June 2019 Reading Wrap-Up

I’m so happy to say that after quite the two-month reading slump, I’m back and motivated as ever. This month I read 8 books, tied for my best month so far this year!

Another round of Buzzwordathon was held in June, accounting for 4 of my 8 books. Instead of repeating everything I said in my Buzzwordathon Wrap-Up post, I’ll just link it for you to check out here. Feel free to go back and read that one if you’re curious what my readathon books were!

As for the remaining four books, below are my summaries and mini-reviews of each of them. As usual, my monthly and year-to-date stats are laid out as well. I can’t believe how well I’m doing on my reading goals this year, and I’m excited to post a mid-year wrap up next week to expand on those goals a little more and talk about my favorite books that I’ve read so far in 2019!

This month’s quick stats:
8 books
2,553 pages
8 authors (4 female)
2 nonfiction | 6 fiction
Year-to-date quick stats:
45 books (4 audiobooks)
12,821 pages
41 authors (25 female)
15 nonfiction | 30 fiction

Title: The Breakdown
Author: B.A. Paris
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 328
My Rating: 3 stars

Brief Summary: Ever since driving past a parked car in the woods, in the rain, and not stopping to help the woman inside, Cass has felt extremely uneasy about the entire situation – even though she had no reason to believe the woman was in danger. Later, when it’s revealed that the woman was murdered in that exact location, Cass’s guilt goes to the next level. Along with constantly thinking about how she should have saved the woman, Cass starts to forget little things in her daily life – where she left her car, if she took her medication, the alarm code for their house, etc. When she starts getting ominous phone calls to her house, she gets paranoid that the killer is now out for her, but no one in her life – including her husband – seems to believe her.

My Thoughts: Before this book, I had read Paris’s two other thrillers and given them both 5 stars – so I was incredibly excited to read this one. I liked the start of the story, but I quickly became annoyed with the fact that the main character started forgetting things and that became the cause of her unreliability as a narrator and as a human in her own life. I don’t know guys, am I the only one tired of thrillers with main (female) characters who have memory problems? It seems like a lazy way to leave out details that later become important in the mystery. But if there is anyone who particularly LIKES when characters can’t remember things about their days and the unreliability that that causes, you probably would really enjoy this book! I love Paris’s writing style and overall the rest of the story kept me intrigued throughout the entire book, but unfortunately is my least favorite of her thrillers so far. It looks like her next is coming out early 2020, so I’m definitely excited for that 😊

Title: Honeymoon with Death
Author: Vivian Conroy
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 193
My Rating: 4 stars
Release Date: July 1, 2019
Thanks to NetGalley and Canelo for providing me with this eARC in return for an honest review!

Brief Summary: This book is tagged to be “the perfect 1920s cosy crime caper.” It follows newlywed Damaris on her honeymoon to a small island in Greece, a trip planned and provided by her new husband. Upon arriving, she starts to get the feeling that she’s been here before, which can’t be possible as she never traveled anywhere as a child or growing up. To add to her uneasiness, she starts seeing things that later disappear and at the peak of her confusion finds herself standing over a dead body, unable to explain how she got there. Luckily for Damaris, there is one man on the island who doesn’t think she is crazy OR guilty – an inspector named Jasper who has the feeling there is more going on around the island than meets the eye.

My Thoughts: What did I just say about women in thrillers having memory problems and those being the only cause of suspicion and unreliability for the otherwise stable main character? Interesting… but again I will digress, as the memory problems were only a small portion of this book’s mystery and I otherwise found myself very engrossed in the story and all of the characters. I really liked the vacation vibe, something I have not read a lot of within the thriller category, and the alternating perspectives that the author used to give points of view from many of the characters. For how complex the mystery is and number of characters, I never got too confused and I really enjoyed the reveals and how everything was pieced together. Overall I think this is a solid thriller and definitely recommend to those who enjoy inspector/detective style mysteries.

Title: Scythe
Author: Neal Shusterman
Genre: Dystopia
Pages: 433
My Rating: 5 stars

Brief Summary: In a futuristic world where technology has advanced so much that humans have achieved immortality, the only form of population control comes from scythes – highly-respected individuals given the responsibility to “glean”, or kill, a certain number of people each year. While everyone in the world recognizes the power these scythes contain, most would never want that level of responsibility or guilt that undoubtedly goes with it. Citra and Rowan are two teenagers chosen to become apprentices, studying under a scythe for a year and then given the opportunity to become one themselves – resulting in them having to make monumental decisions including whether they can accept the responsibility, handle the difficult job, and exactly what type of scythes they will end up becoming.

My Thoughts: THIS is a dystopia done right. I love the complexity of this dystopian world and the way that Shusterman describes it. Not only is it interesting and entertaining to read about, it’s plausible to assume that our current world could evolve into something that resembles the book’s world (which, of course, is slightly terrifying). I also enjoy that this book’s conflicts don’t center around a corrupt government like so many dystopias do, and there is no “chosen one” main character that has us puzzled as to how or why they are the ones able to start a revolution. Instead, it contains relatable characters, intriguing twists, and many moments that had me questioning the definition of humanity in the realm of this book’s world. Definitely worth the hype that I have seen this book receive, and I look forward to reading the subsequent books in the series.

Title: Jane Eyre
Author: Charlotte Bronte
Genre: Classic
Pages: 443
My Rating: 4 stars

Brief Summary: Jane Eyre is the story of an orphan who grows up having to provide and fend for herself completely. Going from her unkind aunt’s house to boarding school with few friends to working as a governess (tutor/teacher) at a rich family’s estate, Jane becomes accustomed to shrinking into the background, only speaking when spoken to and not offering more of her opinion than asked. When she eventually falls in love with her employer and starts feeling more attention on her, she must make a decision about the kind of life she truly wants for herself.

My Thoughts: I’m not really sure what I expected from this book – I knew very little going in, other than the obvious fact that it’s a classic novel beloved by many. Like most classics, I found MANY parts of the book to be unnecessarily drawn out and slow. To get through it, I bounced back and forth between my phyiscal copy and the audiobook. I probably would have given my reading experience a 2 or 3 – but looking back on the story now that I’ve finished the book, I do think it’s beautiful and I can appreciate the long, descriptive portions as a testament to the classic that it is. What I most like about the book is that we as readers and the other characters in the book come to love Jane not for her beauty (as it’s actually mentioned several times that Jane is not pretty), but for her character and morals that extend throughout the entire book. I’m very glad to have finally read this book and now be in the know as to what all of the hype is about!

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s
https://bookedsolid.blog/2019/07/03/june-2019-reading-wrap-up/
bookedsolid.blog
crawl=CC-MAIN-2020-45
77257
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:YHJSIGRG7MJRVUNUBNQSFI6TKSCP2MZ5
<urn:uuid:51437983-042d-439f-8247-0299d4cd4c79>
2020-10-27T12:49:17Z
192.0.78.24
text/html
sha1:TWLKZZGXQBG756JKUI3EXTKOVBARMZTG
<urn:uuid:1b4ac61c-1a50-4053-8278-7d6c4830c3eb>
https://bookedsolid.blog/2019/07/03/june-2019-reading-wrap-up/
response
<urn:uuid:a62d6be9-8101-4a63-af3c-acf74dcfcd1c>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2020-45
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for October 2020
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-143.ec2.internal
software: Apache Nutch 1.17 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.2-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: http://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/