May TBR – 2021

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Hello Hello! How are you?

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the month of April was both very long and dragged endlessly, but was also gone in a flash. I have been working non-stop on so many university assignments in the past month, but I am going to get on with my thesis now as I have to hand it in very soon!

By now, you know that when I say “It’s not a very ambitious TBR”, you know I’m lying aha. Although my May TBR probably looks fairly crazy, I am so excited to read all these books and I just don’t know where to start first. Lots of buddy reads, but also some books that have been sitting on my shelves for ages.

On to the May TBR!

City of Heavenly Fire (#6 The Mortal Instruments) by Cassandra Clare

Fiona, Erika and I are going to be finishing up The Mortal Instruments series in May and this is a chunky book! We haven’t finished City of Lost Souls (book 5) yet so we are pushing it back a week, but we will still be starting this last book of the series in May. I have about 120-odd pages to go in book 5 and I have no idea what is actually going on, what will happen and I just want to know! I think that City of Heavenly Fire is going to be insanely fast-paced and just action-packed and let’s hope it’s a good one!

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

The TWR Gang book club has picked a True Crime book to buddy read in May and I am beyond excited because I love anything and everything True Crime. When this book became a Waterstones Book of the Month last year, I was lucky enough to be in Stirling and this was the first book I bought there. It’s been sitting on my shelves ever since, but I can’t wait to get to it. I don’t know that much about Jack the Ripper to be honest, or the women he killed, so this is going to be very interesting I think!

Broken Homes (#4 Rivers of London) by Ben Aaronovitch

The Folly buddy read is already on the 4th book in the Rivers of London series and I am just loving this series so much. It is also so fun to be reading these books with some of my blogging buddies because we all think of different things and have different thoughts and opinions, which make the discussions really fun. I have a little bit more to go in Whispers Under Ground (book 3) and I’ll be finishing it tonight hopefully. I am so ready for book 4!

The Big Four (#5 Hercule Poirot) by Agatha Christie

Jenny from JenJen Reviews and a bunch of other TWR buddies and I have been reading the Hercule Poirot series in chronological order for the past couple of months and this is the next book on our list. I have to be honest and say that I don’t actually know what this book is about… I am going to continue as I’ve been going and not look at the blurb and be surprised once I open the book. I really like reading these books with the gang because they are quick and we always have a lot of thoughts!

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

I have already started this book but I haven’t finished it yet. I picked up this book because Hannah from Han Loves to Read organised a buddy read for the Women’s Prize Longlist and while most of the books on the list are definitely not my thing, some of them took my fancy. I am only a couple of chapters into this book, but I can already tell it’s going to be heart-wrenching, a very hard read and I think I will like it. I’m going to be finishing this one up in May hopefully!

Carrie by Stephen King

I am a little bit of a wimp, but when I heard about the Stephen King readalong organised by Hannah and Helen, I couldn’t say no and now I’m a member of the Losers Club and gearing up to read ALL the books written by this author. Out of all his books, I have only read The Shining a few years ago which actually terrified me, but I am very excited to start Carrie. We are reading these books in chronological order of publication (yay!!), and I am looking forward to this journey. If you would like to take part in this readalong, you can find all the information here!

Night Shift by Stephen King

In May, the Losers Club is also going to read a short story collection from Stephen King. We aren’t reading the whole collection in May, but we are dividing this book into 4 short stories a month (or less depending on their length) to make both the main book and short story collection more manageable. The four short stories I’ll be reading for this readalong in May are (in order): Graveyard Shift, Night Surf, I am the Doorway and Jerusalem’s Lot. I am really looking forward to these short stories which I think won’t creep me out as much as the main book, but we’ll have to see how it goes!

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

In one of the many chats with the TWR Gang on Twitter, Hannah mentioned she wanted to read War and Peace and I jumped on the chance because I do too and I have wanted to for years. We have now created a subpart of the TWR Gang book club called Classic Lit in which a bunch of us will be reading Classics every month. The first one is of course War and Peace. This is a massive book so we are splitting this in two, half in May and half in June which comes in around 150 pages a week (around 25 pages a day), which we think is doable. I’ll be honest, I can’t really remember what this one is about, but I’m excited about this buddy read and that cover is stunning by the way.

Shards of Earth (#1 The Final Architects Trilogy) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The first and I think only blog tour for @The_WriteReads that I’ll be participating in during the month of May is for the new book written by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Last year, I got the chance to read Doors of Eden by the same author and while quite a bit of the science and space talk went over my head, I really enjoyed it and found the writing style to be very immersive. So when Dave announced this tour, I jumped in. I’m going to be starting this one in the next few days and I’m so excited. My stop on the tour is the 14th of May.

Chasing the Italian Dream by Jo Thomas

Last year I read Escape to the French Farmhouse by this author which I absolutely adored. It was a really quick, sweet and unique book, with French elements that I adored and could relate to, you can find my full review here. So the publishers have since sent me eARCs of her two next books, and although I haven’t gotten to her second book, I’m going to jump into the third one she wrote because it sounds sweet and fun and I will need a palate cleanser after some of the massive reads on my TBR. I am really looking forward to this one, so hopefully, it’s just as good as her other book I enjoyed.

Guess what? Noly and I still haven’t finished our reread of A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas yet that we decided to pick up to catch up on our Hype-A-Thon Readathon backlog. We are just going to take things slowly because we are both really busy and we will have to see by the end of May if we got any further into it, or if we picked something else up!

City of Ghosts (#1 Cassidy Blake) by Victoria Schwab

And the final book on my TBR list is as always the BOTM pick for the Middle Grade Marvels book club that I host on Twitter with Holly and Noly. I was so happy when this book won the poll. I have already read this book, a few years ago actually, but I failed to continue the series. It’s a reread for me, but I know I loved it and I’m sure this will give me the incentive to continue with the sequels because apparently, it gets better! I can’t wait, this is going to be a great book to celebrate the one year anniversary of our little book club!

Well, that isn’t the MOST ambitious TBR ever, it’s actually quite small for me, but there are some real chonkers on the list. I’m just so excited for them all and I know that they will be my reward each day as I make my way through my thesis research!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post, see you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx