**Fireworks light the sky, the reds and blues illuminating the entire maine street. People come out to watch the bright sky spark to life from shoppe windows and tables with closed umbrellas. Cheers sound, hardly heard over the boom of the fireworks. I stare up from my spot on the sidewalk where I sip my cool beverage and watch the colors light the sky.**

I read a TON in June. I think I made more of an effort to prioritize reading last month which helped me get through more than usual. Incentives from summer reading programs don’t hurt either. I have actually completed 9 books in June which I’m excited to talk about. I actually half followed my TBR for once too which was great, picking up about 4/6 of the books I wanted to read. I’m excited to discuss these, so let’s jump right in.

• Killer Spirit by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

This is the second and final book in the Squad series which I had just started in May. The series follows a group of cheerleaders in high school who are actually part of a government organization since they go under the radar and won’t be suspected of anything. My feelings for this one were similar to that of the first: I thought it was just okay. The story is interesting but I feel like the plot never feels fully developed. There’s not really much to the story and I wasn’t overly invested but it’s a quick, fun series.

• With the Fire On High by Elizabeth Acevedo

I had listened to The Poet X a few years ago and liked Elizabeth Acevedo as a narrator which is what led me to this audiobook. This one follows a high school senior with a love for cooking juggling being a teen mom, trying to figure out what to do after school, and trying to figure out how to fund a school-sponsored trip to Spain for her culinary arts class. I don’t really think Elizabeth Acevedo is the author for me. That’s not to say that her books are bad by any means, but I think that her books are just not where my interest lies. I will say though that I stand by the fact that Elizabeth Acevedo is an engaging audiobook narrator.

• Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

Where to start with this one. Kate and Tully have been best friends for decades, starting when they were 14 in 1970. This is a story that follows that friendship for decades and explores the ups and downs and the different choices they each make and what things they want out of life. It’s a book about friendship and life. And it was so good. When I first started, I thought it was an okay story. The writing was dry, and the story was . . . just two girls, so simple. But as I got farther in, I realized that it’s not the writing, but Kristin Hannah’s storytelling. Something about it just captivated me and made me feel so many things. Just the passing of decades made me emotional because it just showed how much time was passing. I love how Kate and Tully want different things and we see how it affects their lives. A small thing, but I also love the way Kate’s crush on Johnny was portrayed. The way she thought about him and noticed his every movement and just the way it was written was unlike anything I had ever read before. It felt deeper somehow and actually felt like a real crush. I had so many feelings during my read and can safely say this was my favorite book of the month. As of right now it fits in my top ten of the year as well. While I wouldn’t say I loved it or anything, it definitely made me feel a lot and it’s one I think I’ll think about sometimes.

• Animal Farm by George Orwell

This was my other audiobook that I listened to in June. I always want to read more classics then never end up getting to them because I remember that I just don’t like them. But this one is short and a good starting place to get more into them. Plus, I liked parts of 1984 so I wanted to give this a try. I’m going to come out and just say that I wasn’t a fan. I think listening to is was the only way I was able to get through it. I just had no interest the entire time, was bored, and didn’t enjoy the book. I will be trying out some other classics (hopefully), but this one was not it for me.

• Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez

I finally read my first Abby Jimenez novel. I have been hearing such incredible things for so long so I wanted to give her books a chance. I remember a few months ago I was testing audiobooks and this one sounded really good so I decided to buy it and give it a read. Honest thoughts: I’m kind of disappointed. This one follows a doctor who works in the hospital her family has worked in for generations. After getting run off the road by a raccoon, Alexis meets Daniel, a guy living in this small town who runs the bed and breakfast and is ten years younger. The two strike up a relationship and we see the struggles they both have with the roles and expectations they have each been thrust into with their family legacies. First of all, the romance was just not there. This was a purely physical relationship for most of the book, though Daniel definitely wants more and Alexis insists she doesn’t. I just didn’t feel a connection between these two at all. I’ve seen reviews online about people hating on Alexis and loving Daniel and saying he deserves better, but I actually didn’t like him. I feel like he always liked her but went with her arrangements to keep seeing her, even though Alexis wanted something casual. I personally don’t like when that happens in books because it feels like the person who falls first in that type of relationship, in our case Daniel, is . . . tricking the other one into a relationship? I don’t think that’s the right way to describe it, but I hate when that happens. Plus towards the end he does something that Alexis didn’t want to happen. I understand Alexis was keeping a lot of her personal life private, but I think Daniel should have listened to her and respected her wishes. My other gripe is the age gap. Alexis is ten years older than Daniel, which fine, whatever. But I hate that she keeps saying how young he is. That just feels so weird to me when she’s having this relationship with him but says that he’s a baby and too young for her. If she didn’t say anything I wouldn’t have cared but it just feels weird. I will say that I like seeing Alexis in doctor mode. We have a few scenes of this and they were quite honestly my favorite. But overall this was not for me. There wasn’t much going on and I didn’t care for either of the characters or the romance.

• Happy Place by Emily Henry

Probably not the best idea to go right from Part of Your World to Happy Place since there are actually quite a few similarities, but lesson learned. This is a reread I was doing since I wanted to go back through my Emily Henry collection. This one follows Harriet and Wyn and the trip they take with their friends every year to Maine. But this year, they’re keeping secrets from their friends since they broke up months ago and no one knows. Throughout the book we get the present day and glimpses of the past to figure out what went wrong and how it led to everything now. I think when I first read this book I thought it was fine. This is one where it seemed like people either loved it or hated it, but I thought it was just okay. This reread though made me like it a little less I think. Going through this one, I felt like I was reading a whole lot of nothing. As we read through the present day chapters, I don’t feel like there were a lot of moments between the friends or just a lot of moments to progress the story. It felt a lot like Harriet in her own head about Wyn or the interactions these two were having. The past did help us gain some insight into their relationship, but I think we should have had more present moments. So did I like it? Sure, it was fine. But I think the whole thing is 300+ pages of Harriet struggling with the end of her relationship and making sense of it that nothing else really happens, so it feels like there is no substance to the story. I still need to reread Funny Story and do a first read of Great Big Beautiful Life to see what I think of my ranking.

• The Edge of Forever by Meghan P. Browne

This is a middle grade book featuring a girl staying in this small Texas town for the summer with her aunt. She doesn’t know anyone so busies herself with helping her aunt and reading at the local library in hopes of winning a summer reading challenge. She ends up meeting a boy around her age and the two of them go on this quest to discover secrets about the town. Something I loved about this book was the summer reading challenge our main character Maisie participates in. I have been doing summer reading challenges at my local library for so many years, so it was great to find a book where the main character was doing the same thing since I’ve never seen that before. And we also get a layer of grief as Maisie has recently lost her father and her mother is going through a lot as well. However, I think this book tried to do too much. We get family secrets, town investigations, summer reading, grief, and not all of them went hand in hand as well as they could have. I think we lost what was supposed to be the main plot of the town scandal somewhere in the book. The two main characters are investigating but I feel like they didn’t really figure anything out and I couldn’t understand what was so important about all of it. Then by the end it didn’t even really feel resolved. I think the story needed some more fleshing out and it could have been a bit better.

• Dear Girl by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Paris Rosenthal; illustrated by Holly Hatam

Honestly, I have nothing to really say. It’s a picture book that helped me finish my goal of reading five books in genres I don’t usually read from.

• Love Radio by Ebony LaDelle

I have wanted to read this book for a while now, like probably a few years, so I finally checked it out from my library and gave it a read. I think I actually put this on my July TBR but that was before I started it or right when I started so I didn’t know I would be getting to it at the time. Anyway, this book follows two characters: Dani, who comes from a loving household, loves to write, and has shut out everyone in her life due to an unknown incident. We also have Prince: raised by a single mom and older brother to 7 year old Mook, radio DJ and love expert, and guy who has crushed on Dani since middle school. These two meet and Prince, the love expert, tells Dani that he wanted to take her on three dates to get her to fall for him, and Dani being our love skeptic does agree after some apprehension and says it won’t happen. We watch these two start hanging out and planning thoughtful dates for each other while they juggle with their own things, like Prince taking care of his mom who has MS and his younger brother while going to school and working on the radio, and Dani with her college applications, writer’s block, and incident. This one was another I just didn’t really have strong feelings for. I think I just haven’t been finding many books I’ve actually liked this year. There was nothing inherently wrong with this book, but I just didn’t really get invested in the story.

I did have Children of Fallen Gods on my TBR since I was about 70 pages in, but I decided to soft DNF it for now. I wasn’t in the mood and I honestly kind of just wanted to restart it, so I want to pick it up again before the year ends. I am also contemplating DNFing The Rise and Ruin of Everwood by Alicia Morgan. I just don’t like it but keep wanting to continue, so I need to make a decision about that one still.

I had a lot of reading in June which I was very happy about. I’m hoping I can read a lot in July as well and find some good books.

xoxo,

Just another reader