WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that Sam hosts at Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

Here is what I am reading, recently finished, and plan to read from Thursday to Wednesday.

Let me know if you have read or are planning on reading any of these books!!

Happy Reading!

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What I am currently reading:

Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda—a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane—as she navigates a rapidly changing world.

Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state’s infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast. Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida, and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.

As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape, but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community, and ultimately, seeks adventure, love, and purpose in a place remade by nature.

Told in four parts—power, water, light, and time—The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It is a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet, and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness.

Includes a Reading Group Guide.

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What I recently finished reading:

Possessing the Secret of Joy is the story of Tashi, a tribal African woman who lives much of her adult life in North America. As a young woman, a misguided loyalty to the customs of her people led her to voluntarily submit to the tsunga’s knife and be genitally mutilated (pharoanoically circumcised). Severely traumatized by this experience, she spends the rest of her life battling madness, trying desperately through psychotherapy – she is treated by disciples of both Freud and C.G. Jung, and even by Jung himself – to regain the ability to recognize her own reality and to feel. It is only with the help of the most unlikely ally she can imagine that she begins to study the mythological “reasons” invented by her ancient ancestors for what was done to her and to millions of other women and girls over thousands of years. As her understanding grows, so does her capacity to encounter her overwhelming grief. Underneath this grief is her glowing anger. Anger propels her to act. Action brings both feeling – life, the ability to exist with awareness in the moment – and death, of which she finds she has completely lost her fear.

While not a sequel to The Color Purple or The Temple of My Familiar, Possessing the Secret of Joy follows the life of a barely-glimpsed character from those books. Combining fact and fiction, communing with the spirits of the living and the dead, Alice Walker in this novel strikes with graceful power at the heart of one of the most controversial issues of our time.

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What I plan on reading Thursday through Sunday:

In 18th century France, the choices for a young black woman of modest means are slim.

Véronique Clair loves her parents and their small home in the countryside of Burgundy but dreams of using her talent for sewing and embroidery to make her own way, without having to rely on a man.

When Véronique’s well-meaning parents find her a suitor of elevated station their happiness turns into her despair. Véronique must make the difficult choice between agreeing to an arranged marriage–with its promise of elevated status in society–or embark upon an unpredictable journey across France and into a world she’s never known.

…for a young woman of honor, only the heart can guide the way.

This story is a 19K-word novella.

A determined witch. A rebellious fae. An enemies to lovers romance that will bring a queen’s court to its knees.
He was supposed to kill me. Now I’m his prisoner.

I was supposed to hate him. Now I’m falling in love.

But neither love nor magic can save me. And now time is running out…

When the Queen of the Fae is after you sometimes your best bet is falling in love with the enemy, even when he’s your kidnapper…

Family is everything…

I always knew my father was a cold, heartless bastard.
But the moment he took Elle Castlemaine and her pathetic daughter into our home, barely a month after our mom died, he unleashed something savage inside me.
I didn’t care they lost their home. Didn’t care their father was behind bars.
Didn’t care he betrayed the notorious Stidda Mafia boss, Benjamin Rossi, and now their lives were in danger.
All I cared about was her.
Ryth.
I wanted to hurt her. Wanted to make her squirm.
I wanted to make her pay for the moans coming from my father’s bedroom.
When he slipped a ring onto her mother’s finger, Ryth became mine.
Mine to bully.
Mine to break.
And I’ll use my brothers to do it.
She’ll become our favorite obsession.
Our sick, tormented game.
She’ll become the only thing I think about, until not thinking about her tears me apart.
I’ll hate her. I’ll hate her so much it hurts…

My brother is bleeding.
My stepsister is gone.

The ones responsible called themselves family.

By blood, and now by marriage.

I want to destroy them for what they’ve done.

Burn everything they have to the ground.

But first I need to find her.

Ryth.

The pathetic, little mouse that scurried into our lives and made a home.

I can’t forget her, can’t get her out of my head.

She unleashed something dangerous in me.

Something that drove me to ruin her.

And ruined myself in the process.

She was once a game to me…

She still is…only this time it’s for keeps.