Top Ten Tuesday – Most Anticipated Releases of the Second Half of 2019

Good morning! As you can tell from the post title today’s Top Ten Tuesday is focusing on the second half of 2019 and the books we’re most looking forward to! I’m fairly certain I’ve managed to missed an announcement or two along the way but these are my top ten as it stands at the moment!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Most Anticipated Releases of the Second Half of 2019

I Hold Your Heart by Karen Gregory

Publication Date: 11 July 2019

‘You make me feel like there’s something good in the world I can hold on to,’ Aaron says. He kisses me again, draws me so close it’s almost hard to breathe. ‘I love you, Gem. And I promise I’ll hold your heart forever.’

When Gemma meets Aaron, she feels truly seen for the first time. Their love story is the intense kind. The written-in-the-stars, excluding-all-others kind. The kind you write songs about.

But little by little their relationship takes over Gemma’s life. What happens when being seen becomes being watched, and care becomes control?

Told in both Gemma’s and Aaron’s words, this is a raw, moving exploration of gaslighting in teenage relationships that skewers our ideas of what love looks like.

This book is dealing with a sensitive and quite a dark topic but it sounds really interesting. I’m not sure how to describe how I feel about this book – due to the subject matter it doesn’t quite feel right to say I’ll enjoy it but I do have very high expectations for it. Countless by the same author also tackled a difficult subject and did it superbly. I expect I Hold Your Heart to do the same.

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Rose, Interrupted by Patrice Lawrence

Publication Date: 25th July 2019

Being a teenager is hard enough, but it’s even harder in a world you’ve never known …

Eighteen months ago, 17-year-old Rose and 13-year-old Rudder escaped a strict religious sect with their mum. They are still trying to make sense of the world outside – no more rules about clothes and books, films and music, no more technology bans. But also no more friendship with the people they’ve known all their lives, no community and no certainty. It doesn’t help that their mum has to work all hours to pay rent on their cramped, smelly, one-bed flat above a kebab shop in Hackney.

While Rudder gorges on once-taboo Harry Potters and dances to Simon and Garfunkel and show tunes, Rose swaps the ankle skirts and uncut hair of the Woodford Pilgrims for Japanese-cute fairy dress and her new boyfriend, Kye. Kye, who she wants with all her being. But there’s loads of scary stuff about their new life that Rose and Rudder have no idea how to handle – it’s normal for girls to let their boyfriends take naked pictures of them, right?

When Rudder accidently sets a devastating chain of events into action, Rose must decide whether to sacrifice everything and go back to the life she hates, in order to save the people she loves.

A story about coming of age, slap-bang in the middle of a strange new world.

Here I must confess I’ve never read a book by Patrice Lawrence but this one sounds wonderful. I was lucky enough to receive a copy for the publishers and I’m looking forward to reading it at the beginning of next month.

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I, Cosmo by Carlie Sorosiak

Publication Date: 1st August 2019

Cosmo’s family is falling apart.
And it’s up to Cosmo to keep them together.
He knows exactly what to do.
There’s only one problem.

Cosmo is a Golden Retriever.

Incredibly funny, and filled with warmth and heart, this is Charlotte’s Web meets Little Miss Sunshine – the story of one dog’s attempt to save his family, become a star, and eat a lot of bacon.

I have a soft spot for both Golden Retrievers, after growing up with one, and Carlie’s writing, after reading If Birds Fly Back. So I’m really looking forward to discovering Carlie’s first middle grade novel.

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Sanctuary by V. V. James

Publication Date: 8th August 2019

Four women with a secret. 
The death that will unravel their lives.

The small town of Sanctuary is rocked by the death of its star quarterback. Daniel’s death looked like an accident, but everyone knows his ex-girlfriend Harper is the daughter of a witch – and she was there when he died.

Then the rumours start. When Harper insists Dan was guilty of a terrible act, the town turns on her. So was his death an accident, revenge – or something even darker?

As accusations fly and secrets are revealed, paranoia grips the town, culminating in a trial that the whole world is watching…

V. V. James also writes under the name Vic James and is the author behind the Dark Gifts trilogy that you may have noticed I’m a little bit in love with! I’ve had this pre-ordered since it was announced and I cannot wait to get my hands on it finally it sounds so good!

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Control by Hugh Montgomery

Publication Date: 8th August 2019

Not all doctors are heroes . . . 

Renowned surgeon Michael Trenchard locks his office door and prepares for a relaxing evening – Wagner on the sound system, a fine Scotch to hand. A knock at the door heralds the arrival of the person he most wants to see – the person who excites him more than anyone else. But what follows will turn his dreams into a living nightmare . . . for he will be discovered later that night in a locked-in coma, the victim of an auto-erotic asphyxiation. 

Can this really be an accident? It is left to Dr Kash Devan, Trenchard’s young protégé, to uncover the truth. What he discovers is chilling: in his ruthless pursuit of wealth and success Trenchard has left a trail of wrecked lives behind him. Which of his victims hated him so much they wanted not only his life, but also his reputation ruined?

I’m getting Coma vibes from this blurb, and that book ignited a love of medical thrillers in me so I cannot wait to read this!

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Emmy In The Key Of Code by Aimee Lucido

Publication Date: 24th September 2019

In a new city, at a new school, twelve-year-old Emmy has never felt more out of tune. Things start to look up when she takes her first coding class, unexpectedly connecting with the material—and Abigail, a new friend—through a shared language: music. But when Emmy gets bad news about their computer teacher, and finds out Abigail isn’t being entirely honest about their friendship, she feels like her new life is screeching to a halt. Despite these obstacles, Emmy is determined to prove one thing: that, for the first time ever, she isn’t a wrong note, but a musician in the world’s most beautiful symphony.

I’m a bit of a tech geek, although not a strong coder, but the idea of coding featuring heavily in a middle grade book excites me!

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Dear Haiti, Love Alaine by Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite

Publication date: 3rd September 2019

When a school presentation goes very wrong, Alaine Beauparlant finds herself suspended, shipped off to Haiti and writing the report of a lifetime…

You might ask the obvious question: What do I, a seventeen-year-old Haitian American from Miami with way too little life experience, have to say about anything?

Actually, a lot.

Thanks to “the incident” (don’t ask), I’m spending the next two months doing what my school is calling a “spring volunteer immersion project.” It’s definitely no vacation. I’m toiling away under the ever-watchful eyes of Tati Estelle at her new nonprofit. And my lean-in queen of a mother is even here to make sure I do things right. Or she might just be lying low to dodge the media sharks after a much more public incident of her own…and to hide a rather devastating secret.

All things considered, there are some pretty nice perks…like flirting with Tati’s distractingly cute intern, getting actual face time with my mom and experiencing Haiti for the first time. I’m even exploring my family’s history—which happens to be loaded with betrayals, superstitions and possibly even a family curse.

You know, typical drama. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.

I discovered this in the Fall / Winter YA Buzz Book and absolutely loved the extract. I can’t wait to read the full thing!

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American Royals by Katherine McGee

Publication date: 5th September 2019

Meet the Washingtons – the most scandalous royal family ever!

HRH Princess Samantha has always been a royal rebel. She’s the spare not the heir, so no one minds too much who she dates or how hard she parties.

It helps that her sister, Princess Beatrice, is literally perfect. She’s demure, sweet and beautiful, and she knows that the crown always comes first – no matter what her heart might really want.

But they’re not the only ones with their eye on the throne. Daphne Deighton might be ‘newly noble’ but she won Prince Jefferson’s heart once, and she’ll do anything to get back into the court’s favour – and his bed.

If only she knew that her competition was a common nobody – plain little Nina Gonzalez, the daughter of the king’s secretary.

Together these four young women must navigate the drama, gossip, scheming and sizzling romance of the most glorious court in the world. There’s everything to play for – but there can only be one queen.

This just sounds delightful! Some of the Real Housewives franchises are my go to guilty pleasure TV shows and this sounds equally backstabby but with the additional trappings of royalty! What’s not to like?!

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Endgame by Daniel Cole

Publication date: 5th September 2019

A locked room. A dead body. A secret that went to the grave.

When retired police officer Finlay Shaw is found dead in a locked room, everyone thinks it’s suicide. But disgraced detective William ‘Wolf’ Fawkes isn’t so sure.

Together with his former partner Detective Emily Baxter and private detective Edmunds, Wolf’s team begin to dig into Shaw’s early days on the beat. Was Shaw as innocent as he seemed? Or is there more to his past than he’d ever let on?

But not everyone wants Wolf back – and as his investigation draws him ever deeper into police corruption, it will not only be his career on the line – but the lives of those he holds closest as well…

This is the third (and possibly final) story in the Fawkes and Baxter series. I really enjoyed Ragdoll and Hangman so I’m looking forward to the next part of the story!

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The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman

Publication Date: 3rd October 2019

A boy and a boat, a girl and her dæmon, their stories inextricably bound.

It is twenty years since the events of La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One unfolded and saw the baby Lyra Belacqua begin her life-changing journey.

It is seven years since readers left Lyra and the love of her young life, Will Parry, on a park bench in Oxford’s Botanic Gardens at the end of the ground-breaking, bestselling His Dark Materials sequence.

Now, in The Secret Commonwealth, we meet Lyra Silvertongue. And she is no longer a child…

The second volume of Sir Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her dæmon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions a world that they had no idea existed.

Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.

Theirs is a world at once familiar and extraordinary, and they must travel far beyond the edges of Oxford, across Europe and into Asia, in search for what is lost – a city haunted by dæmons, a secret at the heart of a desert, and the mystery of the elusive Dust.

The Secret Commonwealth is truly a book for our times; a powerful adventure and a thought-provoking look at what it is to understand yourself, to grow up and make sense of the world around you. This is storytelling at its very best from one of our greatest writers.

I love His Dark Materials so much and I CANNOT wait to discover what’s happening with Lyra now she’s an adult. The Waterstones special edition is already on pre-order!

Do any of these make your lists? Let me know in the comments!