Waiting on Wednesday: The Storyteller and Days Like This

Waiting on Wednesday is hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine and features books that we just can't wait to get our hands on!

This week's picks:

The Storyteller by Antonia Michaelis

Goodreads' description:


"Anna and Abel couldn’t be more different. They are both seventeen and in their last year of school, but while Anna lives in a nice old town house and comes from a well-to-do family, Abel, the school drug dealer, lives in a big, prisonlike tower block at the edge of town. Anna is afraid of him until she realizes that he is caring for his six-year-old sister on his own. Fascinated, Anna follows the two and listens as Abel tells little Micha the story of a tiny queen assailed by dark forces. It’s a beautiful fairy tale that Anna comes to see has a basis in reality. Abel is in real danger of losing Micha to their abusive father and to his own inability to make ends meet. Anna gradually falls in love with Abel, but when his “enemies” begin to turn up dead, she fears she has fallen for a murderer. Has she?

Award-winning author Antonia Michaelis moves in a bold new direction with her latest novel: a dark, haunting, contemporary story that is part mystery, part romance, and part melodrama."

Love that there's a fairy tale woven into this contemporary mystery! Fairy tales can be very dark and I'm interested to see how they're used with the gritty reality of the characters' lives here. Also, I'm definitely liking that pretty cover.

Days Like This by Alison Stewart

Goodreads' description:

"I want to go back to the days when life made sense. The days before our parents became strange; before the warming ate away at all the living things in the world; before The Committee and their Blacktroopers. Before the Wall.

Lily is a prisoner in her own home. Forced to stay inside by The Committee and guarded by their increasingly distant parents, Lily and her brother Daniel are beginning to ask why. Then, when Daniel disappears just before his seventeenth birthday, Lily knows she is next.

She has to escape.

But who else is out there?

And can anyone survive days like this?"

The cover of this one is very grabbing — that shade of pink clashes somewhat with the yellowish-orange, but the whole cover looks striking. It has a kind of post-apocalyptic feel, although I'm not sure if this one is just dystopian or also set after the apocalypse. It reminds me of some covers of the John Marsden Tomorrow series (as does the description a little bit, actually!) 


I also picked it because the title makes me think of The Shirelles' song "Mama Said There'd Be Days Like This," provided here for your entertainment (complete with cute animal pics and nothing whatsoever to do with dystopia):



I have a feeling that song will be playing in my head when I read this book.

What books are you waiting on?