who are the suspects. Did they disappear because they wanted to, or were made too?

According to the New Zealand Police, around 8000 people go missing in this country every year. While 95 per cent of these people are found within 14 days, there remains a small number of people who are never found. 

In The Missing Files, Scott Bainbridge investigates the cases of 15 of these people. Among the cases presented here are some of the most bizarre and fascinating missing persons cases in this country's history - the earlier of those being the disappearance of Jean Martin in Wellington in 1945, and the most recent being the case of John Beckenridge and his stepson, Mike, who were last seen in the Caitlins in 2015. 

The Missing Files features significant updates on some of the cases that were featured in Scott's previous books, Without Trace and Still Missing, and it also shines a light on several new cases that he has been actively investigating. 
With input from family members, key witnesses, police and other experts, Bainbridge provides a background to every missing person, provides detail of the circumstances of their disappearance, and examines the available evidence and each likely scenario in turn. The only thing no one seems able to provide is the answers.

Assassin's Creed- Odyssey

By: Gordon Doherty
Location: FIC  BOW ( I know it should be DOH but all the rest are in BOW)  
Genre: Assassin's Creed

"Assassin’s Creed Odyssey earns it’s place on my bookshelf..fast paced, exciting and vivid." David

They call her misthios--mercenary--and she will take what she is owed.

Kassandra was raised by her parents to be fierce and uncaring, the ideal Spartan child, destined for greatness. But when a terrible tragedy leaves her stranded on the isle of Kephallonia, near Greece, she decides to find work as a mercenary, away from the constraints of Sparta. 

Many years later, Kassandra is plagued by debt and living under the shadow of a tyrant when a mysterious stranger offers her a deal: assassinate the Wolf, a renowned Spartan general, and he will wipe her debt clean. The offer is simple, but the task is not, as she will need to infiltrate the war between Athens and Sparta to succeed.

Kassandra's odyssey takes her behind enemy lines and among uncertain allies. A web of conspiracy threatens her life, and she must cut down the enemies that surround her to get to the truth. Luckily, a Spartan's blade is always sharp.