HOW IT WORKS:
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme that began with Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman and has been hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best since 2016. Each month a new book is chosen a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Links can be formed in any way you want, including authors, themes, keywords, and pretty much anything.

Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the Linky section (or comments) of each month’s post. If you don’t have a blog, you can share your chain in the comments section. You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees

STARTING BOOK: Second Place by Rachel Cusk

BLURB: A woman invites a famed artist to visit the remote coastal region where she lives, in the belief that his vision will penetrate the mystery of her life and landscape. His provocative presence provides the frame for a study of female fate and male privilege, of the geometries of human relationships, and of the struggle to live morally in the intersecting spaces of our internal and external worlds.

I haven’t read the book. I think that may end up how I begin most of these posts. Hahaha…Since I haven’t read it, I’m using coastal regions and water-related locations for this set of links.

---

1. In Spirit Bound, Judith Henderson is an artist who has relocated to the coastal town of Sea Haven to escape her past but an undercover agent seeks her out because of her connections to a criminal. This was the first book I thought of as soon as I saw coastal region and artist. It took me a while to finish the book, I stopped reading it for a couple of months because of the instalove and only recently finished it at the end of July. It did end up being better than I thought it would be.

2. The Summer of Broken Rules is on the other end of the spectrum. I enjoyed this book so much and finished it within a day. The book takes place at Martha’s Vineyard, an island south of Cape Cod in Massachusetts. Here, Meredith Fox seeks distraction from her sister’s death and also an unexpected breakup with her boyfriend. She puts extra effort into playing Assassin and also starts to develop feelings for a groomsman. This was such a fun distraction and helped me get ready for summer. (My Review)

3. Stacey Lee has quickly become one of my favorite authors. She’s pretty much an auto read author at this point. The Secret of a Heart Note is different from her other novels with a contemporary setting and a dose of magical realism. Mimosa is an aroma expert who uses her sense of smell to create elixirs that help people fall in love. When she accidentally gives the elixir to the wrong person, she has to work with the woman’s son to help find the scents to reverse its effects. The beach ends up being rather important for several reasons, but I won’t expose them here. It was a fun read.

4. I read Heart Bones after a fellow blogger recommended it and it also takes place on a beach. Beyah moves in with her father after her mother dies. She spends her summer before college in a beach house with a new stepsister and stepmother and falls in love with a boy who comes from a wealthy family. The book was more intense than I thought it would be and the ending felt somewhat unrealistic. It was good, but I’m not sure if I’m prepared to read more by Hoover.

5. Continuing with the water-related theme leads me to Fable. After Fable’s mother dies, her father leaves her to fend for herself on an island and promises to return for her once she turns eighteen. When he doesn’t show, she goes in search of him instead. It’s a page turner as Fable tries to figure out whether she has a place beside her father. It does end on a cliffhanger so please have the sequel handy. This novel convinced me that I needed to read Young’s other novels. A new novel in the same world is coming soon!

6. Speaking of islands…First in the Drowning Empire trilogy, The Bone Shard Daughter was one of the first ARCs I ever got to read and remains one of my favorite reads of 2020. The book takes place on a set of islands. There are multiple points of view with Lin the emperor’s daughter set to be the main protagonist. The emperor has her competing with her foster brother for the throne while in another part of the empire, Jovis, a smuggler, is looking for his abducted wife. They’re both interesting and all but the book really belongs to Mephi, a sea creature rescued by Jovis. (My Review)

ENDING BOOK: The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

It was a bit more difficult to this month since I was not familiar with the beginning book or the author, so I began with the first thing that came to mind.

This was a reminder why I find blogging helpful. It was easy to remind myself what the books were about since I wrote reviews for some. For those I didn’t, it was a lot more difficult to remember what happened. It was also interesting to see how my reviews have changed throughout my year of blogging.

Until next time!

Next month: The Lottery by Shirley Jackson