What I Read in May

Hey y'all,

I always connect reading with the summer. Between staying up to read the latest Harry Potter novel, library trips, and finally reading the books I wanted (English major problems) my reading life always grows over the summer months. This month I started three different trilogies and plan to finish them over the next few months. I will share my summer reading list next week. I updated my goal of not just reading 65 books this year but making sure 30/65 are by authors of color and will share more on that goal then. Here's what I read last month. 

The Thousandth Floor (The Thousandth Floor #1)

New York City as you’ve never seen it before. A thousand-story tower stretching into the sky. A glittering vision of the future, where anything is possible—if you want it enough.

Welcome to Manhattan, 2118.

A hundred years in the future, New York is a city of innovation and dreams. But people never change: everyone here wants something…and everyone has something to lose.

Leda Cole’s flawless exterior belies a secret addiction—to a drug she never should have tried and a boy she never should have touched.

Eris Dodd-Radson’s beautiful, carefree life falls to pieces when a heartbreaking betrayal tears her family apart.

Rylin Myers’s job on one of the highest floors sweeps her into a world—and a romance—she never imagined…but will her new life cost Rylin her old one?

Watt Bakradi is a tech genius with a secret: he knows everything about everyone. But when he’s hired to spy by an upper-floor girl, he finds himself caught up in a complicated web of lies.

And living above everyone else on the thousandth floor is Avery Fuller, the girl genetically designed to be perfect. The girl who seems to have it all—yet is tormented by the one thing she can never have.

This series has been on my radar for a while and after enjoying American Royals by McGee in the Fall I added this one to my library list. The book is set in NYC in 2118. Central Park is now home to a 1,000-floor tower where the hierarchy is determined by your floor location. The book follows a group of upTower high schoolers and the secrets everyone is keeping from each other. Think Gossip Girl set in the future with hover cars, a whole world within one building (there is a spa/gym on one floor, a bar on another, etc). The book begins with the mystery in the first chapter that someone will fall off the tower and you don’t know who or when it will occur. I am excited to read the rest of the trilogy. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Danger, Sweetheart (Love Tropes #1)

Blake Tarbell has a town to save. Rich, carefree, and used to the Vegas party lifestyle, Blake is thrown for a curve when his former cocktail-waitress mother pleads he go back to her roots to save the town she grew up in. Blake's used to using money to solve his problems, but when he arrives in Sweetheart, North Dakota, this city boy has to trade in his high-priced shoes for a pair of cowboy boots...and he's about to get a little help from the loveliest lady in town...

Natalie Lane's got no time for newbies. The prettiest gal to ever put on a pair of work gloves, there's nothing she can't do to keep a farm up and running. But when a handsome city-slicker rolls into town with nothing but bad farmer's instincts and good intentions, Natalie's heartstrings are pulled. She's about to teach him a thing or two about how to survive in Sweetheart. And he's about to teach her a thing or two about love.

MaryJanice Davidson takes the romance tropes and pokes fun while writing a cute romance. Blake goes to Sweetheart, ND to visit his mother and learn about the town she ran from. He is sentenced to working on a farm and meets Natalie, the banker, that masquerades as the farm foreman. I loved Davidson’s UnDead series but this one took a while to get into based on the writing style. I’m intrigued to see what tropes will be used for the rest of the trilogy out this year. ⭐⭐⭐

The Good Widow

Elementary school teacher Jacqueline “Jacks” Morales’s marriage was far from perfect, but even in its ups and downs it was predictable, familiar. Or at least she thought it was…until two police officers showed up at her door with devastating news. Her husband of eight years, the one who should have been on a business trip to Kansas, had suffered a fatal car accident in Hawaii. And he wasn’t alone.

For Jacks, laying her husband to rest was hard. But it was even harder to think that his final moments belonged to another woman—one who had left behind her own grieving and bewildered fiancé. Nick, just as blindsided by the affair, wants answers. So he suggests that he and Jacks search for the truth together, retracing the doomed lovers’ last days in paradise.

Now, following the twisting path of that fateful road, Jacks is learning that nothing is ever as it seems. Not her marriage. Not her husband. And most certainly not his death…

Jacks just found out her husband was killed in Maui, but she thought he was on a business trip to Kansas. A few weeks later she learns there was a woman found from the same accident, and that woman’s fiancé is now on her front door asking Jacks to go to Maui to discover what happened. This was a very quick read and had a nice twist at the end. ⭐⭐⭐.5

Wicked and the Wallflower (Bareknuckle Bastards #1)

When a mysterious stranger finds his way into her bedchamber and offers his help in landing a duke, Lady Felicity Faircloth agrees—on one condition. She’s seen enough of the world to believe in passion, and won’t accept a marriage without it.

Bastard son of a duke and king of London’s dark streets, Devil has spent a lifetime wielding power and seizing opportunity, and the spinster wallflower is everything he needs to exact a revenge years in the making. All he must do is turn the plain little mouse into an irresistible temptress, set his trap, and destroy his enemy.

But there’s nothing plain about Felicity Faircloth, who quickly decides she’d rather have Devil than another. Soon, Devil’s carefully laid plans are in chaos and he must choose between everything he's ever wanted . . . and the only thing he's ever desired.

I love Sarah MacLean's romance books and this is the latest triology. We met Felicity in the Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3) and her family has placed all their hope in her marriage to a wealthy suitor. When she tells a group of the Ton she is engaged to the mysterious Duke, it sets off a plan where she makes a deal with Devil to keep the engagement rumor alive but it turns out that Felicity might not really want the Ton's idea of perfection. ⭐⭐⭐

I'm currently reading Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation as an audiobook and You Are Not Alone on my Nook.

I'm linking up with Jana and Steph

What are you reading?

Best,