Others: Positive Dylan was six when The End came, back in 2018; when the electricity went off for good, and the ‘normal’ 21st-century world he knew disappeared. Now he’s 14 and he and his mam have survived in their isolated hilltop house above the village of Nebo in north-west Wales, learning new skills, and returning to old ways of living. Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories win a found notebook – the Blue Book of Nebo.
Genres: science fiction, literary fiction, young adult
Lists: …
Kate Beaton
2016 · 40 pages · 1 review
Others: NegativeAll hail King Baby! He greets his adoring public with giggles and wiggles and coos, posing for photos and allowing hugs and kisses. But this royal ruler also has many demands, and when his subjects can't quite keep up, King Baby takes matters into his own tiny hands.
What made the match, strongest first
Olivie Blake
2020 · 380 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Leaning positiveCHICAGO, SOMETIME— Two people meet in the Art Institute by chance. Prior to their encounter, he is a doctoral student who manages his destructive thoughts with compulsive calculations about time travel; she is a bipolar counterfeit artist, undergoing court-ordered psychotherapy. By the end of the story, these things will still be true. But this is not a story about endings.For Regan, people are predictable and tedious, including and perhaps especially herself. She copes with the dreariness of existence by living impulsively, imagining a new, alternate timeline being created in the wake of every rash decision.To Aldo, the world feels disturbingly chaotic. He gets through his days by erecting a wall of routine: a backbeat of rules and formulas that keep him going. Without them, the entire framework of his existence would collapse. For Regan and Aldo, life has been a matter of resigning themselves to the blueprints of inevitability—until the two meet. Could six conversations with a stranger be the variable that shakes up the entire simulation? From Olivie Blake, the New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six, comes an intimate and contemporary study of time, space, and the nature of love. Alone with You in the Ether explores what it means to be unwell, and how to face the fractures of yourself and still love as if you're not broken.
What made the match, strongest first
Octavia E. Butler
1979 · 287 pages · 24 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveDana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.
What made the match, strongest first
Ingvild H. Rishøi
2021 · 1 review
Others: PositiveBrightly Shining is a 'heartbreaking, funny and philosophical tale about the reality of addiction, the power of dreams and the kindness of strangers'. Christmas is around the corner, and Ronja's father is out of work again, but it seems that their luck has turned when she gets him a job selling Christmas trees. But the local pub has a stronger pull on him than his family's wellbeing, and in order to keep social services at bay, Ronja and her sister are forced to fend for themselves. If he won't sell Christmas trees, they will do it for him.
What made the match, strongest first
Tal Bauer
2023 · 7 reviews
Others: PositiveLet me earn it. I keep things simple. I’m a classic one-night wonder. Relationships? Are you out of your mind? No. No way. Not interested. My heart is vulcanized rubber, puck hard, and that’s the way I like it. Then I'm traded to the absolute worst team in the NHL, the Rocky Mountain Outlaws, and I’m hit with a one-two punch. First: I’m asked to step up and lead the team, which is every kind of bad idea you can imagine. I'm a head-down, mind-my-business kind of guy. Mr. Uninvolved, Mr. No, Not Me, Mr. Find Someone Else. But these players have been through a mess of hell, and someone thinks I can help pull them together. The Outlaws are made up of jaded veterans and wide-eyed rookies, and we have no business whatsoever succeeding. We are scrappy and plucky and built out of spit and duct-tape… and whatever we’re doing, it’s working. Second: The first day I’m in Boulder, I go over the boards and come face-to-face with a pair of blue eyes and lose my heart. Boy, howdy: meet my new co-captain, Shea Darling. He’s way, way off-limits. It's a stratospherically terrible idea to want or crave him. This crush, this infatuation, is going nowhere fast. Yeah, right. I’m gone for Shea. I’m head over heels, and I’m all tangled up in something I can’t understand or control. This isn’t me. I don’t fall in love. And there’s nothing simple about Shea, or about the Outlaws. This team is finally putting up the wins, and we are making something of ourselves. Falling for my co-captain while we’re on a Cinderella run could jeopardize everything we’re striving for. But then there’s this one night. And this one kiss. And everything changes. Eighty-two games in a season. Twenty men hungry for redemption. One co-captain who could be my forever. This is the rest of the story. ***** The Rest of the Story is a friends-to-lovers, hockey players/teammates MM romance, and includes themes of survivorship. The Rest of the Story is set in the same universe as Gravity, but each novel can be read independently. You do not need to read Gravity first to enjoy The Rest of the Story.
What made the match, strongest first
Paul Lynch
2023 · 259 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveOn a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist. Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind? The winner of the Booker Prize 2023 and a critically acclaimed national bestseller, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itI would put Forbidden on my list, which I would not recommend, and then The Blue Book of Nebo, which I would recommend, and then also We Spread and Black Girl Unlimited are two books that have made me cry more so than most other things.
