Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! And audiobooks. Don’t forget audiobooks!
In other words, if you can read it or if it can be read to you – no matter how you got it – it belongs in Stacking the Shelves.
The Stacking the Shelves meme was originally hosted at Team Tynga’s Reviews. It is currently hosted by Reading Reality.
Happy Saturday! I hope things are going well for you today. My weekend has been pretty unexciting so far, but we can always hope that the deer will show up for some evening entertainment.
I have three books to talk about this week, and all of them are ones that I am pretty excited about. Two of them are books that I think fit right into fall starting soon as they are both kind of dark and scary. I received one ARC this week for the second book in a cozy fantasy that will be perfect to curl up with on a chilling autumn evening.
Library books I have added to my bedside stack
Kiss Slay Replay by Rachel Harrison
It’s the picture-perfect wedding The venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air—and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends finally having the big wedding they’ve always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seen her ex-fiancé in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl, Willa is not.
Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question whether it was really a dream, déjà vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or else suffer a fate worse than death—being an eternal wedding guest.
I was kind of hoping this wouldn’t show up until closer to October, but oh well. I’m still looking forward to reading this one. I think mixing a time loop with horror is an excellent idea and I am excited to read this one.
ARCs I’ve added to my Netgalley account
The Shadows of Kensington Gore by Ross Montgomery
London, 1911. Coronation fever. Suffragette unrest. A city crackling with tension. When a policeman is found brutally murdered on the streets of Kensington, blame falls on the three women seen fleeing the scene. As riots flare and the city teeters on chaos, the case falls to the most unlikely detective duo in sharp-tongued octogenarian, Miss Decima Stockingham, and her loyal servant, Stephen Pike, who also happens to have been the first on the scene of the crime. Miss Decima, brilliant, fearless and bored of behaving herself, is the only one able to see that this case is not what it seems. Aided by an invisible network of maids—their eyes and ears in every house in London—this unlikely duo must catch the killer before time runs out. But in a city dazzled by ceremony and divided by change, you never know what might be lurking in the shadows… Your favorite duo return in this witty and gripping historical mystery, where Downton Abbey meets Sherlock.
I just adored the first book in this series, The Murder at World’s End, so I of course jumped at the chance to read the ARC for the next book in the series. This is coming out in January 2027.
Audiobooks
Tourist Season by Brynne Weaver
Welcome to Cape Carnage! Visit Once, Stay Forever.
You can hide in the farthest reaches of the deepest hell, and I will still drag you out. Even the devil can’t save you from me.
Cape Carnage is a seaside town of colourful houses, quirky shops, and an unusually high body count. But with tourists comes trouble, and Harper Starling won’t let anyone ruin her picture-perfect home. A skilled gardener with killer instincts, Harper protects her sanctuary at any cost – especially for her aging mentor with a fading memory. Troublesome tourists don’t check out of Carnage. They compost beneath Harper’s award-winning flowerbeds.
But Nolan Rhodes isn’t your average tourist. Devilishly handsome, disarmingly charming, and skilled with a blade, Nolan is relentless in the pursuit of revenge. On every anniversary of the hit-and-run accident that fractured his life, Nolan slays another target. And he’s saved the best for the undeniably beautiful Harper Starling. The problem? Harper isn’t the monster he expected. And she won’t go down without a fight.
When an amateur true crime investigator comes to Cape Carnage on the trail of a long-lost serial killer, Harper and Nolan strike an uneasy truce. If Nolan helps Harper protect her town, she’ll keep quiet about his hunting habits . . . for now. But their alliance soon spirals into obsession, one that threatens to shatter every secret in Carnage – including their fragile love.
Another one that I was waiting for spooky season to read, but oh well. Spooky reading is coming early this year I guess. I’ve been wanting to read this for awhile, so pretty excited to get started on it soon.
Well that is it for this week’s Stacking the Shelves. Looking forward to seeing what others have added to their stacks this week. Until next time…
Confessions of a Serial Reader 