This was a little bit of a slower month of reading for me. Partially because I spent some time rereading/skimming some of my favorite Nora Roberts books. Ha! I read 8 books bringing my total for half of the year to 66!
This was also a terrible month for me in regards to diversity - I read zero books by authors of color and only 1 book with a main character of color. It was heavy on chick lit too ha. And honestly my streak of not great books continues! Zero 5 star reads this month...womp, womp. To compare - through June 2022, I had 22 5 star reads...this year, I've had 2!
The First Four Years by Laura Ingalls Wilder - This was the last book in the Little House series that Drew and I read together and it follows Laura's first years of marriage to Almonzo Wilder. It was largely ghost-written after her passing and definitely feels different than the other books in the series. Neither Drew nor I enjoyed it as much as some of the others...plus it is SO depressing - bad stuff happens left and right! We still need to go back and read Farmer Boy about Almonzo's childhood, but we are taking a little break right now.
Life of Pi by Yann Martel [audiobook] - This was in my 10 oldest books on my Goodreads TBR {I've now finished 5 and have started a 6th, yay}. This was a very entertaining and enjoyable story, I really liked Pi as a character! There's a little twist at the end that I can't decide how I feel about - how anyone else read this? I want to watch the movie now too!
Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gilliam McAllister - Y'all know I'm not the hugest fan of thrillers...yet I keep reading them! I would say this one was pretty darn good. It took me some time to get into it - and I don't think it was just me - it took some time for the story to really get going. But once it did...it was great! Several twists and turns I didn't expect, and I really enjoyed how it wrapped up.
Meet Me at the Lake by Carley Fortune and Same Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan - I was beyond excited to read the latest book by these 2 authors after their 2022 releases were some of my FAVORITES of 2022...and these were just okay. Ugh! I wanted to love them so much and didn't. Maybe my expectations were too high after Every Summer After and Nora Goes Off Script? Both stories were a bit similar - second chance love {and honestly Same Time Next Summer reminded me a lot of Every Summer After}, they were both well-written and enjoyable...just not as amazing as I had hoped.
Florence Adler Swims Forever by Rachel Beanland - This was June's Blog Friend Book Club selection, and it definitely had some mixed reviews and great discussion! This book follows a family after a tragedy happens and they decide to not tell one of their family members about the tragedy as she is on bedrest in the hospital. This was set pre-WW2 in Atlantic City, and this family is Jewish. It was a fascinating setting, and I really enjoyed the perspective of the prejudice against American Jews in the 1930s. We like to pretend that Hitler was the bad guy, and America wasn't problematic...this blows that out of the water! We had a really good discussion about whether this was lying, how we felt about what the family did. The hard part was there were 7 different narrators, so it was hard to feel truly connected to this story. Overall I enjoyed this and thought it was a good story and loved that it gave us a lot to talk about.
Happy Place by Emily Henry - I could have lumped this book in with Same Time Next Summer and Meet Me at the Lake EXCEPT I do not think Emily Henry is my jam. I've read all 4 of her latest books and all were...fine. This story follows 5 friends who are spending one last vacation at their favorite house and 2 of the people were a couple who broke up but no one knows. You can imagine what happens. By the end I was skimming and just ready to get to the end.
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd - This is the first book in a series about a British Detective who is suffering from some pretty severe PTSD after WW1. My mom bought me about 15 books about this detective at a garage sale for Christmas. It was enjoyable enough for me to keep going {and work through a stack of physical books ha}!
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