#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!

Hi everyone,

It’s time for the weekly bookish meme #5OnMyTBR. This week we’re looking at books written in an unconventional format, whether that be letters, emails, video extracts, interviews, verse, and so on and so forth. This theme has resulted in quite a variety of genres and styles in my below list, so hopefully there’s something for everyone!

Devolution by Max Brooks

I JUST got approved for this one on NetGalley, and think it’s going to be my next read as it comes out in just a few weeks! This is a new horror book from the author behind World War Z (I haven’t read that book, just watched the film, but it was terrifying!!) Devolution is all about the Bigfoot legend, told through interviews and the journals of a now assumed dead resident who lived in a town where there was an unexplained massacre.

Please Don’t Hug Me by Kay Kerr

Going from adult horror to YA contemporary makes total sense! Please Don’t Hug Me is a book that released at the end of April, and is told entirely through letters. With own voices autism rep, Please Don’t Hug Me follows Erin who, on the cusp of adulthood, is struggling to make sense of the world and who she is. Erin misses her brother who left a year ago so starts writing letters to him, and finds that writing helps her make sense of everything.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

And now we spring to adult literary fiction. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous has had a lot of talk and buzz, and I can’t wait to read it when my copy arrives (come on, Australia Post! You can do it!) It is described as a letter from son to a mother who cannot read, about his life as a Vietnamese-American boy growing up in the US. It goes into a lot of discussion about war, intergenerational trauma, and immigration and with Vuong’s background as a poet, will likely prove to be highly emotional.

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Elizabeth Acevedo is known for her verse novels so I definitely had to include her on this week’s list! Her most recent novel, Clap When You Land, published a few weeks ago at the start of May. It’s about two half sisters who didn’t know the other existed but find out when their father dies, and is of course written fully in verse.

Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight

Okay I know I had this book on a list a few weeks ago, but it sounds amazing and also fits perfectly with this week’s theme so I had to mention it again! Hex is about an expelled PhD candidate who studies antidotes and poisons. She becomes obsessed with her mentor, Joan, and begins documenting her research in notebooks devoted to Joan. The book is told through these notebooks, and slowly evolve to tell a story of love and obsession. Dark, sciencey and sapphic is literally all needed to sell this to me.

That’s it for this week’s list! One of my favourite books is told in an unconvetional format (Into the Drowning Deep) so I have high hopes for these books. Have you read any of these? What did you think of them? Let me know in the comments.