What_Kel_Reads

The Holdout, written by Graham Moore is scheduled for release on February 18, 2020 by Random House Publishing Group.  I was given an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.  I also chose this as one of my February Book of the Month selections. Synopsis (From Goodreads):   Juror Maya Seale is convinced that African American high school teacher Bobby Nock is innocent of killing the wealthy white female student with whom he appears to have been involved and persuades her fellow jurors likewise. Ten years later, a true-crime docuseries reassembles the jurors, and Maya, now a defense attorney, must prove her own innocence when one of them is found dead in Maya's room. I originally requested this on NetGalley b ecause I found it on a list of 2020’s most promising books.  Once I found out BOTM would also be featuring it, naturally I had to have it.  I love all things true crime, so a fictional story about a true crime case could ...

Blake Crouch's latest book Recursion was released on 06/11/19 by Crown Publishing.  I was lucky enough to get an early copy from NetGalley in exchange for my review. New York City cop Barry Sutton is investigating a universal problem the media is calling False Memory Syndrome—it's giving people memories of lifetimes they've never lived. Scientist Helena Smith has dedicated her life to trying to find a scientific way to preserve memories.  Instead of losing them all to something like Alzheimer's, people can store and relive their memories over and over.   Barry and Helena eventually collide, discovering that their partnership is the only way to save the world and life as they know it...but can they really do it when it feels like the fabric of life is constantly changing and crumbling around them? This book was AWESOME.  It was mind bending, full of twists and interesting plot turns.  It was impossible to stop reading it.  Overall I finished this...

I was lucky enough to receive this ARC from NetGalley.  The book, published by Little, Brown and Company is scheduled for release on May 21st, 2019.  It has also been chosen as a selection for Book of the Month, if the spoiler posts remain true.  This will give BOTM members early access to the book before they can pick it up in stores. This book is about Stella and Violet, lifelong best friends.  Stella comes from money, and it's obvious she's never heard of the word "consequence."  Violet has had to scrape and scratch for everything.  She often accompanies Stella home on holidays because her family is so horrible.  Stella's family seem to "adopt" her, as long as that means they can brag about her accomplishments.  After college, Violet moves to New York and begins working for a cable company while Stella travels the world on her very own drug binge.  She claws her way up from intern, only to have Stella barge in and announce that sh...

There isn't a lot I can say about this book that hasn't already been said.  It's genius.  It ripped my heart out.  I laughed.  I cried.  I immediately wanted to reread this. Synopsis (From Goodreads): Everyone knows Daisy Jones & The Six, but nobody knows the reason behind their split at the absolute height of their popularity . . . until now. Daisy is a girl coming of age in L.A. in the late sixties, sneaking into clubs on the Sunset Strip, sleeping with rock stars, and dreaming of singing at the Whisky a Go Go. The sex and drugs are thrilling, but it’s the rock and roll she loves most. By the time she’s twenty, her voice is getting noticed, and she has the kind of heedless beauty that makes people do crazy things. Also getting noticed is The Six, a band led by the brooding Billy Dunne. On the eve of their first tour, his girlfriend Camila finds out she’s pregnant, and with the pressure of impending fatherhood and fame, Billy goes a little wild o...

I will admit that Queenie is completely out of my comfort zone.  I wasn't sure what I expected when I chose it as my Book of the Month, but I was really excited to find out. Synopsis(from Goodreads): Bridget Jones’s Diary  meets  Americanah  in this disarmingly honest, boldly political, and truly inclusive novel that will speak to anyone who has gone looking for love and found something very different in its place. Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, straddling two cultures and slotting neatly into neither. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up from her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places…including several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie careens from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself w...