Hello!

Every month I really try to make an effort to feel more present and make things feel like they’re going a bit more slowly, but then it’s the end of the month and I feel like I’ve missed it again!

I was so optimistic about my tbr for this month but I got a little bit stuck. I only finished 5 (four and a half maybe…) books but according to the spreadsheet I’ve been using made by @emmaskies I read the most pages I’ve read in a month so far this year, so take from that what you will.

I started the month by finishing The Prospects by K. T. Hoffman – I did a little challenge at the end of May to try and read as much of my tbr as possible in the last few days of the month and I was 120 pages off of finishing this book in the month it was actually on my tbr, but I did binge read the last 120 pages in one sitting on the morning of June 1st and I loved it. It’s one of those books that has really stuck with me, which suggests I should have rated it 5 stars but I’m really confident in my 4 star rating. I didn’t love the beginning – there was too much baseball talk that I didn’t understand and the characters felt a bit bland, but from the 20-30% mark, the characters were given so much more depth and I loved them. It was super sweet, I thought it was a fantastic MM romance and though I’m not the right person to say whether the trans rep was good, but I enjoyed the trans insight! There was fantastic anxiety rep and the snapshot of ADHD was shown really well on the page. I enjoyed it and it’s really stuck with me – considering I finished it on literally the first day of the month, it still feels really fresh in my mind.

The next book I read was an audiobook and I didn’t expect to finish it as quickly as I did but I happened to do a lot more driving that week than I expected – I listened to Gild by Raven Kennedy which I rated 3 stars. It felt like it didn’t really get started? The thing that I find really irritating with a lot of series at the moment is that they know they’re going to be a long series so the individual book doesn’t feel like a complete story. I spent the whole experience waiting for the story to start and it just felt so disjointed. I am hooked enough to continue the series (on my Kindle, I’m not rushing to get physical copies) but I don’t care about the main character at all, I don’t understand what’s going on with the plot at all – it’s definitely less memorable, especially in comparison to how well I remember The Prospects.

Will I ever read Glint? Who knows, stay tuned.

Then it was time to pause everything and read Not In Love by Ali Hazelwood – I love Ali’s books, but the last three releases have been 4 star reads and after loving The Love Hypothesis and Love On The Brain so much, I was starting to worry that maybe I didn’t love those original books as much as I thought I did so when I absolutely devoured this book, I was relieved! I love Ali’s dry, sarcastic writing style, I loved both of the protagonist characters, I liked the plot outside of the romance and the tension was amazing. The only vague criticisms I have are that I didn’t really understanding why the female character’s POV was in first person and the male character’s POV was in third person, I would have loved to have been inside Eli’s brain, and then the other thing was that Rue was incredibly autistic-coded and I’d have loved if it hadn’t been a silent thing, because being autistic and being disabled and using those labels are not a bad thing, they’re not bad words, and not using the words kind of stigmatises them, but obviously I don’t know the intention of the author so maybe I’m off the mark on that one. Rue is so autistic though. I loved it and rated it 5 stars so now I need to pick up a physical copy.

And then another audiobook read (after a week with loads of driving) was The Book of Two Ways by Jodi Picoult which I rated 4 stars – this is a book that I have soft DNFed before because I found all the Egyptian terminology way too overwhelming and I just wasn’t immersed at all. So I listened to it as an audiobook this time and that beginning stage still wasn’t that immersive but it was easier to look past it because I was just listening in the car. As the book went on, my mental rating was dipping from an average 3 stars to a confusing and slow paced high 2 stars – the Egyptian stuff was so overwhelming (and arguably not relevant to the plot at all, at least not in that much detail) and the two storylines needed to reach a resolution because I was getting so bored. When everything was explained and all started to make sense again, it was incredibly satisfying and wasn’t anything I ever could have predicted, but I’m afraid it took too long to get to the satisfying bit and I got so bored. I got to the end and I did like the ending, but the research info dumping and the pacing just meant I couldn’t give it more than 4 stars, I did enjoy it though!

Then, the last book I (have very nearly) finished this month was actually a physical book I started on the first day of the month after I finished The Prospects, I paused it to read Not In Love and I’ve been slowly chugging my way through it over the rest of the month – A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle. This is a non-fiction autobiography from one of Scotland’s ‘worst criminals’ that is my book club pick for the month as it was a book we received as a wedding gift from one of my uncles. Even though it took me literally the entire month to read, I did enjoy it! The writing style was very conversational and friendly, which was a bit confusing for me especially at the beginning when I felt I started to like Boyle despite knowing where the rest of the narrative was going to go! Rating non-fiction is tricky, but I’d probably give this 3 stars – I enjoyed it, I didn’t not look forward to reading it but it did take me a long time to get through and it’s not life changing for me, if that makes sense? A positive 3 star read for sure.

The two books I didn’t get round to were my Famous Five read for the month, Five on Kirrin Island Again by Enid Blyton and my May Afterlight subscription book which was One Last Shot by Bety Cayouette. Just like every other month, it was just a case of running out of time so I will be reading Famous Five asap and adding One Last Shot to my leftover tbr!

I was going to try and tag on my July tbr but I’ve nattered too much again! I’ll do a bonus post throughout the week as it’s an exciting one this July!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx