Telling Tales | The Birthday Money Haul

So, July is my birthday month, and usually I receive some money from my family to use however I see fit. Needless to say, I bought just a few books with it.

Good Girls Die First | Kathryn Foxfield

Goodreads Rating: 3.48
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Paranormal
Summary: Mind games. Murder. Mayhem. How far would you go to survive the night?
Blackmail lures sixteen-year-old Ava to the derelict carnival on Portgrave Pier. She is one of ten teenagers, all with secrets they intend to protect whatever the cost. When fog and magic swallow the pier, the group find themselves cut off from the real world and from their morals. As the teenagers turn on each other, Ava will have to face up to the secret that brought her to the pier and decide how far she’s willing to go to survive.

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Coraline | Neil Gaiman

Goodreads Rating: 4.05
Genre: Fantasy Horror, Young Adult, Fiction, Childrens
Summary: There is something strange about Coraline’s new home. It’s not the mist, or the cat that always seems to be watching her, nor the signs of danger that Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, her new neighbours, read in the tea leaves. It’s the other house – the one behind the old door in the drawing room. Another mother and father with black-button eyes and papery skin are waiting for Coraline to join them there. And they want her to stay with them. For ever. She knows that if she ventures through that door, she may never come back. 

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The Strings of Murder | Oscar de Muriel

Goodreads Rating: 3.92
Genre: Mystery, Historical, Historical Fiction, Thriller, Fiction
Summary: Edinburgh, 1888. A virtuoso violinist is brutally killed in his home. Black magic symbols cover the walls. The dead man’s maid swears she heard three musicians playing before the murder.
But with no way in or out of the locked practice room, the puzzle makes no sense…
Fearing a national panic over a copycat Ripper, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Frey to investigate under the cover of a fake department specializing in the occult. However, Frey’s new boss – Detective ‘Nine-Nails’ McGray – actually believes in such nonsense.
McGray’s tragic past has driven him to superstition, but even Frey must admit that this case seems beyond reason. And once someone loses all reason, who knows what they will lose next…

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Vicious | V.E. Schwab

Goodreads Rating: 4.20
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction, Adult, Paranormal
Summary: Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.
Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will. Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

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Vengeful | V.E. Schwab

Goodreads Rating: 4.21
Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fiction, Adult, Paranormal
Summary: Magneto and Professor X. Superman and Lex Luthor. Victor Vale and Eli Ever. Sydney and Serena Clarke. Great partnerships, now soured on the vine.
But Marcella Riggins needs no one. Flush from her brush with death, she’s finally gained the control she’s always sought—and will use her newfound power to bring the city of Merit to its knees. She’ll do whatever it takes, collecting her own sidekicks, and leveraging the two most infamous EOs, Victor Vale and Eli Ever, against each other once more.
With Marcella’s rise, new enmities create opportunity—and the stage of Merit City will once again be set for a final, terrible reckoning.

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It’s Behind You | Kathryn Foxfield

Goodreads Rating: 4.57
Genre: Thriller, Young Adult, Fiction, Horror
Summary: Welcome to the reality game show that’ll scare you to death! Have you got what it takes to last the night?
Five contestants must sit tight through the night in dark and dangerous Umber Gorge caves, haunted by a ghost called the Puckered Maiden. But is it the malevolent spirit they should fear … or each other?
As the production crew ramps up the frights, secrets start to be revealed. These teenagers have hidden motives for taking part in It’s Behind You! and could some of them be … murder?

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The Things We Don’t See | Savannah Brown

Goodreads Rating: 4.10
Genre: Mystery, Young Adult, Fiction, LGBT, Contemporary, Thriller
Summary: To everyone else, it’s a minuscule island, that brings tourists in summer and not a lot else the rest of the time.
To Mona Perry, it’s a mystery.
Thirty-four years ago, promising singer and Sandown resident Roxy Raines went missing, and was never found. The people of the island are still reluctant to talk about it, claiming Roxy was simply a runaway, but the evidence doesn’t quite add up.
Mona is convinced something else is going on. Armed only with a suitcase and a microphone – to record her findings for the general public – this runaway teenager is determined to get to the bottom of the disappearance.
But as Mona gets drawn deeper and deeper into the strange goings on of this isolated community, it is clear that nothing is as it seems – not even Mona’s own past.

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Ace of Spades | Farisah Abike-Iyimide

Goodreads Rating: 4.44
Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, LGBT, Thriller, Mystery, Contemporary
Summary: Welcome to Niveus Private Academy, where money paves the hallways, and the students are never less than perfect. Until now. Because anonymous texter, Aces, is bringing two students’ dark secrets to light.
Talented musician Devon buries himself in rehearsals, but he can’t escape the spotlight when his private photos go public. Head girl Chiamaka isn’t afraid to get what she wants, but soon everyone will know the price she has paid for power.
Someone is out to get them both. Someone who holds all the aces. And they’re planning much more than a high-school game… 

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