June Wrap-Up!
Hello Hello Hello! How are you all doing? It is July which means half of 2021 is over. Where did the time go? Seriously. If you find out, let me know.
So throughout June, I only read 5 books, hence my lack of a bi-weekly wrap-up this month. To nobody's surprise, 3 of those were thriller/mystery types. Here's the lowdown.
1. Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover - 🙅
I really have no idea as to what possessed me to read this book. I have an oddly specific taste in romance novels and even the description of this wasn't something I'm interested in, so why oh why, did I read this book? Both of the main protagonists were annoying and I was rooting for the main female lead to just wake up and realize that this man is so darn toxic, but alas when do things ever go my way in romance novels? I mean the title is literally 'Ugly Love', so really what was I expecting?
The basic gist is that there's a girl who moves to a new city to live with her brother. She meets her across-the-hall neighbor, who is of course a very nice-looking young man who happens to have quite a traumatic past. They enter some sort of friends with benefits situation, but has that worked for anyone ever? So they kind of fall in love, but the dude's past prevents him from leading a happy life and it goes on and on. My gut told me to stop reading about 50 pages in, but my brain told me to continue because she just really needed to see how the whole story would implode on itself at the end. In retrospect, I can now say, the implosion wasn't even worth it. Not even a good implosion. Do yourself a favor and read literally any other romance book instead of this one.
2. Some Choose Darkness by Charlie Donlea - 😐
This too was another subpar reading experience. I don't know man, June was kind of a meh reading month for me. My main qualm with this book was that our main protagonist was so utterly uninteresting. I also should've known that the author was a man trying to write a main female protagonist, which to be fair, sometimes works out fine (case in point, Riley Sager), but in this case, all I got was that the author was trying to convince me she was super smart, 'quirky' (whatever that means), and loves beer.
The main protagonist is a woman named Rory Moore who is a forensic reconstructionist. After her lawyer father passes, she takes on one of his last cases, a cold case from 20 years ago investigating the disappearance of a woman who was a major witness to a murder. The mystery itself was interesting enough. I mean I read the whole thing, so that must count for something. However, I will say that if you're really interested in characters and character development, this isn't for you cause none of that happens here.
3. The Dollmaker by Mary Burton - 🍪
This was one of the two SOLID books I read this month. I read a Mary Burton book before and I found it mildly interesting. But this was weird. Like....really weird. It's about this man, Dakota Sharpe, who's some kind of state-level detective. He begins investigating the case of this young woman who is tattooed to look like a doll and then murdered. Yeah. And on top of all of this, the medical examiner on the case, Tessa McGowan, happens to be his estranged wife, whom he is of course still in love with. So we got a weird murder case and a second-chance romance story on the side. It's safe to say I'll be checking out more by Mary Burton soon.
This is a good example of 'the journey is better than the destination'. The reveal at the end had me all kinds of confused and I found it unnecessarily dramatic, but the ride to get there was super entertaining. I liked Dakota and the medical examiner, Tessa. The setup for the case had me intrigued almost immediately, and while the ending fell flat, I still thoroughly enjoyed all the weird parts in between.
4. With Our Blessing by Jo Spain - 🍪
So a few months ago you might remember (why would you, though?) that I read a book called The Darkest Place by Jo Spain. To my surprise, it happened to be the fourth book in a series of six, which I don't know how I didn't realize. I also don't know why it took me so long to go back and start from the beginning, but I was in the mood and I finally decided to read the first one. And um... it was fabulous. The detective team in these novels is just so funny. It's like mild comedy mixed with a murder story/investigation. Our main detective, Tom Reynolds, seems like a gem of a human being. His friendship with his sidekick, Ray is just so adorable and funny. The rest of the team is just so great too. We see bits and pieces of their own backstory as well. I've already read the second book, and am currently reading the third book in the series, so you'll be hearing more of my love for this detective team soon enough.
This story introduces all the characters and delves into a surprisingly horrific crime. I mean given my description of mild comedy and funny detectives, you'd think the author would go light on the human depravity, but no. We're following the investigation into the murder of a nun, which leads to an investigation of this one church in rural Ireland. I finished this book in about two days. VERY compelling and I'd highly recommend it.
5. Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - 🙅
I've heard a lot about this author and was really interested in checking out some of her work, so I decided to start with her debut short story collection. I ended up not liking it. This was a little too abstract for me. The first story really captured my attention, but the others just went over my head. The author is very obviously incredibly talented, but I just couldn't wrap my head around a lot of the things she was trying to say. The author mixes a lot of themes of magical realism, fantasy, and absurdity, with themes of feminism and femininity.
The first story, 'The Husband Stitch', is my absolute favorite of the collection and one that will probably stick with me for a while given how insane it is. It's a take on the classic, shouldn't-be-for-children, children's story, 'The Green Ribbon'. You know, that story about that girl with a green ribbon around her neck that she never takes off. And then she meets a guy and he's curious about the green ribbon but she never tells him, and they get married and like live their life, but he just gets super curious about this green ribbon and then one day after YEARS of marriage, she finally takes it off and HER HEAD FALLS OFF. You know that story? The first story in this short story collection is based on it but takes a very weird turn that is REALLY worth reading.
But, as for the rest of the collection, I genuinely don't remember what was in them. I don't think this is the fault of the author. I'm just not someone who enjoys fantasy or elements of magical realism in their stories, nor am I a fan of short story collections in general. I don't think I was the intended audience for this book. That being said, I'd still be interested in checking out more from Carmen Maria Machado, perhaps in novel format.
So there you have it folks, the books that I've read in June. I'm still behind on my reading challenge, but I'll make it up one day. How's your reading going? Read anything interesting lately? Let me know!
