This week I’ll be finishing up a book that I started yesterday, a book that my friend got me at BEA, an arc the publisher sent me a few weeks back, and a surprise book.

What are you reading?

The Lost and the Scarred- T. Marie Alexander

ROX
When I was six, Wran Belmont found me buried in snow and gave me a place to live.

He became my best friend.

When I was fifteen, I gave him all of me—only for him to abandon me.

Now, he’s back and expecting the lost, scarred girl he’s left behind. I’m not that girl anymore. And while I may still have secrets, it will not be as easy for him to retrieve them this time around.

WRAN
When I was eleven, my father lost his job and became a pathetic excuse for a father. A few months later I found Roxanna Raine buried in snow, barely hanging on to life.

Her father was the reason mine was an alcoholic, and I thought about letting her freeze to death.

One look in her eyes and she became my kryptonite. I swore I would get my revenge, though, even if it was on the fair-skinned beauty.

When I was nineteen, I left Rox without an explanation—broken-hearted and even more lost.

Now, I’m back and I’ll do anything to make up for the stolen time.

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals about Death- Caitlin Doughty

Best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers real questions from kids about death, dead bodies, and decomposition.

Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. What would happen to an astronaut’s body if it were pushed out of a space shuttle? Do people poop when they die? Can Grandma have a Viking funeral?

In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, Doughty blends her mortician’s knowledge of the body and the intriguing history behind common misconceptions about corpses to offer factual, hilarious, and candid answers to thirty-five distinctive questions posed by her youngest fans. In her inimitable voice, Doughty details lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn colors during decomposition? And why do hair and nails appear longer after death? Readers will learn the best soil for mummifying your body, whether you can preserve your best friend’s skull as a keepsake, and what happens when you die on a plane. Beautifully illustrated by Dianné Ruz, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? shows us that death is science and art, and only by asking questions can we begin to embrace it.

Hello Girls- Brittany Cavallaro & Emily Henry

Best friends are forged by fire. For Winona Olsen and Lucille Pryce, that fire happened the night they met outside the police station—both deciding whether to turn their families in.

Winona has been starving for life in the seemingly perfect home that she shares with her seemingly perfect father, celebrity weatherman Stormy Olsen. No one knows that he locks the pantry door to control her eating and leaves bruises where no one can see them.

Lucille has been suffocating beneath the needs of her mother and her drug-dealing brother, wondering if there’s more out there for her than disappearing waitress tips and generations of barely getting by.

One harrowing night, Winona and Lucille realize they can’t wait until graduation to start their new lives. They need out. Now. All they need is three grand, fast. And really, a stolen convertible to take them from Michigan to Las Vegas can’t hurt.

The Year They Fell- David Kreizman

When a horrible tragedy unites five very different high school seniors, they discover the worst moment of your life can help determine who you really are in the powerful YA novel, The Year They Fell.

Josie, Jack, Archie, Harrison, and Dayana were inseparable as preschoolers. But that was before high school, before parties and football and getting into the right college. Now, as senior year approaches, they’re basically strangers to each other.

Until they’re pulled back together when their parents die in a plane crash. These former friends are suddenly on their own. And they’re the only people who can really understand how that feels.

To survive, the group must face the issues that drove them apart, reveal secrets they’ve kept since childhood, and discover who they’re meant to be. And in the face of public scrutiny, they’ll confront mysteries their parents left behind—betrayals that threaten to break the friendships apart again.

A new family is forged in this heartbreaking, funny, and surprising book from award-winning storyteller David Kreizman. It’s a deeply felt, complex journey into adulthood, exploring issues of grief, sexual assault, racism, and trauma.