Before I start, I want to say I got this idea from Michelle at Magical Reads! It’s such a wonderful idea Michelle!

Hopefully you saw my part one post yesterday with fantasy recs for emojis! If not, you’re welcome to check that one out here. There is no order at all to these posts haha. But anyway, the gist of the posts is: I had people give me an emoji, and for each one I chose a book to rec based on it! Some are straightforward, some I got creative with. I’ll write a little bit about why I chose each book! So here we go with part two of the fantasy recs!

Before I start, I want to say I got this idea from Michelle at Magical Reads! It’s such a wonderful idea Michelle!

Earlier this week I asked people on Bookstagram for some help with this post! I had people give me emojis, and in return I’d give a book rec for each emoji. Here are the resulting book recs! Well okay, this is part one because people sent A LOT of emojis oh my god. So part two will come tomorrow to make it easier to read and not get overwhelmed.

Some emojis are easier to pick books for, so for the harder ones I had to do a little interpretation. I’ll explain my reasoning a little bit so you understand why I chose each book for each emoji! And there will be a sci-fi edition (also in two parts) coming next week. So without further ado, here we go!

September was a bit of a hectic month for me. I didn’t realize it was over until I saw people on bookstagram posting their monthly wrap ups haha. During the last week of the month, I traveled across the country with my partner to move to our new home in the desert (Las Vegas). Since he did the driving, he got to choose the soundtrack. We listened to lots of podcasts, so I’ll talk about that in addition to the books that I read. I can’t read in the car, so most of these were read before we set out on our trip.

The Happy Place 5 is a monthly series where a few friends and I post 5 of our favorites books for a certain topic or theme. The name is from a Discord group that I am a part of. We created the space to have a positive environment for a handful of close friends. All of us are bookworms, and many of us are bookstagrammers and bloggers. So we decided to start a blog post series together! I’ll link my friends blogs and posts for this month’s topic at the end of this post.

Hello and happy September! Today for The Happy Place 5, we’re talking about book recommendations that we’ve gotten from our friends. One of my favorite things about the book community, be it bookstagram, book blogging, or Twitter, has been meeting people! Naturally, since these people all love books and have read different things than me, I’ve ended up VASTLY INCREASING MY TBR.

I’m just sad that I don’t have all the time in the world to read everything haha. So anyway, today I want to highlight a few books I’ve read because of some of my dear friends! I picked only five books, but there are actually more than five friends. This is because a couple of these books I can’t remember who recommended it first, but I know all of them were shouting at me to read it hahaha.

Life goes on for the billions left behind after the humanity-saving colony mission to Proxima Centauri leaves Earth orbit ... but what's the point?
Julie Riley is two years too young to get out from under her mother's thumb, and what does it matter? She's over-educated, under-employed, and kept mostly numb by her pharma emplant. Her best friend, who she's mostly been interacting with via virtual reality for the past decade, is part of the colony mission to Proxima Centauri. Plus, the world is coming to an end. So, there's that.
When Julie's mother decides it's time to let go of the family home in a failing suburb and move to the city to be closer to work and her new beau, Julie decides to take matters into her own hands. She runs, illegally, hoping to find and hide with the Volksgeist, a loose-knit culture of tramps, hoboes, senior citizens, artists, and never-do-wells who have elected to ride out the end of the world in their campers and converted vans, constantly on the move over the back roads of America.

Thank you so much to Angry Robot for sending me a copy for review. And for including me on the tour!

Reading this right now felt particularly timely, as I am nearing a cross country roadtrip myself! However, I’m really hoping mine isn’t nearly as stressful as Julie’s haha. Most likely that will be manageable, seeing as how I’m not living in the bleak future that she is. I would classify this as a dystopian, but honestly the future Julie lives in seems more and more likely given the way our planet is going. I was afraid it would be too depressing to read, but R.W.W. Greene has infused this book with humor and good people, making it a lovely read.