Friday Finds (2) – 3 October 2014

Is it Friday again already? What am I doing with my life?? (Ooo, don’t open that door!) Anyway, on with this week’s Friday Finds!

Friday Finds is a weekly meme hosted by Should Be Reading which encourages you to share the books you have discovered over the past 7 days with your fellow bloggers. Whether you found them in a bookshop, online, in the library or just heard about them from a friend, Friday Finds is a great way to spread the love with other readers.

My list is heavy on YA fiction this week, which I seem to be into a lot at the moment. This could have something to do with the fact I’m turning 27 this month and my teenage years feel like a distant and confusing dream I’ve half forgotten, half made up. Maybe I’m looking to relive some of those years through these stories, although I can’t say I’ve ever tried to drive a Mercedes into a tree in a suicidal experiment to test out Newton’s laws of motion (see number 4 below). Or maybe I just like YA right now, who cares? Good books are good books. I’m going to try and diversify my finds for next week though. All books are linked to their Goodreads pages so you can discover them too.

1) Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes: Firstly, I love the title, which is what initially attracted me to it. Described as Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower (both of which I loved), it’s the story of a girl who denies her inner freak in order to maintain her position in her high school’s hierarchy while fighting her attraction to the loner while the popular guy hounds her for a date. This one really blows my “reliving my teenage years” theory out of the water, as my inner freak would not be denied and lived very much on the outside, and neither the loner nor the popular guy ever asked me out, but it still sounds like a good read to me!

2) The Magician’s Elephant by Kate DiCamillo: “What if? Why not? Could it be?” When I first read the synopsis for this book, I felt like it had an air of The Night Circus about it, which I’m a bit obsessed with (okay, a LOT obsessed, you can read my review to find out why). A boy goes to a fortune teller to ask about his missing sister, and what he learns there sends him on an incredible journey filled with love, hope … and magic. The book also contains some lovely pencil illustrations, which I’m sure will add to the story. It’s on the Y side of YA, but I have a feeling it would make a lovely bedtime story for the children I hope to have one day, so it’s on my TBR list.

3) Top Ten Clues You’re Clueless by Liz Czukas: Another easy-read-light-hearted-Sunday-afternoon book that I think sounds fun and interesting. This one is about a girl called Chloe who, along with five co-workers (one of whom she has a crush on), has been accused of stealing over $10,000. They all have to work together to get out of this mess, and if the reviews I’ve read are to be believed, the exploits of this diverse group of characters will have me laughing all the way through. Sold!

4) Falling into Place by Amy Zhang: The first line of the synopsis reads: “On the day Liz Emerson tries to die, they had reviewed Newton’s laws of motion in physics class. Then, after school, she put them into practice by running her Mercedes off the road.” This caught my attention and made me want to find out more. The novel apparently has a surprising narrator and is told in a nonlinear narrative, which is something I usually really enjoy, so I’m looking forward to this one.

So what books have you discovered this week? Have you read any of the ones I’ve mentioned? Let me know in the comments!