Book of the Month! [August]

Hellooo August – is summer really almost over?!  This month Ashley @ Falling Down the Book Hole and I will be continuing our little book club adventure and we’d love to have you join us!  You can read along with us on our blogs or head over too Goodreads and join the Future Cat Ladies of America Book Club – the Goodreads group is currently Ashley’s domain because I am bad at remembering to check it (I know, I’m terrible). We’re going to try fitting our book club choices to a theme each month, so for August we thought we’d go with something summery to help distract us from the fact that fall is quickly approaching:

Title: Second Chance Summer
Author: Morgan Matson
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Synopsis: Taylor Edwards’ family might not be the closest-knit—everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled—but for the most part, they get along just fine. Then Taylor’s dad gets devastating news, and her parents decide that the family will spend one last summer all together at their old lake house in the Pocono Mountains.

Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere. Her former best friend is still around, as is her first boyfriend…and he’s much cuter at seventeen than he was at twelve.

As the summer progresses and the Edwards become more of a family, they’re more aware than ever that they’re battling a ticking clock. Sometimes, though, there is just enough time to get a second chance—with family, with friends, and with love.

 
We’re going to be spreading out our reaction posts a little more this month, so here’s the schedule for which chapters we’ll be reading each week (and covering in our reaction posts) if you plan on reading along with us:

August 1-15: Chapters 1-20
August 16-30: Chapters 21-40

We’ll also be tweeting as we read at @KittyCatReads and @downthebookhole using the hashtag #FCLABookClub if you’d like to join us there (I promise I’ll try to be better at tweeting this month)!

I hope some of you will join us in reading Second Chance Summer this month!  Our planned theme for September is ‘Back to School’ so if you have any suggestions for school-related reads leave them in the comments!

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On an unrelated note, I’m thinking about changing the look of my blog because I’m just not feeling the color scheme I’m working with right now.  I’m thinking black and white with a pop of color, thoughts?

Book of the Month! [July]

Happy July everyone!  Starting today Ashley @ Falling Down the Book Hole and I are going to be starting a fun new feature on our blogs, we’ll be hosting a book club!  Each month we’ll be choosing a new book to read together and we’ll be posting our (probably spoilery and mostly uncensored) reactions to what we’ve read in weekly round-up posts either here or over at Ashley’s blog.  We would love to have all of you join in on our discussions or even read along with us too so we’ve created our own little book club group over on Goodreads, we are officially the Future Cat Ladies of America Book Club (though you need not be a lady, or American, or even a cat person to join us)! Feel free to join the group if you’d like to keep up with our discussion of the book, we’d love to hear your thoughts too. So, without further ado, here is our pick for July:

Title: The Raven Boys
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Goodreads | Barnes & Noble | Amazon

Synopsis: It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

 
Here’s the schedule for which chapters we’ll be reading each week (and covering in our reaction posts) if you plan on reading along with us:

July 1-5: Prologue – Chapter 12
July 6-12: Chapters 13-24
July 13-19: Chapters 25-36
July 20-26: Chapters 37-48

We’ll also be tweeting as we read at @KittyCatReads and @downthebookhole using the hashtag #FCLABookClub if you’d like to join us there!

If you have any questions about the book club feel free to leave me a comment, we’re still very much in beta mode with this little feature so suggestions are more than welcome as well! Ashley and I will both be posting our own reviews at the end of the month too, so don’t worry, you’ll have more than just our ramblings throughout the month to help you decide if you’d like to add The Raven Boys to your to-read list!