Mailbox Monday (October 18)

Mailbox Monday is the gathering place for readers to share the books they received during the previous week. Warning: Mailbox Monday can lead to envy, toppling TBR piles and humongous wish lists! Mailbox Monday, which was started by Marcia at The Printed Page, is on blog tour—and I’m thrilled to be hosting this month!

I’m back from vacation—it was great to see my family and meet my new nephew, although I unfortunately was sick the last few days I was there, which explains the total lack of posts this week! (I’m feeling better now.)

One new book was waiting for me upon my return: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, which I won from Ladybug at Escape in a Book as part of her SpeakLoud giveaway. (You may want to read her thoughtful post about book banning from a Norwegian perspective.)

Here’s the blurb from the book’s inside flap:

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t know hate her from a distance. It’s no use explaining to her parents; they’ve never known what her life is really like. The safest place for Melinda to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that’s not safe. Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she admitted it and let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have no choice. Melinda would have to speak the truth.

What did you find in your mailbox this past week? Let us know by leaving a link to your post below (and now that I’m home, I’ll make an effort to visit all your blogs!).