#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,

After spending most of this year struggling to reach my goal of 10 books a month, I’m somehow on my 8th book already and it’s only DAY 9 of November. I don’t know what has happened to my brain but I would like it to continue please. I’ve also almost got all my judging entries read for the British Fantasy Awards and hoping to get stuck into my entries for the Aurealis awards this week! This week’s #5OnMyTBR theme is all about friendship, so I’ve got a mix of books about fun friendship groups/found family, as well some books looking at smaller, best friend relationships!

The Archive of the Forgotten by A.J Hackwith

The Archive of the Forgotten is the sequel to one of my favourite fantasy novels, The Library of the Unwritten. It’s a series set in Hell’s library, and in the first book follows a librarian who is hunting down a character who escaped from one of the books. In this sequel, the team of Claire (former librarian and new Archivist), Hero (formerly escaped character), Brevity (muse and new librarian), and Rami (fallen angel) must work together to find out why the books have started leaking a strange ink. The first one was so much fun and had such a great group of charcacters and as my copy arrived last week, I’ll be picking this one up asap!

Architects of Memory by Karen Osbourne

I think science fiction books do friendship groups really well. My re-introduction to scifi in recent years was Becky Chambers and her books have excellent friendship groups/space crew which is probably partly accounting for why I think this, but when I also think of my more recent reads like Unconquerable Sun, the statement holds true too! So I’m hopeful that Architects of Memory will also have a great crew on board a ship with a terminally ill pilot looking for a cure, but instead finds the remains of a genocidal weapon.

Seven Devils by Elizabeth May and Laura Lam

Yep, it’s the title that appeared on mt #5OnMyTBR lists like three times in a row earlier in the year and which I STILL have not read. Someone please shame me into reading this. This is another scifi space crew book, with a whopping seven different POVs and follows a group of resistance fighters as they try to free the galaxy aka it’s queer Star Wars.

The Adversary by Ronnie Scott

The Adversary is a local queer Aussie literary fiction title and because I always struggle to explain what literary fiction books are about, I’m stealing the blurb for this one: “The Adversary is a sticky summer novel about young people exploring their sexuality and their sociability, where everything smells like sunscreen and tastes like beer, but affections and alliances have consequences. It asks what kinds of stories are possible – or desirable – for which kinds of friendships, and what happens when you follow those stories to their natural conclusions.” It was very amusing to me that as I wrote this post my flat does smell like sunscreen because it’s finally starting to get hot again here.

Let’s Call it a Doomsday by Katie Henry

Let’s Call it a Doomsday is about two girls who meet in their therapist’s waiting room and become best friends. One spends her life in constant anxiety about how the world is going to end; the other knows exactly when it will. I’ve heard this has really excellent anxiety and faith representation, as well as a questioning bi girl. I’ve had a copy since earlier this year but given the state of the world and thus the state of my mental health, I’ve put off reading this book until I’m in a slightly less anxious frame of mind!

And that’s another week! As I mentioned last week, this will be my only post for the week since I’m busy with judging duties. But I’ll be back next week to talk about more books on my TBR in the hopes it will shame me into actually reading some.