Hello!

Another month has flown past and here we are again, talking about the books I finished last month.

I had a real drive to finish my tbr this month – I’d had a really good reading month in April, I had a tbr I was excited about and my next book shopping date was in the diary for MCM Comic Con in London…

And, in my defence, I did have another good reading month – I finished the same amount of books that I read in April, I had FOUR books that I rated 5 stars in a row and I spent the last four days of the month giving myself a challenge to read as much of my remaining tbr as possible…

And I still only read three out of the seven books that were on my tbr.

Three and a half, if we’re being generous.

Let’s start at the beginning.

To Hate Adam Connor – Ella Maise ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I started the month by finishing off an audiobook I’d started the previous month and I really didn’t expect to give it 4 stars! The first book in the series was a below average 3 star read for me and I was a-okay with feeling the same about this one, but I found the characters so much more compelling, the tension was palpable and the story itself was really sweet. I really enjoyed reading this one and I would actually go as far as to say I would consider it a cosy read to come back to if I need it! I’m not much of a rereader, but I would reread this one!

The Reappearance of Rachel Price – Holly Jackson ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one was on my April tbr and I started it in the last few days of April with an unjustified optimism that I could finish it in time, but alas – it was May by the time I found out everything there was to know about Rachel Price.

Holly Jackson did it again – I was hooked from literally the first page, the character’s leapt out of her words and immediately felt so real to me, I was instantly filled with tension and suspense about the disappearance of Rachel Price and even though it was in the title, I was shocked when she reappeared and felt tense in every page till the end – every character was suspicious, everything felt dangerous, the stakes were high and the teeny tiny bit of romance was stunning.

I loved everything about this book. Don’t get me wrong – I didn’t enjoy reading it, I was incredibly stressed the whole time, but it was amazing. The start of my 5 star streak!

Daisy Jones and The Six – Taylor Jenkins Reid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book has been on my radar for so long – I’ve owned a physical copy since about 2021? But then I heard that the audiobook was absolutely the best way to listen to this story and I cannot agree more – I’m so glad I waited for my first TJR book to be this one and I’m glad I listened to the audio version.

The story itself is astonishing – I often had to remind myself that it wasn’t about a real band and real people, but the interview style that it’s written in and the full cast of the audiobook was just so compelling. It was hard and it was heavy – with topics such as addiction, parental neglect, infidelity and more addiction, but there was so much heart; characters that were just trying to find ways to do what they love, trying to navigate the music they loved and the fame they earned, trying to balance a personal, professional and private life in the height of the 70s, before Spotify and Instagram and mobile phones.

It was an easy 5 stars, this book has gone on my list of my favourite books of all time and I am currently browsing Etsy for fictional band merch.

Funny Story – Emily Henry ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was another one from my April tbr that I kind of stumbled into reading by accident – I was co-reading another book, but I didn’t like having two audible books on the go at the same time, so I decided to finish ‘Daisy Jones and The Six’ and then focus on the book I was coreading, which meant I needed another book to read with my eyes. So I picked up my Kindle and started reading Funny Story.

It’s worth the hype. April was a fantastic month for new releases and I went into this one fairly speculatively – I’ve only ever read one Emily Henry book before and it was a five star read, but that didn’t mean I was going to love everything she wrote.

But apparently it does. I loved Daphne and Miles so much. Everything that made Daisy Jones an etherial celebrity, was the opposite in these protagonists – they were just normal people, who’d been put in a shitty situation by shitty people and were just trying to figure out how to stand on their own two feet. Their emotions were organic, their conversations were authentic and for such an outlandish situation, the whole thing felt quite believable (other than the fact that their exes as called Peter and Petra).

This is another one that I absolutely see myself coming back to and has inspired me to read more of Emily Henry’s backlog – Book Lovers, You and Me on Vacation and Happy Place, here I come.

The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A fourth 5 star book?? Genuinely shocking.

If you know anything about my taste, you know this isn’t the kind of book I would reach for – it’s historical, it’s literary and it’s heavy and whilst I’m not against reading heavy books, in fact I love reading books about cultures I’ve never experienced, but I’m also a sucker for a light fluffy romance.

This was one of my book club picks – a gift from our wedding that my husband picked out – and I was dubious going in. This is the book I was coreading that I paused to finish Daisy Jones, but once I had I was determined not to get stuck on this book.

Then I got stuck in to the book – it’s such an interesting narrative to have such a sad story, but the sad story doesn’t belong to the narrating protagonist. There were so many interesting perspectives on privilege, classism, sexism and the life of refugees and whilst it was a harrowing read, it was also incredibly insightful. This is another one that I didn’t enjoy reading, but as soon as I finished I knew I couldn’t give it anything less than 5 stars and I absolutely stand by that rating.

Famous Five: Five Go Off In A Caravan – Enid Blyton ⭐️⭐️⭐️

And so the 5 star streak ends, but at least it was by a book I knew wouldn’t be 5 stars rather than one I hoped would be!

The fifth instalment in the Famous Five series (so many fives!) was not too different to the rest – the children are on holiday from school, they go off and do something without adult supervision that seems absolutely unfathomable when read through 21st century eyes and then a bunch of pre-teens solve a crime that the local authorities are unable to solve completely by accident.

The adventure element of this one in particular didn’t come in until the last 25% mark I reckon, which made the rest feel quite slow. I think this may have been intentional, a ‘false sense of security’ kind of thing, but it felt a little predictable. However, I am 27 and this book was written in the 1940s for children, so I may be a bit harsh.

Either way, it was fine – five down, five to go.

To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods – Molly X Chang ⭐️⭐️

And so began my ridiculous endeavour to read the remaining six books on my monthly tbr in four days – I managed to finish the Famous Five in an afternoon, but this one took me a little bit longer. I coread this, listening to the audiobook on Spotify, and I’m glad I did – so much of the story is set in a magical, semi-historical version of China, even including Chinese words within the story, and without the audiobook I never would have gotten any of the pronunciations right.

But otherwise, this book fell really flat for me – it had so much potential, but the world building was really lacking, the way the characters spoke to each other felt incredibly forced and I saw an interesting review on Storygraph that pointed out that there was no need for the antagonists to be Roman. The ones that attack her home and her city are a foreign army, coming through a portal in the sky, boasting science and technology beyond the comprehension of the magic users residing there, but there was nothing that identified them as the Romans we learnt about in school – as an English person, I pictured English characters, even though the Princes’ surname was Augustus. Their name was the only vaguely Roman thing about them.

Everything just felt a bit disjointed – I’m not sure if the story needed more editing or if perhaps the writing just shouldn’t have been published, because while the concept was relatively good, I don’t think it was executed particularly well and I’m disappointed to have been let down by another book from my Illumicrate subscription, because these books cost too much for me to keep being disappointed in them!

I did make a start on The Prospects by K. T. Hoffman but only managed to finish this on the morning of June 1st, so unfortunately didn’t finish it in time to count it towards this wrap up but as a ✨ sneak preview ✨, I really enjoyed it, Luis is an absolutely icon of a character and I think I’m going to rate it 4 or 5 stars but I’ve not quite decided yet. I’ll keep my full thoughts for next month though!

So the tbr books I didn’t get round to are Sixteen Souls by Rosie Talbott, Radio Silence by Alice Oseman and Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne. They will all be added to my leftover tbr list and optimistically, I’ll be able to get through a few of them if I ever get through one of my monthly tbrs!

But either way, seven books in a month is above average for me and for FOUR of them to have 5 star ratings is almost unbelievable.

Thank you so much for taking time out of your book,

Sophie xx