Hello, readers! It is Monday again! As it is Monday, welcome to another #5OnMyTBR update. The rule is relatively simple. I must pick five books from my to-be-read piles that fit the week’s theme.

This week’s theme: Multiple POVs

This week’s prompt is to feature books with multiple points of view. However, I already did this last year – you may click here – and I have yet to read any of the books in this list. As such, I decided to deviate from this week’s prompt and instead feature novels told from the first-person point of view. Without ado, here is my list. Happy reading!

5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Title: Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda
Author: Becky Albertalli
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publishing Date: 2018
No. of Pages: 343

Synopsis: 

Sixteen-year-old and not-so-openly gay Simon Spier prefers to save his drama for the school musical. But when an email falls into the wrong hands, his secret is at risk of being thrust into the spotlight. Now Simon is actually being blackmailed: If he doesn’t play wingman for class clown Martin, his sexual identity will become everyone’s business. Worse, the privacy of Blue, the pen name of the boy he’s been emailing with, will be jeopardized.

With some messy dynamics emerging in his once tight-knit group of friends and his email correspondence with Blue growing more flirtatious every day, Simon’s junior year has suddenly gotten all kinds of complicated. Now change-averse Simon has to find a way to step out of his comfort zone before he’s pushed out – without alienating his friends, compromising himself, or fumbling a shot at happiness with the most confusing, adorable guy he’s never met.

Title: Swing Time
Author: Zadie Smith
Publisher: Penguin Books
Publishing Date: 2017 (2016)
No. of Pages: 453

Synopsis: 

Two brown girls dream of being dancers – but only one, Tracey, has talent. The other has ideas: about rhythm and time, about black bodies and black music, what constitutes a tribe, or makes a person truly free. It’s a close but complicated childhood friendship that ends abruptly, never to be revisited, but never quite forgotten, either.

Tracey makes it to the chorus line but struggles with adult life, while her friend leaves the old neighborhood behind. The story moves from London to West Africa, where diaspora tourists travel back in time to find their roots, the women dance just like Tracey – the same twists, the same shakes – and the origins of a profound inequality are not a matter of distant history, but a present dance to the music of time.

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: William Morrow
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 324

Synopsis: 

This is what he remembers, as he sits by the ocean at the end of the lane:

A dead man in the back seat of the car, and warm milk at the farmhouse.

An ancient little girl, and an old woman who saw the moon being made.

A beautiful housekeeper with a monstrous smile.

And dark forces woken that were best left undisturbed.

They are memories hard to believe, waiting at the edges of things. The recollections of a man who thought he has lost but is now, perhaps, remembering a time when he was saved…

Title: Giovanni’s Room
Author: James Baldwin
Publisher: Delta Publishing
Publishing Date: June 2000
No. of Pages: 169

Synopsis: 

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin’s now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of human heart.

Title: Nothing to See Here
Author: Kevin Wilson
Publisher: ECCO
Publishing Date: 2019
No. of Pages: 254

Synopsis: 

Lillian and Mdison were unlikely roommates and yet inseparable friends at their boarding school. But then Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly in the wake of a scandal, and they’ve barely spoken since. Until now, more than ten years later when Lillian gets a letter from Madison pleading for her help.

Madison’s twin stepkids are moving in with her family and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there’s a catch: the twins spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a startling but beautiful way. Lillian is convinced Madison is pulling her leg, but it’s the truth.

Thinking of her dead-end life at home, the life that has consistently disappointed her, Lillian figures she has nothing to lose. Over the course of one humid, demanding summer, Lillian and the twins learn to trust one another – and stay cool – while also staying out of the way of Madison’s buttoned-up politician husband. Surprised by her own ingenuity yet unused to the intense feelings of protectiveness she feels for them, Lillian ultimately begins to accept that she needs these strange children as much as they need her – urgently and fiercely. Couldn’t this be the start of the amazing life she’d always hoped for?

With white-hot wit and a big, tender heart, Kevin Wilson has written his best book yet 0 a most unusual story of parental love.