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Future Favorites Friday October 19


I take the 2nd Friday of every month to highlight some upcoming releases I am looking forward to that I hope are Future Favorites. Feel free to do your own post, just please link back to my blog and tell me about your post in the comments.

How I feel about "Beauty and the Beast" has been long established on this blog. At this point, it should also be pretty clear I'm quite the fan of Sandhya Menon. And now those two things are coming together. In one book.

Will the princess save the beast?

For Princess Jaya Rao, nothing is more important than family. When the loathsome Emerson clan steps up their centuries-old feud to target Jaya’s little sister, nothing will keep Jaya from exacting her revenge. Then Jaya finds out she’ll be attending the same elite boarding school as Grey Emerson, and it feels like the opportunity of a lifetime. She knows what she must do: Make Grey fall in love with her and break his heart. But much to Jaya’s annoyance, Grey’s brooding demeanor and lupine blue eyes have drawn her in. There’s simply no way she and her sworn enemy could find their fairy-tale ending…right?

His Lordship Grey Emerson is a misanthrope. Thanks to an ancient curse by a Rao matriarch, Grey knows he’s doomed once he turns eighteen. Sequestered away in the mountains at St. Rosetta’s International Academy, he’s lived an isolated existence—until Jaya Rao bursts into his life, but he can't shake the feeling that she’s hiding something. Something that might just have to do with the rose-shaped ruby pendant around her neck…

As the stars conspire to keep them apart, Jaya and Grey grapple with questions of love, loyalty, and whether it’s possible to write your own happy ending
Rebecca Stead has written some of my favorite (and some of the most profound) MG books I've read. I'm really looking forward to her new one. I love the concept of the title and where it comes from so much.

Release Date: February 18, 2020 from Simon Pulse


When Bea's parents got divorced, they told her about two big changes: Dad is gay. Mom and Dad will have different apartments, each with a room for Bea. They also gave her a special notebook to record the list of things that will not change. The first and most important: Mom and Dad will always love Bea, and each other. They are still a family, just different. Bea's days are split between her parents; school remains the same. She still goes to Dad's family's lake house every summer. Only now, no one mentions Mom.

Then, Dad announces that he and his boyfriend Jesse are getting married. Bea is thrilled. She loves Jesse--and he has a daughter her age, Sonia. Bea has never met her, but she's sure that she and Sonia will be the perfect sisters. Behind her joy, though, something she did last summer is haunting Bea.

This warm story is a testament to a modern family, and to the kind of love that doesn't ask you to be anyone but who you are.

Release Date: April 7, 2020 from Wendy Lamb Books

Jane Austen. Enough said. Though I will add that this is not about retelling her work as it is about her legacy. 


The Jane Austen Society is set at the end of WWII in the English town of Chawton, where Austen actually lived. The story follows an unlikely group of locals - from a farmer to the village doctor, the local gentry to a visiting Hollywood movie star - who come together out of their mutual passion for Austen’s work to preserve what remains of Austen’s legacy.

Release Date: May 28, 2020 by St. Martin's Press

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