Hello friends! I’m here today to talk to you about the books that I purchased throughout the month of May! I didn’t think that I picked up that much this month, but I did attend two events (TCAF & Anime North) where I did pick up some titles that I almost forgot about! Without further ado, here are the books that I picked up this month!
Physical + E-book Haul
Find You In The Dark by Nathan Ripley
Martin Reese has a hobby: he digs up murder victims. He buys stolen police files on serial killers, and uses them to find and dig up missing bodies. Calls in the results anonymously, taunting the police for their failure to do their job. Detective Sandra Whittal takes that a little personally. She’s suspicious of the mysterious caller, who she names the Finder. Maybe he’s the one leaving the bodies behind. If not, who’s to say he won’t start soon? As Whittal begins to zero in on the Finder, Martin makes a shocking discovery. It seems someone—someone lethal—is very unhappy about the bodies he’s been digging up. Hunted by a cop, hunted by a killer. To escape and keep his family safe, Martin may have to go deeper into the world of murder than he ever imagined.
Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi
For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind. Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him. When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.
The Backstagers Vol.2 by James Tynion IV
All the world’s a stage . . . but what happens behind the curtain is pure magic—literally! Jory and the rest of the Backstagers have one goal this semester: to put on the best show their town’s ever seen. But best laid plans aren’t easy to achieve when there’s an entire magical world that lives beyond the curtain! When one of the actors suddenly goes missing, the Backstagers must band together to save their comrade and maintain the natural balance of . . . theater.
Leah On The Offbeat by Becky Albertalli
Leah Burke—girl-band drummer, master of deadpan, and Simon Spier’s best friend from the award-winning Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda—takes center stage in this novel of first love and senior-year angst. When it comes to drumming, Leah Burke is usually on beat—but real life isn’t always so rhythmic. An anomaly in her friend group, she’s the only child of a young, single mom, and her life is decidedly less privileged. She loves to draw but is too self-conscious to show it. And even though her mom knows she’s bisexual, she hasn’t mustered the courage to tell her friends—not even her openly gay BFF, Simon. So Leah really doesn’t know what to do when her rock-solid friend group starts to fracture in unexpected ways. With prom and college on the horizon, tensions are running high. It’s hard for Leah to strike the right note while the people she loves are fighting—especially when she realizes she might love one of them more than she ever intended.
A Court Of Frost & Starlight by Sarah J. Mass
Feyre, Rhys, and their close-knit circle of friends are still busy rebuilding the Night Court and the vastly-changed world beyond. But Winter Solstice is finally near, and with it, a hard-earned reprieve. Yet even the festive atmosphere can’t keep the shadows of the past from looming. As Feyre navigates her first Winter Solstice as High Lady, she finds that those dearest to her have more wounds than she anticipated–scars that will have far-reaching impact on the future of their Court.
Girl Made Of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake
Mara and Owen are about as close as twins can get. So when Mara’s friend Hannah accuses Owen of rape, Mara doesn’t know what to think. Can the brother she loves really be guilty of such a violent crime? Torn between the family she loves and her own sense of right and wrong, Mara is feeling lost, and it doesn’t help that things have been strained with her ex-girlfriend and best friend since childhood, Charlie. As Mara, Hannah, and Charlie navigate this new terrain, Mara must face a trauma from her own past and decide where Charlie fits in her future. With sensitivity and openness, this timely novel confronts the difficult questions surrounding consent, victim blaming, and sexual assault.
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service: Omnibus 1 by Eiji Otsuka
‘Your body is their business! Five young students at a Buddhist university, three guys and two girls, find little call for their job skills in today’s Tokyo… among the living, that is! But all that stuff in college they were told would never pay off – you know, channeling, dowsing, ESP – gives them a direct line to the dead… the dead who are still trapped in their corpses and can’t move on to the next reincarnation. The five form the Kurosagi (“Black Heron” – their ominous bird logo) Corpse Delivery Service: whether suicide, murder, accident, or illness, they’ll carry your body wherever it needs to go to free your soul! The kids from Kurosagi can smell a customer a mile away – it’s a good thing one of the girls majored in embalming!
TCAF Book Haul
A few weekends ago, I had the pleasure of attending TCAF (The Toronto Comic Arts Festival) in Toronto! I picked up quite a few titles, most of them by Inio Asano who was a featured guest at the event! I absolutely loved Goodnight Punpun by him, so I was really excited to mett him and pick up some more of his work! You can read a full re-cap of my experience at TCAF here! For now, here are the books I picked up while I was there!
Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction Vol.1 by Inio Asano
It’s just an everyday apocalypse. Three years ago the aliens invaded Tokyo. Nothing was ever the same again. But after a while, even impending doom starts to feel ordinary. The Japanese Self Defense Forces are still looking for a way to combat the looming alien threat three years after the invasion, but so far conventional weapons have had no effect on the mothership. Maybe it’s time to try something unconventional. Meanwhile, Kadode Koyama is in high school. She and her best friend avidly track the aliens’ movements on social media and less enthusiastically study for college entrance exams. When the end of the world is overhead, you learn to take things one step at a time.
A Girl On The Shore by Inio Asano
When Koume and Keisuke’s relationship begins to take shape, it is apparent that they are both searching for something. Maybe Keisuke wants something more than a kiss from the fair Koume. Maybe Koume is looking for someone better than Misaki, the local playboy. But what they find in each other over the course of a summer might be far greater than anything they were expecting. Their lives are going to change. And this will all transpire before high school exams!
Solanin by Inio Asano
Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Naruo is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn’t pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she’s just not cut out to be a part of the real world.
Solanin: An Epilogue by Inio Asano
This epilogue was an exclusive at TCAF (The Toronto Comic Arts Festival) that I got for free for purchasing Solanin!
The Prince & The Dressmaker by Jen Wang
Paris, at the dawn of the modern age: Prince Sebastian is looking for a bride―or rather, his parents are looking for one for him. Sebastian is too busy hiding his secret life from everyone. At night he puts on daring dresses and takes Paris by storm as the fabulous Lady Crystallia―the hottest fashion icon in the world capital of fashion! Sebastian’s secret weapon (and best friend) is the brilliant dressmaker Frances―one of only two people who know the truth: sometimes this boy wears dresses. But Frances dreams of greatness, and being someone’s secret weapon means being a secret. Forever. How long can Frances defer her dreams to protect a friend? Jen Wang weaves an exuberantly romantic tale of identity, young love, art, and family. A fairy tale for any age, The Prince and the Dressmaker will steal your heart.
There you have it! All of the books that I picked up throughout the month of May! Turns out I got more than I thought I did, but I’m super excited to read each and every single one! What did you pick up this month?
Thank you for reading!
Big City Bookworm 
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