Hello YABC’ers!
Welcome to the weekly post by the Staff at YA Books Central for Current Reads Monday!
We love everything bookish and just wanted to share with our readers what books we are currently reading and obsessing about! So check out what books the YABC Staff are currently reading below and comment to let us know what book or books you’re reading as well!!
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Happy Reading!!
*Kim’s Current Read*
(Staff Reviewer)
From New York Times bestselling, award-winning author Jennifer Donnelly comes a revolutionary, gender-swapped retelling of Beauty and the Beast that will forever change how you think about beauty, power, and what it really means to follow your heart.
What makes a girl “beastly?” Is it having too much ambition? Being too proud? Taking up too much space? Or is it just wanting something, anything, too badly?
That’s the problem Arabella faces when she makes her debut in society. Her parents want her to be sweet and compliant so she can marry well, but try as she might, Arabella can’t extinguish the fire burning inside her — the source of her deepest wishes, her wildest dreams.
When an attempt to suppress her emotions tragically backfires, a mysterious figure punishes Arabella with a curse, dooming her and everyone she cares about, trapping them in the castle. As the years pass, Arabella abandons hope. The curse is her fault — after all, there’s nothing more “beastly” than a girl who expresses her anger — and the only way to break it is to find a boy who loves her for her true self: a cruel task for a girl who’s been told she’s impossible to love.
When a handsome thief named Beau makes his way into the castle, the captive servants are thrilled, convinced he is the one to break the curse. But Beau — spooked by the castle’s strange and forbidding ladies-in-waiting, and by the malevolent presence that stalks its corridors at night — only wants to escape. He learned long ago that love is only an illusion. If Beau and Arabella have any hope of breaking the curse, they must learn to trust their wounded hearts, and realize that the cruelest prisons of all are the ones we build for ourselves.
*Jan’s Current Read*
(Assistant Blog Manager & Staff Reviewer)
Twins Willow and Jake Grimm are not prepared for the bizarre gadgets and scary changes in their new home of New Marburg, the location of the top-secret Think Tank where their parents now have jobs as scientists. In this town, people jetpack to work, robots direct traffic, and senior citizens duel with laser swords.
Yet nothing compares to what happens the day after lightning strikes the twins’ house. Their school building transforms around them, becoming a medieval castle—complete with moat, drawbridge, and a dangerous giant who looks strangely like the school’s overly aggressive hall monitor.
Barely managing to escape before a massive beanstalk lifts the castle above the clouds, Willow and Jake learn that their ancestors, the original Brothers Grimm, were more than storytellers. They were Grimmwalkers, able to travel from our universe to Grimmworld: the universe where all fairy tales are born.
Somehow, Willow and Jake have been transported to Grimmworld as well. But before the twins can figure out how to get back to their own universe, they discover that their best friends, Hank and Pearl, have morphed into the fairy tale characters Hansel and Gretel and been captured by a candy-obsessed witch deep in the Cursed Forest.
Now, aided by a mysterious wizard with shimmering golden eyes and a befuddled, talking naked mole-rat named Chet, the twins must trust in each other, believe in themselves, and find the courage to face their darkest fears in order to save their friends, return to their family, and maybe—just maybe—save the world.
*Lillian’s Current Read*
(Indie Manager & Staff Reviewer)
his program includes a bonus conversation with the author.
From the New York Times-bestselling author of We Hunt the Flame comes the first audiobook in a hotly anticipated fantasy duology teeming with romance and revenge, led by an orphan girl willing to do whatever it takes to save her self-made kingdom.
On the streets of White Roaring, Arthie Casimir is a criminal mastermind and collector of secrets. Her prestigious tearoom transforms into an illegal bloodhouse by night, catering to the vampires feared by society. But when her establishment is threatened, Arthie is forced to strike an unlikely deal with an alluring adversary to save it—she can’t do the job alone.
Calling on some of the city’s most skilled outcasts, Arthie hatches a plan to infiltrate the sinister, glittering vampire society known as the Athereum. But not everyone in her ragtag crew is on her side, and as the truth behind the heist unfolds, Arthie finds herself in the midst of a conspiracy that will threaten the world as she knows it. Dark, action-packed, and swoonworthy, this is Hafsah Faizal better than ever.
A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
*Connie’s Current Read*
( Site Manager & Staff Reviewer)
Destroy the Day (Defy the Night, 3)
Left for dead, but desperate to survive . . . they have one last chance to save their kingdom.
Prince Corrick is out of options. Held captive by the vicious Oren Crane, he’s desperate to reunite with Tessa, but will need to ally with the rebel leader Lochlan, who until now wished him dead. An unlikely but deadly pair, Corrick and Lochlan must plot their next moves carefully. . .
An island away, Tessa Cade is heartbroken and angry. Grieving Corrick, and unsure how to find a way back to Kandala, she doesn’t know who to trust. Until Rian–the man she trusts least–makes an offer: aid in a plot to finally oust Oren Crane and see what the future holds. . .
Meanwhile in Kandala, Harristan is dethroned and on the run. He’s struggling to unite the rebels in his fractured kingdom, but he finds support–and maybe more–in unexpected places.
Can Harristan be the king his people need? Can Corrick and Tessa find their way back to each other? As outside threats loom and the fires of revolution burn from within, time is running out to save their kingdom.
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