Top 5 Wednesdays: Latin Lit (Coming in 2021)

I did a 7 On Sunday post a couple of months ago featuring some Latinx books that were on my TBR, and I wish I’d kept my notes of the names of some of the other books! I remember being surprised last time to realize how many books by Latinx authors I had on my TBR already. It is not something that I specifically look for. I decided to go in a bit of a different direction with this week’s prompt, and focus on upcoming books by Latinx authors that I’m looking forward to trying.

Top 5 Wednesday is a meme created by Gingerreadslainey on Youtube, and is now hosted by Sam at ThoughtsOnTomes. The official GoodReads group with the weekly topics can be found here.

1) Infinity Reaper by Adam Silvera (March 2)

Infinity Son was one of my most anticipated books this year, but it seems unlikely at this point that I’ll be able to read it before the end of December! I was still very excited to see the next book in the series was due out in March, although I’ve purposely avoided looking at the synopsis in too much detail in case of any spoilers. From what I do know, the series is about two brothers, Emil and Brighton, who live in a world that contains celestials with a variety of powers, including the vigilante group known as the Spell Walkers whose goal is to protect everyone from the specters who steal their powers. Brighton has always wanted to be a part of the fight, while Emil wishes the cycle of violence would just stop. I’ve seen quite mixed reviews for the first book so far, but I’m still very excited to try it. I’m most likely going to put it off until next year so I can read both of these together, although the third book won’t be out until 2022!

2) The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore (March 16)

I expect this will be a book that I’ll be mentioning a lot in the next couple of months, since it’s very high on my list to pick up next year, especially since I am currently reading and loving Dark & Deepest Red. This book is their newest release due out early next year, and it focuses on two teenagers who both discover that they were sexually assaulted the same party, and they begin to develop a friendship as they work through what happened. After the party, Graciela loses her ability to make enchanted pan dulce and begins to find strange shards of mirrored glass. Lock has no memory of what happened that night or how the glass is affecting him, so Ciela decides to help him while keeping the truth about that night a secret to ensure both of their survival. I’d been a bit nervous to pick up any more books by this author since magical realism doesn’t always work for me, but I love Anna-Marie McLemore’s writing style and I’m very interested to give this one a try.

3) Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas (March 23)

This is the upcoming new book by the author of Cemetery Boys, a book that I’ve been hearing about non-stop for months now! This one is a Peter Pan retelling, set in a town called Astoria five years after Wendy and her brothers went missing in the woods. She returned safely, but her brothers were never seen again. When more of the town’s children begin to disappear, questions arise about Wendy’s brothers and while attempting to flee, she almost runs over a boy lying in the road. The boy, Peter, claims that other children will meet the same fate as her brothers if Wendy doesn’t do something, but in order to rescue the children, she must finally confront what’s been waiting for her in the woods. To be honest, I knew absolutely nothing about this book until just now, even though it has apparently been on my TBR since April 2019. I suspect I’d added it in the first place on author name alone, even though I still haven’t read Cemetery Boys either. Now that I’ve seen the synopsis though, it’s even more intriguing!

4) The Mary Shelley Club by Goldy Moldavsky (April 13)

I didn’t realize that this book was by an Latinx author until I looked up a list of upcoming Latinx releases for 2021, and I discovered that this author is Peruvian. I think I added this one to my TBR originally after looking for more YA thrillers, but the title also drew me in since I love Frankenstein. This book is about a girl named Rachel Chavez who is excited for a fresh start at her new prep school, but struggles to fit in since she is one of the scholarship kids. Things get even worse when she gets caught up in a prank that goes wrong, but she is surprised when this prank brings the attention of the Mary Shelley Club, a group of students whose goal is to come up with the scariest prank possible to elicit real fear. As the competition escalates and the club itself begins to be targeted, Rachel must find out who is behind it all, even if that means confronting the past she’s been trying to avoid. I love books that focus on dark academia and secret societies/clubs, and it sounds like this one might be up that alley. YA thrillers are always a bit hit-or-miss for me, but I’m definitely willing to try this.

5) Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee (May 4)

I’ve been following Emery Lee on Twitter for a while now, so I’m excited for her first book to finally come out next year, especially since I’ve seen it compared to Becky Albertalli, who is one of my favourite YA authors. This book is about a boy named Noah Ramirez, who runs a popular blog called The Meet Cute Diary, collecting stories of happily ever afters from trans contributors. When someone discovers that his blog is all stories that Noah made up himself and threatens to expose him, Noah scrambles to convince everyone that the stories are true. He soon meets Drew, who agrees to fake-date him to save the blog, and Noah quickly realizes that dating in real life is not the same as the stories he’s written. The list of tropes that Emery Lee herself listed for this book on Goodreads (in the review section) is enough to make me really want to pick this one up!

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