The Lies We Tell
Katie Zhao
Anna Xu moves out of her parent’s home and into the dorms across town as she starts freshman year at the local, prestigious Brookings University. But her parents and their struggling Chinese bakery, Sweetea, aren’t far from campus or from mind, either. At Brookings, Anna wants to keep up her stellar academic performance and to investigate the unsolved campus murder of her childhood babysitter.
She also finds a familiar face–her middle-school rival, Chris Lu. The Lus happen to be the Xu family’s business rivals since they opened Sunny’s, a trendy new bakery on Sweetea’s block. Chris is cute but still someone to be wary of… until a vandal hits Sunny’s and Anna matches the racist tag with a clue from her investigation.
Anna grew up in this town, but more and more she feels like maybe she isn’t fully at home here–or maybe it’s that there are people here who think she doesn’t belong. When a very specific threat is made to Anna, she seeks out help from the only person she can; Anna and Chris team up to find out who is stalking her and take on a dangerous search into the hate crimes happening around campus. Can they root out the ugly history and take on the current threat?
The Lies We Tell is a social activism/we all belong here anthem crossed with a thriller and with a rivals-to-romance relationship set on a college campus.
The Stolen Heir
Holly Black
Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge. Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, Lady Nore, fled to the human world.
There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains.
She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.
Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.
Exes and O’s
Amy Lea
The next steamy and hilarious rom-com from Tik Tok favourite Amy Lea
Tara Chen has had her heart broken ten times, by ten different men. Nevertheless, she is still determined to find her perfect match. The only problem? Tara is a romance novel obsessive, and her standards are sky high.
Modern dating apps have killed the meet-cute, so Tara decides to revisit her exes – all ten of them – in the hope of finding her very own trope-worthy second-chance romance. And every heroine needs a sidekick, so she enlists her new flatmate, firefighter Trevor.
Trevor Metcalfe is the first to rush into a burning building but the last to rush into a relationship. Love just isn’t his thing. But, the more time they spend together, the more Trevor appreciates Tara’s authentic, dramatic self.
Can they break the habits of a lifetime and give their spark a chance?
Two Can Play That Game
Leanne Yong
Funny and romantic, an upbeat YA novel about gaming, goals and getting even from a fresh new voice in contemporary fiction.
