Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk:
On the heels of her Newbery Honor, Wolf Hollow, Wolk has created a richly atmospheric world in a cozy homemade beach shack along the northern Atlantic sea. Crow’s origins have always been mysterious, but now that she’s turned twelve, her mild curiosity about her past has swelled into a fiery yearning. As islanders and tourists comb over the smaller islands off the coast searching for treasure, Crow thinks one island may hold a secret about her birth parents. Wolk’s prose transports readers to the New England coast, complete with salty air on the tongue and wind whipping through hair. I don’t want this story to end!
–Kit
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon:
I bought this book as a Christmas gift for my mom, thinking it would fit nicely on her shelf next to her Nicholas Sparks books. However, this book is completely different and I’ve now claimed it as a Christmas gift for myself. The story follows Claire, a WWII-era nurse, who is reconnecting with her husband in a seemingly quiet, unhurried village in the Scottish Highlands. After witnessing a mysterious pagan ritual, Claire falls back 200 years to a place where the locals are suspicious of her. With her freedom threatened, she faces her biggest dilemma yet: choosing between the polished husband she left behind or the passionate Scot she’s found herself attached to.
–Kelsey
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie:
This week I decided to reread a book I remembered loving in high school, but didn’t quite remember the story of, which is something I’ve been doing quite a bit this year. And Then There Were None is classic mystery we all generally know at least the premise to, where ten people find themselves on an island, and one by one they all start to get murdered. The amazing thing about this book is that despite having read it before I genuinely don’t know who the murderer is. It may be a little out of touch in some ways, having been written in 1940, but it is still a fascinating read that I cannot put down, and I cannot wait to find out how exactly ten people are being murdered while they are the only ones on the island.
–Lojo
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