Sponsored by Kind of a Big Deal by Shannon Hale, with Fierce Reads.
There’s nothing worse than peaking in high school. Nobody knows that better than Josie Pie. She was kind of a big deal—but the bigger you are, the harder you fall. And Josie fell. Hard. Ouch. Meanwhile, her life keeps imploding. Desperate to escape, Josie gets into reading. Literally. She reads a book and suddenly she’s inside it. It’s alarming. But also . . . kind of amazing? It’s the perfect way to live out her fantasies. Book after book, Josie the failed star finds a new way to shine. But the longer she stays in a story, the harder it becomes to escape. Will Josie find a story so good that she just stays forever?
Happy Monday, book nerds! I hope you spent the weekend reading something amazing. I deep-cleaned my apartment while listening to an audiobook, and while I’d much rather spend the afternoon in a hammock with my book, audiobooks make unpleasant tasks at least a bit more palatable!
I’ve got a lot of exciting deals and fun news so you can start this week off on the right foot. That said, I know it’s a stressful time right now as so many decide whether or not to send kids back to school (or maybe the decision was forced upon you), so I hope you’re taking care of yourselves, wearing your masks, and remembering to hydrate!
Trivia time: Which bestselling YA fantasy writer posted an early version of her debut series on the Internet for free, years before publication?
Deals and Squeals:
Andy Weir has a new novel coming out next year! Look for Project Hail Mary, a deep space adventure, coming May 4, 2021!
Fonda Lee’s The Jade City is going to be adapted to TV!
Classic books previously published under male pseudonyms are being released under their authors’ real (female) names. While the move seems like a step to reclaim women’s voices, it’s important to note that none of these writers have had a say in this change, and for all we know, some of them might not have identified as female.
Roxane Gay’s comic series The Banks is being adapted into a movie and Gay is writing the screenplay!
Midnight Sun sold a million copies its first week, and Stephenie Meyer has two more Twilight novels planned.
The Upper World by Femi Fadugba is coming to Netflix! The book won’t be available in the U.S. until 2022, but look for it in the UK next year.
AppleTV has ordered an animated series of Harriet the Spy from the Jim Henson Company!
One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus is being made into a Peacock TV series!
The trailer for Unpregnant (based on the YA novel by Jenni Hendricks and Ted Caplan) has landed! The film will stream on HBOMax in September!
Spooky season is upon us, which is why it’s awesome that the adaptation of The Devil All the Time now has a trailer, and it looks amazing. It’ll premiere on Netflix next month!
Riot Recommendations
At Book Riot, I’m a cohost with Liberty on All the Books!, plus I write a handful of newsletters including the weekly Read This Book newsletter, cohost the Insiders Read Harder podcast, and write content for the site. I’m always drowning in books, so here’s what’s on my radar this week!
Reading Recommendation: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
I know I highlighted this book a few weeks back as my want-to-read pick but I finished it last week and oh my gosh, I have to tell you how much I loved it and how it’s one of my favorite books of 2020! Cara is a traverser of the multiverse in a future where a brilliant inventor and his company control all multiverse travel. You can only travel to worlds where your counterpart is dead, which is no problem for Cara–she’s had a rough life and most of her counterparts in other worlds haven’t survived. But when she’s sent to a new world where her other self has recently been murdered, Cara realizes that she’s a pawn in the middle of a vast conspiracy–and she has to decide if she wants to stay complicit, or fight back, even if it means death. THIS BOOK! The plotting is tight and relentlessly unexpected, with twists and turns I didn’t see coming and developments I could sense but when they finally showed up, I was swept away by how clever they were. The world-building (worlds-building?) here was also really excellent, and you can see clear parallels to our own times where billionaires profit off the backs of people of color who live in extreme poverty. Oh, and it has a slow-burn will-they-or-won’t-they queer romance–enough said! I can’t recommend it enough!
What I plan on reading this week:
Unpregnant by Jenni Hendricks and Ted Caplan (it’s been on my shelf for forever!)
Six Angry Girls by Adrienne Kisner
Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon
Trivia answer: Sarah J. Maas
That’s it for now! I leave you with a photo of tiny, sweet peaches I stole off my parents’ peach tree. I hope that you’re grasping onto whatever goodness you can find in these last days of summer!
Happy reading,
Tirzah