It’s Tuesday again and it’s also a new month! And a new quarter of the year actually. So, this week it’s time to look to our most anticipated reads for this second quarter. I want to nuance this a little bit as I’m not truly anticipating any books, but am curious for loads.

Top 5 Tuesday is created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm and is now hosted by Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads. Each Tuesday, participants share 5 books that fit the assigned topic for the week. There’s a Link-Up where participants share their link so others could visit and react!

Watch Me by Tahereh Mafi

Expected publication: April 15

To be honest, I’m quite conflicted about this book since I didn’t like the second trilogy in the “Shatter Me” series that much. I think this series is a bit milked out now and that’s such a pity. However, this first book in the “Shatter Me: The New Republic” series takes place ten years after the final events in the original series and is about James, Adam’s little brother who was just a kid back then. I’m really curious for how he will hold up as our main character!

James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win. 

It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo—Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson—led a worldwide rebellion and established the New Republic of the West. But after a decade of unsettling quiet, The Reestablishment is ready to make a devastating move, and they have the perfect person for the job. 

Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. She always has a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence—and when she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates. 

Brimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, Watch Me is an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape where enemies-to-lovers has never felt more impossible. Step into a beloved and breathtaking world that demands an answer to a desperate question— 

The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig

Expected publication: May 20

I haven’t been raving about the “Shepherd King” duology like many others, but I have to admit that the atmosphere was dark, gloomy and grim, and that the writing was whimsical. I therefore am curious how this author will hold up after such a successful duology.

From NYT bestselling author Rachel Gillig comes the next big romantasy sensation, a gothic, mist-cloaked tale of a young prophetess who is forced on an impossible quest with the one infuriating knight whose future is beyond her sight. Perfect for fans of Jennifer L. Armentrout and Leigh Bardugo.

Sybil Delling has spent nine years dreaming of having no dreams at all. Like the other foundling girls who traded a decade of service for a home in the great cathedral, Sybil is a Diviner. In her dreams she receives visions from six unearthly figures known as Omens. From them, she can predict terrible things before they occur, and lords and common folk alike travel across the kingdom of Traum’s windswept moors to learn their futures by her dreams. 

Just as she and her sister Diviners near the end of their service, a mysterious knight arrives at the cathedral. Rude, heretical, and devilishly handsome, the knight Rodrick has no respect for Sybil’s visions. But when Sybil’s fellow Diviners begin to vanish one by one, she has no choice but to seek his help in finding them. For the world outside the cathedral’s cloister is wrought with peril. Only the gods have the answers she is seeking, and as much as she’d rather avoid Rodrick’s dark eyes and sharp tongue, only a heretic can defeat a god. 

The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong

Expected publication: May 13

Even though I didn’t rate On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous 5 stars, it still is a book I won’t forget about. In May, this author will publish a new novel and I’m very curious for it!

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.
Following the cycles of history, memory, and time, The Emperor of Gladness shows the profound ways in which love, labor, and loneliness form the bedrock of American life. At its heart is a brave epic about what it means to exist on the fringes of society and to reckon with the wounds that haunt our collective soul. Hallmarks of Ocean Vuong’s writing—formal innovation, syntactic dexterity, and the ability to twin grit with grace through tenderness—are on full display in this story of loss, hope, and how far we would go to possess one of life’s most fleeting mercies: a second chance.

Ocean Vuong returns with a bighearted novel about chosen family, unexpected friendship, and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson

Expected Publication: April 8

I’ve read Dirty Halo by this author and still need to read the rest of that series, but this new romantasy sounds great! I’m definitely looking forward to it!

Magic and adventure swirl through this spellbinding romantasy where a young woman reignites the embers of an ancient prophecy, unleashing a storm that could save her realm or doom them all.
 Fear of maegic plagues war-torn Anwyvn. Halflings like Rhya Fleetwood are killed on sight. But Rhya’s execution is interrupted by an unexpected savior—one far more terrifying than her would-be killers. The mysterious and mercenary Commander Scythe. In the clutches of this new enemy, Rhya finds herself fighting for her life in the barren reaches of the Northlands. Yet the farther she gets from home, the more she learns that nothing is as it seems—not her fearsome captor, not the blight that ravages her dying realm, not even herself.
 For Rhya is no ordinary halfling. The strange birthmark on her chest and the wind she instinctively calls forth means she is a Remnant, one of four souls scattered across Anwyvn, fated to restore the balance of maegic…or die trying.
 But mastering the power inside her is only the beginning. Desire for the Commander—a man she can never trust, a man with plans of his own—burns just as fiercely as the tempests beating against her rib cage for release. Rhya must choose: smother the flames…or let them consume her.

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater

Expected publication: June 3

I’m in the middle of my “The Raven Boys” read, but books about WWII always make me curious. This one is released in June and therefore on my “to keep an eye on” list.

As the U.S. joins World War II, the manager of a luxury hotel set in the remote West Virginia mountains finds herself charged with the care of detained Nazi diplomats—and the FBI agent looking for a spy among them, by the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater.

JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel’s West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles. 

June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel’s aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. Now, though, the Gilfoyle family heir has made a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats. June must convince her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the frontlines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile. 

She also must reckon with Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent whose coal tattoo hints at their shared past in the mountains, and whose search for the diplomats’ secrets disrupts the peace June is fighting so hard to maintain. Hers is a balancing act with dangerous consequences; the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal, and only June can manage the springs. As dark alliances and unexpected attractions crack the polished veneer of the Avallon, June must calculate the true cost of luxury. 

THE LISTENERS is a mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.

What are books you’re curious for in this second quarter?