After picking up so many samplers at YALC a few weeks ago, myself and my dear friend Steph @ A Little But A Lot came up with the idea of having a #SamplerSunday. We chose five of the samplers neither of had read yet and sat down on Sunday afternoon to virtually read them together. Queue lots and LOTS of exchanged texts and some excitable tweets. It was a lot of fun and so I thought I’d put my thougths together in a blog post. You can also check out Steph’s post here.

The five samplers we chose were: Sorrow by Melinda Salisbury, It Only Happens In The Movies by Holly Bourne, Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart, Clean by Juno Dawson and Tangleweed and Brine by Deirdre Sullivan. Below I’ll look at each in a bit more detail and will link to the Goodreads pages for anyone who wants more information on any of the books!

Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart

I was definitely intrigued to read this sampler as I didn’t know much of what Genuine Fraud is about but loved the fact it had a US passport on the cover. It definitely got me thinking. This was quite a long sampler and so we were able to glean a fair bit of information from it. Jule definitely seems like the kind of badass female character I could get behind and there is definitely a lot of intrigue and mystery surrounding her. The sampler was really, really fast paced so I imagine the book itself will be a quick read! The last two sentences really caught me and now I’m interested to see what will happen next.

Clean by Juno Dawson

Next up was Clean by Juno Dawson. Can we start by acknowledging how clever the cover of this sampler is? The book is called Clean and this sampler is so clean you can barely tell there is anything written on the front – I love that kind of thing! Okay so this sampler is excellent. I NEED this book so, so badly – I have no idea how I will wait until April 2018 for more!! Lexi is a drug addict and in the sampler we read the chapter where her brother has taken her to a rehab facility. This book seems right up my street: swearing, Juno’s wonderfully honest writing, drugs, a love-to-hate main character. I just loved the voice of this sampler and will be pre-ordering a copy of this!

Tangleweed and Brine by Deirdre Sullivan

The cover for Tangleweed and Brine was revealed at YALC at the end of her panel and I was (and still am) SWOONING over this. Look how gorgeous that cover is, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this book. The writing took a little bit of mind shifting to adapt to but I loved it. I can tell just from this small sample that this book will be beautifully atmospheric and I loved the fairytale vibes and nods to the traditional Rumplestiltskin story. There was a gorgeous illustration at the back of the sampler and I can’t wait to see more of them in the finished copy. Luckily this is out in September so I won’t have to wait too long!

It Only Happens In The Movies by Holly Bourne

I have been gagging for this book since it was announced. I fell in love with Holly’s writing when I binged the Spinster Club trilogy earlier this year and this sampler did not disappoint at all. As someone who loves both books and films this book is destined to be right up my street. Topped off with Holly’s wonderful, humorous writing style and a huge dollop of feminism I just loved this sampler. It ended with a pretty fantastic feminist rant and honestly it could have been me saying those words. Really excited for this one – it’s already pre-ordered!

Sorrow by Melinda Salisbury

Melinda Salisbury is a Queen. I fell in love with her books in February and have since met her and she is just so lovely and hilarious. This sampler absolutely sucked me into her new world within a few lines. There is something about her writing style that just sucks you straight into a story and her wrtiing is so descriptive that you are instantly able to conjure up images of her world. Even in this sampler alone we had hints of war, romance, hope, future, sorrow, death and it was just WONDERFUL. Steph and I had great fun predicting where this book is going to go and this one definitely caused the biggest text message storm! I am super excited for this book – I think we definitely saved the best until last!

And there we have chapter one of #SamplerSunday complete! Five fantastic books that I’m looking forward to reading. I may be back with another similar post soon – there is still a pile of samplers on my shelf!

Have you read any of these samplers? What did you think?

Did you add any of these to your TBR? I’d love to hear!

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