Waiting to Read Wednesday: Happily Never After / A Great Country / How to Solve Your Own Murder / The Great Zoo of China

The New

Can't-Wait Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted by the marvelous Tressa at Wishful Endings to spotlight upcoming release we are excited about that we have yet to read.

Happily Never After by Lynn Painter
Release Date: March 12, 2024 by Berkley

Their name? The objectors.

Their job? To break off weddings as hired.

Their dilemma? They might just be in love with each other.

When Sophie Steinbeck finds out just before her nuptials that her fiancé has cheated yet again, she desperately wants to call it off. But because her future father-in-law is her dad’s cutthroat boss, she doesn’t want to be the one to do it. Her savior comes in the form of a professional objector, whose purpose is to show up at weddings and proclaim the words no couple (usually) wants to hear at their ceremony: “I object!”

During anti-wedding festivities that night, Sophie learns more about Max the Objector’s job. It makes perfect sense to her: he saves people from wasting their lives, from hurting each other. He’s a modern-day hero. And Sophie wants in.

The two love cynics start working together, going from wedding to wedding, and Sophie’s having more fun than she’s had in ages. She looks forward to every nerve-racking ceremony saving the lovesick souls of the betrothed masses. As Sophie and Max spend more time together, however, they realize that their physical chemistry is off the charts, leading them to dabble in a little hookup session or two—but it’s totally fine, because they definitely do not have feelings for each other. Love doesn’t exist, after all.

And then everything changes. A groom-to-be hires Sophie to object, but his fiancée is the woman who broke Max’s heart. As Max wrestles with whether he can be a party to his ex’s getting hurt, Sophie grapples with the sudden realization that she may have fallen hard for her partner in crime. [Goodreads Summary]

Are wedding objectors for hire a real thing? I don't know, but I imagine this will be a fun rom-com!

A Great Country by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
Release Date: March 26, 2024 by Mariner Books

From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel in the tradition of Celeste Ng's Little Fires Everywhere, exploring the ties and fractures of a close-knit Indian-American family in the aftermath of a violent encounter with the police.

Pacific Hills, California: Gated communities, ocean views, well-tended lawns, serene pools, and now the new home of the Shah family. For the Shah parents, who came to America twenty years earlier with little more than an education and their new marriage, this move represents the culmination of years of hard work and dreaming. For their children, born and raised in America, success is not so simple.

For the most part, these differences among the five members of the Shah family are minor irritants, arguments between parents and children, older and younger siblings. But one Saturday night, the twelve-year-old son is arrested. The fallout from that event will shake each family member's perception of themselves as individuals, as community members, as Americans, and will lead each to consider: how do we define success? At what cost comes ambition? And what is our role and responsibility in the cultural mosaic of modern America?

For readers of The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, A Great Country explores themes of immigration, generational conflict, social class and privilege as it reconsiders the myth of the model minority and questions the price of the American dream. [Goodreads Summary]

This book encompasses many themes I am drawn too--generational conflict and immigration themes among them. I imagine this will be an emotional read for me, and a book I look forward to immersing myself in. 

How to Solve Your Own Murder (Castle Knoll Files #1) by Kristen Perrin

Release Date: March 26, 2024 by Dutton  

For fans of Knives Out and The Thursday Murder Club, an enormously fun mystery about a woman who spends her entire life trying to prevent her foretold murder only to be proven right sixty years later, when she is found dead in her sprawling country estate... Now it's up to her great-niece to catch the killer.

It’s 1965 and teenage Frances Adams is at an English country fair with her two best friends. But Frances’s night takes a hairpin turn when a fortune-teller makes a bone-chilling prediction: One day, Frances will be murdered. Frances spends a lifetime trying to solve a crime that hasn’t happened yet, compiling dirt on every person who crosses her path in an effort to prevent her own demise. For decades, no one takes Frances seriously, until nearly sixty years later, when Frances is found murdered, like she always said she would be.

In the present day, Annie Adams has been summoned to a meeting at the sprawling country estate of her wealthy and reclusive great-aunt Frances. But by the time Annie arrives in the quaint English village of Castle Knoll, Frances is already dead. Annie is determined to catch the killer, but thanks to Frances’s lifelong habit of digging up secrets and lies, it seems every endearing and eccentric villager might just have a motive for her murder. Can Annie safely unravel the dark mystery at the heart of Castle Knoll, or will dredging up the past throw her into the path of a killer?

As Annie gets closer to the truth, and closer to the danger, she starts to fear she might inherit her aunt’s fate instead of her fortune. [Goodreads Summary]

The title alone was enough to catch my attention, but the synopsis is what is luring me in. It sounds like Frances made a lot of enemies in her attempt to find her future-murderer. I look forward to finding out where this mystery takes me. 

Do any of these books interest you? What upcoming releases are you looking forward to reading?

The Old(er) 

Carole of Carole's Random Life in Books has given me the perfect excuse to spotlight those unread books on my TBR in her Books from the Backlog feature, reminding me what great books I have waiting for me under my own roof still to read!

In January of 2016, I started participating in Michelle's (of Because Reading) TBR List Poll. At the beginning of each month, I list three books from my TBR shelves for you to vote on and I read whichever book wins. Although Michelle no longer runs the feature, I still put up a monthly poll. I need all the help I can get in choosing what book to read next sometimes! Regardless of which book wins, they are all books I want to read. It's just a matter of which ones I get to sooner. Some months I read all three! Most of the time though, I only get to the winner and the remaining two end up back on my TBR to wait their turn. Today I am featuring a book from that very first poll I posted on my blog--that didn't win. Today I am featuring the 2nd place winner, The Great Zoo of China. This one has Jurassic Park written all over it.  But set in China. It sounds like it could be exciting. And scary. Perhaps this will be the year I finally read it!

The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly (Gallery Books, 2014)

It is a secret the Chinese government has been keeping for forty years.

They have found a species of animal no one believed even existed. It will amaze the world.

Now the Chinese are ready to unveil their astonishing discovery within the greatest zoo ever constructed.

A small group of VIPs and journalists has been brought to the zoo deep within China to see its fabulous creatures for the first time.

Among them is Dr Cassandra Jane ‘CJ’ Cameron, a writer for National Geographic and an expert on reptiles.

The visitors are assured by their Chinese hosts that they will be struck with wonder at these beasts, that they are perfectly safe, and that nothing can go wrong.

Of course it can’t…

GET READY FOR ACTION ON A GIGANTIC SCALE. [Goodreads Summary]

Have you read The Great Zoo of China?  Does this book sound like something you would like to read? 

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