Library Summer Challenge! #BookChallenge #SummerReads

Good morning everyone and happy Saturday. I’m taking part in the #librarysummersix challenge this summer started by the lovely @the.running.bookworm.

The idea follows the library challenge for children, you’ve probably seen being advertised, but for adults! We have all chosen six books from the library to read this summer. Here are my choices!

Have you read any of these? Which one would you read first?

The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Guntur

‘Inventive, heartbreaking and acutely funny’ Observer

Vacca Vale, Indiana: recently voted number 1 on Newsweek‘s list of dying American cities. According to the developers, however, it’s a city with a whole history of reinvention, one that ‘buzzes with the American spirit.’

Not everyone agrees though – certainly not the residents of the Rabbit Hutch, a low-cost housing complex in the once bustling industrial centre, populated by a cast of unforgettable, disenfranchised characters. There’s an online obituary writer, a woman waging a solo campaign against rodents and, most notably, eighteen-year-old Blandine, recently released from foster care and determined to stop the developers whatever the cost. 

Set over one sweltering week in July, The Rabbit Hutch is a savagely beautiful and bitingly funny snapshot of contemporary America. Bold, experimental and brilliantly written, it will live in the memory long after the final page. 

The Villa by Rachel Hawkins

As kids, Emily and Chess were inseparable, but their bond has been strained by the demands of their adult lives. So when Chess suggests a girls trip to Italy, Emily jumps at the chance to reconnect with her best friend.

Villa Aestas in Orvieto is breathtaking, but it has a dark past: in 1974 it was rented by a notorious rockstar, who was joined by up-and-coming musician Pierce Sheldon and his girlfriend, Mari. By the end of the holiday Pierce is dead, and Mari goes on to write one of the greatest horror novels of all time.

As Emily digs into the villa’s history, she begins to think that Pierce’s murder wasn’t just a tale of sex, drugs, and rock & roll gone wrong, but something more sinister – and that there might be clues hidden in the now-iconic works that Mari left behind.

Yet the closer that Emily gets to the truth, the more tension she feels developing between her and Chess. As secrets from the past come to light, equally dangerous betrayals from the present also emerge – and it begins to look like the villa will claim another victim before the summer ends.

An enthralling tale of gothic suspense that will keep you reading late into the night, The Villa is perfect for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley, with the rock-and-roll glamour of Daisy Jones and the Six.

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

SARAJEVO. SPRING 1992.

Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents – whether Muslim, Croat or Serb – push the makeshift barriers aside.

When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over. Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.

The Secret Of Villa Alba by Louise Douglas

1968, Sicily. Just months after a terrible earthquake has destroyed the mountain town of Gibellina, Enzo and his wife Irene Borgata are making their way back to the family home, Villa Alba, on roads overlooked by the eerie backdrop of the flattened ghost town. When their car breaks down, Enzo leaves his young wife to go and get help, but when he returns there is no trace of Irene. No body, no sign of a struggle, nothing.

2003. TV showman and true crime aficionado Milo Conti is Italy’s darling, uncovering and solving historic crimes for his legion of fans. When he turns his attention to the story of the missing Irene Borgata, accusing her husband of her murder, Enzo’s daughter Maddi asks her childhood friend, retired detective April Cobain, for help to prove her father’s innocence. But the tale April discovers is murky: mafia meetings, infidelity, mistaken identity, grief and unshakable love. As the world slowly closes in on the claustrophobic Villa Alba, and the house begins to reveal its secrets, will the Borgata family wish they’d never asked April to investigate? And what did happen to Enzo’s missing wife Irene?

Bestselling author Louise Douglas returns with an irresistibly compelling, intriguing and captivating tale of betrayal, love, jealousy and the secrets buried in every family history.

Girl Crush by Florence Given

GIRLCRUSH is a dark feminist retelling of Jekyll & Hyde by bestselling author Florence Given.

In Given’s debut novel, we follow Eartha on a wild, weird and seductive modern-day exploration as she commences life as an openly bisexual woman whilst also becoming a viral sensation on Wonderland, a social media app where people project their dream selves online.

The distance between her online and offline self grows further and further apart until something dark happens that leads her into total self-destruction, forcing Eartha to make a choice; which version of herself should she kill off?

Warning this book does include storylines that some readers may find triggering.