Friday Five: deze vijf boeken verdienen meer aandacht

Vandaag is het weer tijd voor een Friday Five. Joany van Craving Pages bedacht deze: boeken die je nog niet eerder voorbij zag komen op Nederlandstalige boekenblogs. Ik lees best divers qua genres en schrijvers, en zowel in het Nederlands als Engels. Daarom kon ik wel vijf boeken verzinnen die aan deze opdracht voldoen. Ik koos voor vijf boeken die zelfs nog helemaal niet vertaald zijn en daarom wel wat meer aandacht én een vertaling verdienen. Sterker nog: zelfs wij schreven nog geen recensies over deze vijf boeken. Laat in de comments daarom zeker weten waar je hier graag een recensie over zou lezen!

Hideous Beauty

Auteur: William Hussey
Genre: Young Adult LGTBQI+ thriller/liefdesverhaal
Steekwoorden: verlies van een geliefde; whodunnit; liefde; familie
Jaar van uitgave: 2020
Flaptekst:

When Dylan and Ellis’s secret relationship is exposed on social media, Dylan is forced to come out. To Dylan’s surprise they are met with support and congratulations, and an amazing reception at their high school dance. Perhaps people aren’t as narrow-minded as he thought?

But Dylan’s happiness is short-lived. Ellis suddenly becomes angry, withdrawn, and as they drive home from the dance, he loses control of the car, sending it plunging into Hunter’s Lake. Barely conscious, Dylan is pulled free of the wreck, while Ellis is left to drown.

Grief-stricken, Dylan vows to discover what happened to Ellis that night and piece together the last months of his boyfriend’s life – and realises just how little he knew about the boy he loved.

Only Mostly Devastated

Auteur: Sophie Gonzales
Genre: YA romance
Steekwoorden: Grease in een modern LGBTQI+ jasje
Jaar van uitgave: 2020
Flaptekst:

Will Tavares is the dream summer fling ― he’s fun, affectionate, kind ― but just when Ollie thinks he’s found his Happily Ever After, summer vacation ends and Will stops texting Ollie back. Now Ollie is one prince short of his fairy tale ending, and to complicate the fairy tale further, a family emergency sees Ollie uprooted and enrolled at a new school across the country. Which he minds a little less when he realizes it’s the same school Will goes to… except Ollie finds that the sweet, comfortably queer guy he knew from summer isn’t the same one attending Collinswood High. This Will is a class clown, closeted ― and, to be honest, a bit of a jerk.

Ollie has no intention of pining after a guy who clearly isn’t ready for a relationship, especially since this new, bro-y jock version of Will seems to go from hot to cold every other week. But then Will starts “coincidentally” popping up in every area of Ollie’s life, from music class to the lunch table, and Ollie finds his resolve weakening.

The last time he gave Will his heart, Will handed it back to him trampled and battered. Ollie would have to be an idiot to trust him with it again.

Right? Right.

The Devouring Gray

Auteur: Christine Lynn Herman
Genre: YA mystery
Steekwoorden: oude families; magische krachten; geheimen; creepy omgeving
Jaar van uitgave: 2019
Flaptekst:

On the edge of town a beast haunts the woods, trapped in the Gray, its bonds loosening…

Uprooted from the city, Violet Saunders doesn’t have much hope of fitting in at her new school in Four Paths, a town almost buried in the woodlands of rural New York. The fact that she’s descended from one of the town’s founders doesn’t help much, either—her new neighbours treat her with distant respect, and something very like fear. When she meets Justin, May, Isaac, and Harper, all children of founder families, and sees the otherworldly destruction they can wreak, she starts to wonder if the townsfolk are right to be afraid.

When bodies start to appear in the woods, the locals become downright hostile. Can the teenagers solve the mystery of Four Paths, and their own part in it, before another calamity strikes?

Five Total Strangers

Auteur: Natalie D. Richards
Genre: YA thriller
Steekwoorden: geheimen; wie is wie; whodunnit; stalker; benauwende omgeving
Jaar van uitgave: 2020
Flaptekst:

A hitched ride home in a snow storm turns sinister when one of the passengers is plotting for the ride to end in disaster.

When Mira flies home to spend Christmas with her mother in Pittsburgh, a record-breaking blizzard results in a cancelled layover. Desperate to get to her grief-ridden mother in the wake of a family death, Mira hitches a ride with a group of friendly college kids who were on her initial flight.

As the drive progresses and weather conditions become more treacherous, Mira realizes that the four other passengers she’s stuck in the car with don’t actually know one another.

Soon, they’re not just dealing with heavy snowfall and ice-slick roads, but the fact that somebody will stop at nothing to ensure their trip ends in a deadly disaster.

Legendborn

Auteur: Tracy Deonn
Genre: YA urban fantasy
Steekwoorden: Koning Arthur mythe; eeuwenoude magie; racisme; universiteit; dark academia
Jaar van uitgave: 2020
Flaptekst:

After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.

A flying demon feeding on human energies.

The secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.

And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.

The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.

She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.