Total Number of Books: 13
Total Number of Pages: 4,381
Physical: 5
eBooks: 6
Audiobooks: 2
Favorite (New) Reads of the Month: For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing AND We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange
Physical:
For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Ace of Spades by Faridah Abike-Iyimide – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Local Woman Missing by Mary Kubica – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Now that is a good group of books right there—1.5 stars away from fives across the board! All year, there was so much hype over Ace of Spades—”Gossip Girl meets Get Out“—and I was a little wary. Seriously, the hype was real! It was such a well crafted story that had me on the edge of my seat the entire time. A bunch of these books were killer mysteries—pun intended. I’ve become such a big fan of mystery thrillers, I think I’m going to have to quit saving them for the later months and start reading them all year long. I really loved Normal People so I was excited for Sally Rooney’s newest, Beautiful World, Where Are You. Not gonna lie, it took some time to get into—I almost DNF’ed it. However, I’m happy I stuck it out; I ended up listening to the audiobook for some of it, too. I read a lot of literary fiction centered around familial relationships and I think We Are the Brennans is one of my all-time favorites. It’s such a wonderful story, with perspectives from all the different members of the family. It really snuck up on me.
eBooks:
If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
The Spanish Love Exception by Elena Armas – ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
How We Fall Apart by Katie Zhao – ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
XOXO by Axie Oh – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fools in Love edited by Ashley Herring Blake & Rebecca Podos – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Ballerinas by Rachel Kapelke-Dale – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Spanish Love Exception, at almost 500 pages, no contemporary romance should be that long. In the mystery How We Fall Apart, it’s hard to find sympathy for a pretty despicable person—even if they’re now dead. According to Goodreads it’s the first in a line of books—I’ll probably continue with the books out of curiosity. XOXO was really sweet and interesting and this is coming from someone who knows nothing about Kpop. The rest of these books will be discussed in a post next week.
Audiobooks:
If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous by Now by Via Bleidner – ⭐️⭐️.5
Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Being from Calabasas, I was excited to read If You Lived Here You’d Be Famous by Now just to get a kick out of a Gen X view of the town where I grew up and hold such complications feelings for. However, this was pretty disappointing. Obviously I haven’t been a student at Calabasas High school in over a decade, but it didn’t not resemble anything like how Bleidner describes in her book of essays. By the end of the book, which dragged on for ages, I kind of wanted to smack her in the face for her self-righteous attitude.
Lindsay Glenne 