Hello!

I swear every month I promise I’m going to try and be more present and every month time whizzes by before I can even notice. I swear June started YESTERDAY and now it’s July? Holy moly I can’t keep up.

I honestly didn’t think I could read as much as I did in May with a two week holiday, but it turns out that I’m really on the hype right now and I am making time for reading in every spare moment – I read 11 books this month and I’m honestly so proud of myself because it means I’ve hit my reading goal for the year. I set my goal at 42 books because last year I only just met my goal of 36 (3 a month, I usually aim for a multiple of 12 for this reason) so I went for halfway between (3.5 books a month – it made sense in my head) and I’ve already done it!

I’m not going to extend my goal for the year, but I have set myself secret little stretch goals that I may or may not aim for, but the never ending physical tbr I have is enough of an incentive for me to keep reading! I have a goal of how much I’ve like to get off my physical tbr by the end of the year but I don’t want to jinx it by sharing it.

But enough about the numbers – here are the books I read in June!

Things We Never Got Over – Lucy Score ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Escaping the wedding she spent two years meticulously planning, Naomi grabs the opportunity to run to her estranged twin when she asks for help. Arriving in Knockemout, Naomi is reminded of her evil twins tendencies and finds herself without her car, her phone, and all her money, with an 11 year old niece she didn’t know about in their place.

Knox doesn’t mean to be there when her life implodes, but when he sees the hand she’s been dealt he can’t help but intervene for the sake of Waylay, the abandoned child. Just as soon as they stop getting into trouble, he can leave her alone and get back to his peaceful, solitary life. At least that’s the plan.

I absolutely ate this up. I finished it in the early hours of June 1st so it feels like a million years ago but I loved the characters, I love that Naomi and Knox were so into each other and so determined not to start a relationship and then there was a surprise crime/mystery element at the end? Honestly, the whole thing was a rollercoaster and I had a fantastic time.

Don’t get me wrong, it was ridiculously long but I really enjoyed it and the epilogue and the bonus epilogue was a bit predictable but very sweet.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck – Mark Manson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
My second non-fiction book of the year and much more impactful than Horrible Histories if I’m honest! This book was my husband’s choice from our wedding library (context: for our wedding we asked our guests for copies of their favourite books to make our own little library and we choose one a month to read) and honestly, I think it changed my life. It’s the first book I’ve ever read that I want to annotate – I want to make notes and put quotes in frames around my house. It made me want to read more non-fiction and it’s definitely one I need to return to and I am definitely going to count it as a second book if I read it again this year.

Things We Hide From The Light – Lucy Score ⭐️⭐️
Nash Morgan was always known as the good Morgan brother. But having been shot with no memory of the event, his southern charm has been overshadowed by panic attacks and depression. He feels like a shell but has to keep up appearances for the town that relies on him as their Chief.

But Lina ignites a spark that he can’t resist – she makes it easier to breathe and knows how to help with the panic. She has her own secrets, including why she isn’t a fan of physical contact, but Nash is different. He feels it too. Their connection is a flame that only grows but neither can explain.

Nash wants everything from Lina but can he trust a woman with so many secrets? She knows he’ll never forgive her if he finds out the real reason she’s in town and she doesn’t do relationships anyway… So why is Nash Morgan so hard to resist?

This is the first sequel I’ve read that has made me reconsider my rating of a previous book – I thought everything about this book was ridiculously stereotypical and cliché and it was even longer. I think I will enjoy ‘Things We Never Got Over’ less the next time I read it. The pacing was really inconsistent, for a book that long it could have been a fantastic slow burn but it absolutely wasn’t. The ending with the same crime/mystery element nearly blindsided me because I did like that bit and the epilogues actually made me feel a little emotional, but the last 15% does not justify the previous 85%.

I have preordered the sequel which I can never remember the name of but I am going in dubiously – Lucian and Sloane have been angry at each other for two books now and they’ve been laying it on a little bit thick but there’s potential for a story about an questionably-legal spy-ish person and a hot librarian to be really good.

All That She Can See – Carrie Hope Fletcher ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people can’t and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others. As far as the rest of the town is concerned she’s simply the kind-hearted young woman who runs the local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful the townspeople start to feel better about their lives.

When she meets Chase, someone who shares her ability in the worst way, he threatens to undo all the good Cherry has done. But she won’t let a little mischief get in her way.

I really liked the concept of this book – the magical theory was cool and the third act conflict could have been incredible, but the narrative style was a bit jarring. Writing a book with the intention of whimsy and magic makes it very easy to read quite childish, so when there was swearing and references to sex it felt disjointed and forced to make it an ‘adult’ book. The antagonist/love interest felt more like a plot device than a character and there was absolutely no substance for a romance plot line at all. I rated it 3 stars because the concept could have been incredible, but I also rated it 3 stars because it wasn’t.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Two kids met in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. Their love of video games becomes a shared world – of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view.

When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. They slot back into each other’s lives like they did before and they decide to make a game – to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.

This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success.

I understand the hype – I’m not normally one for literary fiction and the narrative definitely wasn’t as easy to digest as my cosy romances, but the style was beautiful – elegant and raw and awe inspiring. Sam and Sadie’s world was a nostalgic place facing a variety of hardships and the cast has fantastic representation; with diverse representation from all over the world, showing insight into being half American and half Asian feeling wholly neither, a disabled main character, Sadie although white and privileged in many senses, presented the side of being a minority in her studies and industry – being a woman in STEM, navigating a male-dominated industry with a partner that she thinks everyone credits for her work as well as the hardships of of pregnancy and loss.

But it was all done in a way that felt organic and real, not ticking boxes to have a book that counts as diverse and inclusive. The worlds Sadie and Sam created were an extension of themselves and an escape from the world they lived in and the balance of friendship in a professional environment often made their partnership complicated. Absolutely worth the hype.

Gates of Thread and Stone – Lori M. Lee ⭐️⭐️
In a city of walls and secrets, where only one man is supposed to possess magic, seventeen-year-old Kai struggles to keep hidden her own secret – she can manipulate the threads of time. When Kai was eight, she was found by Reev on the riverbank, and her “brother” has taken care of her ever since. Kai doesn’t know where her ability comes from—or where she came from. All that matters is that she and Reev stay together, and maybe one day move out of the freight container they call home. Kai’s only friend is Avan, the shopkeeper’s son with the scandalous reputation that both frightens and intrigues her.

Then Reev disappears. When keeping silent and safe means losing him forever, Kai vows to do whatever it takes to find him. She will leave the only home she’s ever known and losing her only friend to find her brother. But to save Reev, Kai must unravel the threads of her past and face shocking truths about her brother, her friendship with Avan, and her unique power.

I have absolutely no recollection of how I came to download this book on audible – I don’t know if it was on Audible Plus or if I saw a TikTok on it, but either way it didn’t grab me. Firstly, the narrator sounded like an animated Nickelodeon character from the early 2000s and I kept imagining Timmy from Fairly Odd Parents while listening, which isn’t the vibe when the protagonist is meant to be a seventeen year old witchy looking girl.

Secondly, Kai as a narrator was so stubborn and ignorant and I know she’s only seventeen but the way she made the plot more stunted than it needed to be was infantile. The reason I gave it two starts instead of one was actually the god mythology system – the Infinite were a cool concept, very much like Greek gods but dystopian, but the descendants and mahjo and sentinels thing was all very confusing and I still don’t get it.

Love, Theoretically – Ali Hazelwood ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The many lives of theoretical physicist Dr Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an underpaid adjunct professor. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills.

But Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favourite client, turns out to be the experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who is standing right between Elsie and her dream job.

Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but… those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?

On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the last 40%, hands down obsessed. But the first 60% I found disappointing. Obviously not that disappointing since I still gave it 4 stars, but disappointing in the way that I gave both The Love Hypothesis and Love On The Brain easy 5 stars, no hesitation.

My initial gripe with with the amount of physics and science-based content in the story – it’s cool to see that Hazelwood actually knows what she’s talking about when it comes to the scientific content but I found it all a little overwhelming as I tried to figure out whether I needed to understand physics to understand the story (you don’t) but the biggest thing was I didn’t like Elsie – the whole people pleasing thing I can get to some extent, pretending to like your best friends taste in movies is pretty harmless, but it was her stubborn, almost childish decision that she knew exactly who Jack was, exactly what he thought about her and about theoretical physics when his actions didn’t support it at all. She became much more bearable when he convinced her to be honest with him and then I was enjoying it wholeheartedly.

The spice was hot, the science boyfriend was off the charts and the character development was fab, a very solid 4 star read.

Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race – Reni Eddo-Lodge ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In February 2014, Reni Eddo-Lodge posted an impassioned argument on her blog about her deep-seated frustration with the way discussions of race and racism in Britain were constantly being shut down by those who weren’t affected by it. She gave the post the title ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race’. Her sharp, fiercely intelligent words hit a nerve, and the post went viral, spawning a huge number of comments from people desperate to speak up about their own similar experiences.

Galvanised by this response, Eddo-Lodge decided to dive into the source of these feelings, this clear hunger for an open discussion. The result is a searing, illuminating, absolutely necessary exploration of what it is to be a person of colour in Britain today, covering issues from eradicated black history to white privilege, the fallacy of ‘meritocracy’ to whitewashing feminism, and the inextricable link between class and race. Full of passionate, personal and keenly felt arguments, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race is a wake-up call to a nation in denial about the structural and institutional racism occurring in our homes.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such an important book before. I remember when it first came out, being intrigued by the cover, but my binary autistic brain interpreted the title as a book that wasn’t for me. It took the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 for me to realise that I had misinterpreted it completely.

Then in listening to this book, particularly in four hours of driving in one day, everything I thought I knew about racism was put into perspective – racism is a white people’s problem. Racism is systematic and in many of us, internalised to a degree we couldn’t comprehend unless we really make the effort to change it.

I’m excited to reread this book time and time again. I’m excited to read more books – fiction and non-fiction – in ways that people who look like me have manipulated the power they decided they deserved and created centuries of prejudice. I want to learn to be a better anti-racist and this book was a fantastic start.

Adult Assembly Required – Abbi Waxman ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
When Laura Costello arrives in downtown Los Angeles, her life has somewhat fallen apart. Her apartment building has caught fire, her engagement has been broken off, and she’s just been caught in a rare LA downpour and has no dry clothes.

But when she seeks shelter in Nina Hill’s local neighbourhood bookshop, she finds herself introduced to the people who will become her new family. And as Laura becomes friends with Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob, things start to look up.

Proving that – even as adults – we all sometimes need a little help assembling and re-assembling our lives…

I was so grateful to pull a contemporary romance title from my tbr jar and boy I got the cosiest story I’ve read in an awfully long time. Although sprinkled with heavy (but excellently and authentically written) trauma and mental health rep, this story begins with a low stakes ambling of Laura’s new life in LA and I thought I’d found the easiest read on my bookshelf.

Then things get harder and I got this ache in my chest about the yucky ex-fiancé and the gaslighting from a family that needs a lot of therapy, not so cosy and low stakes but now I’m invested! With a cast of wonderful characters, this book gives a super authentic reminder about how being an adult is a team sport alongside a beautifully quiet romance.

If you want a serious case of the warm fuzzies, this is the book.

Animal Farm – George Orwell ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

A farm is taken over by its overworked, mistreated animals. With flaming idealism and stirring slogans, they set out to create a paradise of progress, justice, and equality. Thus the stage is set for one of the most telling satiric fables ever penned—a razor-edged fairy tale for grown-ups that records the evolution from revolution against tyranny to a totalitarianism just as terrible.

I think this is the first classic I’ve read by my own choice? (GCSE English definitely doesn’t count)

And even then, I didn’t particularly choose it – my dad gave me a copy of 1984 by George Orwell as it’s his favourite book and I thought it would be easier to listen to and I found an Audible Plus package that bundled Animal Farm and 1984 together read by Stephen Fry. Then I noticed the other day that the bundle is being taken off Audible Plus on July 4th and I didn’t want to pay for it so I picked it to read next and Animal Farm is the first one in the narration!

At first, I got too wrapped up in trying to understand the parallels with Russian politics but once I let go of that I actually kind of understood it better? I don’t know anything about Russian politics in the 40s but I actually saw a lot of parallels with the current and recent British government which was eye-opening and quite concerning.

But because it was all ‘disguised’ (not very subtly) as a book about farm animals that could probably be read to children, it was quite easy to read and Stephen Fry was a wonderful narrator. I felt very smart while reading it!

The Infinite – Lori M. Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sequel to ‘Gates of Thread and Stone’, I said in my TikTok review that I wouldn’t be reading the sequel… then I found that it was included in Kindle Unlimited in one of their ‘read and listen’ packages and I thought I might as well as it’s essentially free – turns out, the book is significantly more engaging when it doesn’t sound like it’s being read by a 10 year old animated boy! It takes a more political spin with a visit to a country they didn’t know existed and balancing building an alliance with them with protecting the needs of their own people – definitely not one you can read as a standalone but I really enjoyed it.

It definitely leads to a third to complete the trilogy and I’m keeping my fingers crossed it’ll also be available on KU!

And what I’m currently reading:

Icons – Margaret Stohl
My next pick from my tbr jar turns out to be a YA sci-fi dystopian story about a ‘chosen one’ esque kid – I read the first 60 pages in one go and was really enjoying them, but I found that I wanted to finished the YA dystopian fantasy in The Infinite first so I didn’t get anything muddled up! Looking forward to finding out more about this one and getting stuck in to a paperback again.

1984 – George Orwell
Part 2 of my George Orwell awakening and it’s definitely not as easy to understand as Animal Farm (though I think this is intentional). I listened to the first chapter and I am mostly confused, but I only have a few days to listen to it – whether I make it or not is a different question entirely but I’m at a weird place where I want to binge it for the sake of ticking it off my tbr and not forcing myself to read it when I’ve got other stuff to do. We’ll see!

Turns out going through everything I’ve read with plot summaries makes for a really long blog post! I will work on a better format for next month but serious points if you made it this far – I really appreciate it!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx