New month, new books! Let me know which books you’re most excited to read this month in the comments below!

November 3

“The Girl Who Wasn’t There” – Penny Joelson

Sourcebooks Fire

I know what I saw.

Nothing ever happens on Kasia’s street. And Kasia would know. Her illness keeps her home for days at a time, with little to do but watch the world from her bedroom window. So when she witnesses what looks like a kidnapping, she’s not sure she can believe her own eyes…

So she sets out to find the only other witness. The girl in the window across the street. The girl who was also watching when things went down.

But what Kasia discovers shocks her more than the kidnapping itself.

There is no girl.

November 5

“Date Me Like You Mean It” – R.S. Grey

*ARC Review coming soon

I’m good at hiding my feelings.
Having to pretend I’m not in love with my best friend?
Pfft. That’s child’s play.

Here’s how I do it: I avert my eyes when he walks out of his room, shirtless in all his toned glory. I squash the butterflies that fill my stomach every time he slowly unfurls a dimpled smile. And, most importantly, I keep an arsenal of “personal massagers” in my bedside drawer. Wink.

Not to brag, but Aiden Smith isn’t hard to resist if you’ve been doing it for as long as I have. In fact, we might have continued as best friends forever if not for the fact that I needed him to play the part of my fake boyfriend.

Date me like you mean it, I told him. Nudge nudge. C’mon, just go along with a little lie, help a girl out, and then we can all return to life as we know it.

Except he veered from the plan.

He crossed the line.

Flirting with me when no one else was around? Pinning me down and kissing me like that? Okay, how exactly is taking off my bra part of the ruse, Aiden?!
I’d ask him about it if I could, but well…things got ugly and we’re not best friends anymore.

In fact, we’re the exact opposite.

Now, I have to play nice even though I want to crush his heart in the palm of my hand.

Pretending not to love Aiden was the easy part.
Pretending not to hate him?
Well…I might need a little more practice.

November 6

“Read My Mind” – Natasha Preston (The One #3)

*ARC review coming soon

The pursuit of happiness is never easy when the person you love already has a significant other. Someone who isn’t you.

Mila, desperate for passion in any way she can get it, is back with her boyfriend Liam, despite everyone knowing they’re wrong for each other. Epic loves can’t be forced, but Mila would rather be with someone than no one at all.

Reid, her sexy neighbour, has been in love with Mila for years. If only she knew that, behind this editor’s brooding stare, was a man who could be everything she needed in her life. Unfortunately, for a man who plays with words for a living, he seems incapable of stringing a sentence together to tell Mila how he really feels.

When the two are finally thrown together, and fate lends a hand, entwining their lives in a way that forces them to face their true feelings for each other, Reid finally has his chance to make her see him.

It’s just a shame Mila is already taken…

Reid is running out of time to leave more than just a red pen mark on her heart.

“Warning Track” By: Carrie Aarons

*ARC review coming soon

Colleen Callahan is exactly where she’s always dreamt of being.

From a young age, she’s been groomed to take over as general manager of the Packton Pistons, her family’s professional baseball dynasty. Except she never expected her father would have to go to prison for the role to become hers.

The public, and even her own family, are counting on the first female to wear the title to fail. Hoping to wipe the slate clean and clear the club’s name, Colleen vows to put her job above everything else. Friends, a social life, her well-being, and most of all, love.

Until she meets the team’s new star player. Their chemistry is instant, igniting the stadium and her heart. But the last thing she needs is a distraction, much less a surly God of the clay diamond who seems to despise her.

Fate has other plans, though. If they’re found out, it could mean the end of both of their careers. Except hurtling so close to the danger zone has never felt more right.

Hayes Swindell would prefer hell over the place he ended up.

After a series of bribes and blackmail gone bad, the league’s most desirable veteran superstar finds himself playing on a team that he wants no part of. The family who runs this dynasty is corrupt, and he’s spent his career avoiding limelight exactly like this.

With a chip on his shoulder and the intention to hightail it out of Pennsylvania as soon as his one-year contract is up, he has no plans to fall for the very woman he should stay away from.

In his ten years in the league, he’s never once gotten bit by the love bug. But the moment he lays eyes on her, Hayes can see his days are numbered. When the forbidden happens, he has a decision to make.

Should they head for disaster together, risking it all, or course-correct and save themselves the ultimate price of heartbreak and scandal?

November 10

“Those Who Prey” – Jennifer Moffett

Atheneum

Sadie meets The Girls in this riveting debut psychological thriller about a lonely college freshman seduced into joining a cult—and her desperate attempt to escape before it’s too late. 

College life isn’t what Emily expected.

She expected to spend freshman year strolling through the ivy-covered campus with new friends, finally feeling like she belonged. Instead, she walks the campus alone, still not having found her place or her people so far away from home.

But then the Kingdom finds her.

The Kingdom, an exclusive on-campus group, offers everything Emily expected out of college and more: acceptance, friends, a potential boyfriend, and a chance to spend the summer on a mission trip to Italy. But the trip is not what she thought it would be. Emily and the others are stripped of their passports and money. They’re cut off from their families back home. The Kingdom’s practices become increasingly manipulative and dangerous…

And someone ends up dead.

“Rent A Boyfriend” – Gloria Chao

Simon Pulse

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets The Farewell in this incisive romantic comedy about a college student who hires a fake boyfriend to appease her traditional Taiwanese parents, to disastrous results, from the acclaimed author of American Panda.

Chloe Wang is nervous to introduce her parents to her boyfriend, because the truth is, she hasn’t met him yet either. She hired him from Rent for Your ’Rents, a company specializing in providing fake boyfriends trained to impress even the most traditional Asian parents.

Drew Chan’s passion is art, but after his parents cut him off for dropping out of college to pursue his dreams, he became a Rent for Your ’Rents employee to keep a roof over his head. Luckily, learning protocols like “Type C parents prefer quiet, kind, zero-PDA gestures” comes naturally to him.

When Chloe rents Drew, the mission is simple: convince her parents fake Drew is worthy of their approval so they’ll stop pressuring her to accept a proposal from Hongbo, the wealthiest (and slimiest) young bachelor in their tight-knit Asian American community.

But when Chloe starts to fall for the real Drew—who, unlike his fake persona, is definitely not ’rent-worthy—her carefully curated life begins to unravel. Can she figure out what she wants before she loses everything?

“Lies Like Poison” – Chelsea Pitcher

Margaret K. McElderry Books

Riverdale meets Kara Thomas’s The Cheerleaders in this electrifying, twisted thriller about estranged friends who reunite when someone commits the murder they’d planned—but didn’t go through with—and leaves one of their own to take the fall.

Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. So when they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her evening tea so she’d never be able to hurt Raven again. But someone got cold feet, the plot faded to a secret of the past, and the group fell apart.

Three years later, on the eve of Raven’s seventeenth birthday, his stepmother turns up dead. But it’s only belladonna found in her tea, and it’s only Belladonna who’s carted off to jail. Desperate for help, Belle reaches out to her estranged friends to prove her innocence. They answer the call, but no one is prepared for what comes next.

Now, everyone has something to lose and something equally dangerous to hide. And when the tangled web of secrets and betrayal is finally unwound, what lies at its heart will change the group forever.

November 17

“These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights #1) – Chloe Gong

Simon Pulse

Perfect for fans of The Last Magician and Descendant of the Crane, this heart-stopping debut is an imaginative Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai, with rival gangs and a monster in the depths of the Huangpu River.

The year is 1926, and Shanghai hums to the tune of debauchery.

A blood feud between two gangs runs the streets red, leaving the city helpless in the grip of chaos. At the heart of it all is eighteen-year-old Juliette Cai, a former flapper who has returned to assume her role as the proud heir of the Scarlet Gang—a network of criminals far above the law. Their only rivals in power are the White Flowers, who have fought the Scarlets for generations. And behind every move is their heir, Roma Montagov, Juliette’s first love…and first betrayal.

But when gangsters on both sides show signs of instability culminating in clawing their own throats out, the people start to whisper. Of a contagion, a madness. Of a monster in the shadows. As the deaths stack up, Juliette and Roma must set their guns—and grudges—aside and work together, for if they can’t stop this mayhem, then there will be no city left for either to rule.

Which book are you most excited to read this month? Let me know in the comments below!