5 Stars Predictions // A.K.A. What I already love but need to actually sit down and read it

Hello Everyone! I haven’t been posting much lately because my life had been full of Responsibilities lately but I haven’t forgotten about you! I’m still not exactly free — just having some time — but I promise to post more as soon as October rolls up! I haven’t been reading much as well so why not come here and dream about books I want to read so much I already 5-stared them in my head?

🔖 The Storm of Life (The Brilliant Death #2) by Amy Rose Capetta

The sumptuous and powerful conclusion to the gender-fluid duet begun by The Brilliant Death, hailed by Kirkus as “a delicious and magical intrigue too tempting not to devour” (starred review).

Teodora diSangro and Cielo, the strega she loves, are on a mission to save their country of Vinalia from its manipulative leader, who wants to exploit streghe and use them as his weapons. But will marshaling a small but powerful band of streghe be enough to wrest power from a cunning dictator? And what if Teo’s been setting her sights on the wrong enemy all along? This epic sequel to The Brilliant Death completes the Italian-inspired fantasy duet with shocking twists, steamy romance, and magic that will dazzle your imagination and make you wish Vinalia were a real place.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I LOVED the first books so much! It had everything! The tension! The enemies-to-lovers trope! The original magical world! The mafia and politics! So, yes, I’m pretty sure I will love the sequel just as much.

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Oof… 2020 release

---

🔖 Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer Trilogy #1) by Maggie Stiefvater

The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.

And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.

Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.

Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.

Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . . 

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I just love Ronan and Adam so much and I need new content. That’s all.

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Again, not out yet.

---

🔖 Ink in the Blood (Ink in The Blood #1) by Kim Smejkal

A lush, dark YA fantasy debut that weaves together tattoo magic, faith, and eccentric theater in a world where lies are currency and ink is a weapon, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Kendare Blake.

Celia Sand and her best friend, Anya Burtoni, are inklings for the esteemed religion of Profeta. Using magic, they tattoo followers with beautiful images that represent the Divine’s will and guide the actions of the recipients. It’s considered a noble calling, but ten years into their servitude Celia and Anya know the truth: Profeta is built on lies, the tattooed orders strip away freedom, and the revered temple is actually a brutal, torturous prison.

Their opportunity to escape arrives with the Rabble Mob, a traveling theater troupe. Using their inkling abilities for performance instead of propaganda, Celia and Anya are content for the first time . . . until they realize who followed them. The Divine they never believed in is very real, very angry, and determined to use Celia, Anya, and the Rabble Mob’s now-infamous stage to spread her deceitful influence even further.

To protect their new family from the wrath of a malicious deity and the zealots who work in her name, Celia and Anya must unmask the biggest lie of all—Profeta itself.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

MAGIC. TATTOOS. Also, they are fighting evil religious group, travelling with a theater troupe and it’s gay. Sounds like my thing.

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

I promise, the rest of them is already out and it’s not just me gushing about new releases for the whole post…

---

🔖 The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction—but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

Everyone loved it so much! I want to join the hype, especially since it’s!! Sapphic!! I want to support sapphic content and I want to consume good sapphic content! It’s a win-win! And it has DRAGONS!!

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Honestly? It’s over 800 pages and it intimidates me a bit…

---

🔖 Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki

Laura Dean, the most popular girl in high school, was Frederica Riley’s dream girl: charming, confident, and SO cute. There’s just one problem: Laura Dean is maybe not the greatest girlfriend.

Reeling from her latest break up, Freddy’s best friend, Doodle, introduces her to the Seek-Her, a mysterious medium, who leaves Freddy some cryptic parting words: break up with her. But Laura Dean keeps coming back, and as their relationship spirals further out of her control, Freddy has to wonder if it’s really Laura Dean that’s the problem. Maybe it’s Freddy, who is rapidly losing her friends, including Doodle, who needs her now more than ever. Fortunately for Freddy, there are new friends, and the insight of advice columnists like Anna Vice to help her through being a teenager in love.

Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell bring to life a sweet and spirited tale of young love that asks us to consider what happens when we ditch the toxic relationships we crave to embrace the healthy ones we need.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I saw a pic of it and the art is SO!! GOOD!! This is so pretty! And it’s also talking about important things I want it so much!!

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Honestly? I don’t know. I’ve been either swamped with ARCs or otherwise busy lately so I wasn’t really thinking of it.

---

🔖 Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire #1) by Natasha Ngan

Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for…and the most demeaning. This year, there’s a ninth. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.

In this richly developed fantasy, Lei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. She lives in a remote village with her father, where the decade-old trauma of watching her mother snatched by royal guards for an unknown fate still haunts her. Now, the guards are back and this time it’s Lei they’re after — the girl with the golden eyes whose rumored beauty has piqued the king’s interest.

Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learns the skills and charm that befit a king’s consort. There, she does the unthinkable — she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world’s entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she’s willing to go for justice and revenge

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

Another super hyped sapphic book and once again I want to jump on the bandwagon. And it also has Asian rep!

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

It talks about important issues, mainly slavery and rape and with my depression all over the place I don’t think I’m in the right place mentally to read it now. I’m an emotional sponge and things like that tend to drain me so I’m putting it off for now.

---

🔖 Wilder Girls by Rory Power

It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.

It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.

But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I’ve been obsessed with this book since I saw that cover! And it has everything I love! Weird sciency shit? Check. Boarding school? Check. Sapphic content? Check. Moral ambiguity and complex female characters? CHECK.

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

…Exactly. Why?

---

🔖 The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. By all rights their paths should never cross, but Achilles takes the shamed prince as his friend, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine their bond blossoms into something deeper – despite the displeasure of Achilles’ mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But then word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus journeys with Achilles to Troy, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Profoundly moving and breathtakingly original, this rendering of the epic Trojan War is a dazzling feat of the imagination, a devastating love story, and an almighty battle between gods and kings, peace and glory, immortal fame and the human heart.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I’ve been eyeing this book for years, tbh. I want to know what’s going on. I feel like this one will drain me but in such a way that I will end up loving every second of this suffering?

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

I’m not ready to cry this much…

---

🔖 Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

What happens when America’s First Son falls in love with the Prince of Wales?

When his mother became President, Alex Claremont-Diaz was promptly cast as the American equivalent of a young royal. Handsome, charismatic, genius—his image is pure millennial-marketing gold for the White House. There’s only one problem: Alex has a beef with the actual prince, Henry, across the pond. And when the tabloids get hold of a photo involving an Alex-Henry altercation, U.S./British relations take a turn for the worse.

Heads of family, state, and other handlers devise a plan for damage control: staging a truce between the two rivals. What at first begins as a fake, Instragramable friendship grows deeper, and more dangerous, than either Alex or Henry could have imagined. Soon Alex finds himself hurtling into a secret romance with a surprisingly unstuffy Henry that could derail the campaign and upend two nations and begs the question: Can love save the world after all? Where do we find the courage, and the power, to be the people we are meant to be? And how can we learn to let our true colors shine through?

Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue proves: true love isn’t always diplomatic. 

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I saw the hype and I don’t always believe it but I think it’s real this time. And I don’t have to repeat how much I love enemies-to-lovers, right? Everyone and their mother knows that about me at this point…

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Life’s been busy and I either didn’t have the time or wasn’t in the right mood. Maybe in October? 

---

🔖 Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Ivy Gamble has never wanted to be magic. She is perfectly happy with her life—she has an almost-sustainable career as a private investigator, and an empty apartment, and a slight drinking problem. It’s a great life and she doesn’t wish she was like her estranged sister, the magically gifted professor Tabitha.

But when Ivy is hired to investigate the gruesome murder of a faculty member at Tabitha’s private academy, the stalwart detective starts to lose herself in the case, the life she could have had, and the answer to the mystery that seems just out of her reach.

🔸🔶🔸Why do I expect to 5 star it?🔸🔶🔸

I’m just a sucker for paranormal mysteries and magic schools so I hyped this one up to myself…

🔸🔶🔸Why haven’t I read it yet?🔸🔶🔸

Thuth be told, I’ve read some reviews and now I’m hesitant because they weren’t all good? I expected a 5 star and I want a 5 star and I’m not ready to be disappointed yet…

---

Do you have any books you expect to 5-star? Or are you afraid you will ‘jinx’ it if you say so? Have you read any of the books I’ve mentioned? Feel free to rush me to read them then! 

–E.

[icons]