June Wrap Up

Hope you had a wonderful Pride month!

Total Number of Books: 16
Total Number of Pages: 5,135
Physical: 6
eBooks: 5
Audiobooks: 5
Favorite (New) Reads of the Month: Joyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul Scheer AND Girls Who Burn by M.K. Pagano

Physical:

Wild and Crooked by Leah Thomas – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Things We Couldn’t Say by Jay Coles – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Fresh by Margot Wood – ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Pointe, Claw by Amber J. Keyser – ⭐️⭐️
The Quiet and the Loud by Helena Fox – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Heartstopper, Vol. 5 by Alice Oseman – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Went back and read some backlist titles this month, but only came out with a couple winners and all fabulously queer. Wild and Crooked had fun and interesting characters with some great disability representation. I loved the platonic love story for our main characters Kayln and Gus and how they untangled their connected family histories. I read the fresh new volume of Heartstopper before bed one night, basking in the glow of their adorableness. I never want Alice Oseman to stop creating it.

eBooks:

Ever Since by Alena Bruzas – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
Next to You by Hannah Bonam-Young – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Girls Who Burn by M.K. Pagano – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
The Pairing by Casey McQuiston – ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5
But How Are You, Really by Ella Dawson – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston was kind of disappointing. I’ve read all their other work so I was excited when I got approved for the arc, but I was left feeling underwhelmed. I love second-chance romances, but I just wasn’t feeling these characters—though their chemistry was off the charts. And everyone was having sex with everyone as they moved through Europe. I thought we’d get more about the food and wine tasting. I absolutely loved Girls Who Burn by M.K. Pagano. It felt very atmospheric and her characters were extremely vivid. Small town murder mysteries are almost always a fun time.

Audiobooks:

The Chain by Chimene Suleyman – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Joyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul Scheer – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Louder Than Words by Ashley Woodfolk and Lexi Underwood – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado – ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado was an incredibly beautiful yet heart wrenching read. She described the cycles of abuse so poetically. I had been waiting for Joyful Recollections of Trauma by Paul Scheer since it’s inception. As an avid listener of his podcast, How Did This Get Made, I would hear the little snippets of his upbringing that kind of always horrified the audience and his fellow hosts. Now that he’s finally written it all down, there’s a more completed picture of who he is and how he got to be the positive and engaging guy that he is. However, I know that the book probably only scratched the surface of the wild stories he has. Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna was an incredible story of one of the originals of the feminist punk riot grrrl movement. Reading about her stories of growing up in the Pacific Northwest, college and the feminist scene in Washington, and making music in the 90’s was fascinating. And she ended up marrying a Beastie Boy!