July Reading Wrap-up!

Hi hello, how are you all doing today? I am back with a reading wrap-up for July. I don't know what happened, but July ended up being my strongest reading month in a while. I've finally gotten back on track with my reading challenge and the majority of the books I read this month were absolutely fantastic. Without further ado, let's get into it. 

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - 🍪

So, I don't know if you remember, but last month I was having a moment with detective fiction and it trailed into my reading this month, with my first three books of the month being mystery-ish. Case Histories is not my typical detective-type book, but it was nonetheless enjoyable. We're following three different cold cases assigned to a private detective named Jackson Brodie. The three cases are from different time periods and are unrelated to each other. 

Jackson Brodie is not your nice, good-guy type detective. I mean the man brings his young daughter to crime scenes and generally had me wondering, is this guy for real? In a way, Kate Atkinson's portrayal of Brodie reminded me of Tana French-style detectives. They're not really 'good guys', but you know that they're good people, just complicated and sometimes do very questionable things. 

While I probably won't be continuing this series, I found the non-mystery aspects of this book more interesting than the mysteries themselves. If you're just looking for a mystery or a thriller, this isn't for you. However, if you're looking for a book about a random assortment of characters dealing with grief, and there just happens to be a mystery threading through all the individual narratives, then this might be up your alley.   

Beneath The Surface & Sleeping Beauties by Jo Spain 

(Inspector Tom Reynolds Series #2 & #3) - 🍪

 

As promised in my last monthly wrap-up, I continued the Inspector Tom Reynolds series by Jo Spain, featuring the highly entertaining Tom Reynolds and his equally entertaining squad of detectives. I genuinely don't remember much from either of these books, but I do remember being intrigued enough to finish both within a few days of each other. Nothing much interesting to report here other than, check out the series if you're interested in Irish detective fiction. 

The Outsider by Stephen King - 🙅 

This...was not for me. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't my style. The story starts off with the most brutal of murders and the police investigating what happened. They have evidence (physical + circumstantial) placing this one person at the scene of the crime, however, there is just as much evidence placing that same person in a completely different town at the exact moment of the crime. So, who's the actual murderer? How did this happen? Answering this question is the entire rest of the book. 

Personally, as intriguing as the plot was, the book was way too long. Easily could have been 200 pages shorter, and the point still would've been made well. I also didn't find any of the characters particularly compelling or interesting. The detective was a little boring. The rest of the squad was also a little dull. The build-up to the actual point was slow, and then after the point was made, it somehow got even slower. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Stephen King has way better novels (*cough* Pet Sematary *cough*). 

A Will to Kill by RV Raman - 😐

Think, Agatha Christie murder mystery but everyone is Indian and it all takes place in India. First off, I loved the setting. The whole murder mystery takes place in Nilgiri hills, which is in southern India and is such a picturesque place. Too nice for a murder to occur there, but suspend your beliefs for the purpose of the novel. We start off with this man named Bhaskar Fernandez in fear of his life after he narrowly escapes an assassination attempt. Bhaskar has an insanely large estate and is very wealthy. Because he fears for his life, he asks Detective Harith Athreya to investigate his family and the attempted assassination. Athreya arrives at Bhaskar's estate and is greeted by a horde of friends and family members who are there for a party Bhaskar is hosting that weekend. A landslide occurs, forcing everyone to remain at the estate and then a murder happens. Who died? Why did they die? Athreya investigates the matter and everyone is a suspect. 

This was a short, entertaining read. I loved the Christie-like vibes and appreciated that the mystery took place in India, with references to Indian places and foods and such. The reason for my relatively lackluster rating is because there was nothing particularly new about the actual mystery in this book. I would say it's very much in line with your standard Poirot or Holmes mystery, with lots of focus on the detective questioning suspects and not really gaining much insight into what the detective is actually thinking until the reveals at the end. If you like a good 'locked-room mystery', you'll definitely like and appreciate this.

Competitive Grieving by Nora Zelevansky - 🍦

The next book I read was a 2021 release that had been on my radar for quite some time. This got 5 enthusiastic, wholehearted stars from me. It was interesting, funny, and weirdly hopeful. 

The book follows a woman named Wren whose best friend Stewart has recently, unexpectedly died. In the days after his death, she finds herself questioning whether she actually knew her best friend as well as she thought she did. We are inside Wren's head the entire book, hearing her thoughts while also watching her interact with Stewart's other friends and family, learning things about Stewart she never knew. We get glimpses into Wren and Stewart's past and how they ended up becoming friends in the first place, while also watching how their relationship changed over time as Stewart became a famous actor. We also follow Wren's experience dealing with her grief while she's also feeling that she needs to compete with Stewart's other friends for 'best friend grieving rights'. 

Even though this book focuses on the grieving process and discusses death, the book wasn't as sad as I anticipated. Yes, there were parts that are intensely emotional, yet there were just as many parts that were comical and hopeful. I found Wren to be a very relatable character. Her sarcastic inner monologues had me laughing out loud, but I also found her moments of uncertainty and anger to be realistic and understandable. I found myself loving George, one of Stewart's other best friends, and his budding friendship with Wren. I found their conversations about regret and guilt to be hard-hitting and insightful. I even got teary-eyed at some point (shocking, yes I know). Overall this book is emotional, funny, and heartwarming and I'd 100% highly recommend it. 

What Are You Going Through by Sigrid Nunez - 🍪

I don't know how this happened, but after Competitive Grieving, I happened to read another book discussing grief. In this book, we're following an unnamed narrator and her experience with different people she meets, all while she is dealing with her friend's final days fighting cancer. 

To be completely honest, I don't remember much from this book other than the writing and the questions that it raises. I remember that while reading it, I was quite taken with the writing style. Nunez is incredibly insightful about the human condition. I recall a section of the book where the narrator is talking about meeting an ex and she describes his personality with such nuance and understanding, it's beautiful. This book also raises several questions regarding the dying process and what it means to have ownership over your own life and the decisions you make regarding it. 

*Slight Spoilers*

This discussion really comes into play when the narrator's friend, who is suffering from cancer, wants to do euthanasia. The narrator and the friend have several discussions about it, while the narrator also separately ponders over how she should feel about it. 

*End of Slight Spoilers*

I wouldn't say much happens in this book plotwise. It focuses more on crafting an image of an individual in a specific moment in time, with an emphasis on their personality and thought processes regarding intriguing, philosophical questions. I'd also say that I had to be in a very specific mood to read this book. This is definitely not something you'd just randomly pick up and dive into. I felt that it required a lot of thoughtful reading on my end to truly grasp what was happening. Overall, I'd definitely recommend reading.  

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo - 🍦

So I had never heard of this book, nor this author, before, but one day I was randomly scrolling through Goodreads and BAM, I saw this. Looked through a few reviews and they were all 5 stars, so obviously, I had to read it at that particular moment. And let me tell you, the high reviews are for good reason. This was a WILD ride. 

So we are following two people at this university. One is an English professor, while the other is a freshmen student. The professor is also secretly a killer, only killing terrible men at the university and completely getting away with it. But one day, after her latest kill (a male student who raped a female student and received no punishment), the administration launches an investigation into recent deaths at the university and the professor worries that she will be exposed. Meanwhile, the freshmen student's roommate gets assaulted at a party and she becomes obsessed with getting revenge on her roommate's attacker. The rest of the book is about how these storylines converge and what happens to both the freshmen student and the professor. 

This was indeed very, very, VERY thrilling. The characters were all crazy and intriguing. The pacing was 10/10. There were so many twists that I could not see coming even if I was 10,000 feet above ground watching. I actually ended up reading the book entirely in one day because I was that concerned with how this plot would play out. Overall, I'd HIGHLY recommend it even if you aren't a fan of thrillers. 

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware - 🍪

Speaking of reading books in one day, here is another book that I read in a day. The story follows a woman named Hal who gets a mysterious notice that she's been mentioned in the will of a one Mrs. Westaway. Hal, who doesn't have any living family, realizes that the notice of inheritance must have been sent to the wrong person, but also decides to go claim it anyways. When she reaches there, she realizes that there is something very, very weird going on with this family. 

The most notable thing about Ruth Ware's style of writing is how ominous she is able to make the setting and vibe. Within 5 pages, you already get the sense that this is going to be an extremely strange story and the intrigue factor goes through the roof. I was so invested in Hal's story, getting second-hand anxiety about how she was planning to face the family and continue the lies. It was wild. The only reason I didn't give this 5 stars was that I had a sense of what the ending would be, from the middle of the book. But though I knew how it would end, Ruth Ware's writing is so enticing and brilliant that it didn't even matter to me that I had guessed the twist. Overall, would highly recommend this book.

Dial A for Aunties by Jesse Q. Sutanto - 🍦

The roll of 4-5 star reads continued with this romp of a book. In Dial A For Aunties, we're following Meddy Chan, a young woman who is working at her family's wedding planning business. Meddy's mother and 3 aunts set her up on a blind date, which doesn't go well, to say the least. In fact, Meddy accidentally kills him. She ends up turning to her aunts and mother to help her cover the crime up, all while helping run the biggest wedding event her family's business has gotten. To add to all this, the wedding happens at a hotel that just happens to be run by her ex-boyfriend, Nathan, whom she's still in love with. 

This book really has it all. Murder, family drama, comedy, romance. You name it, it's probably in there. The characters are hilarious. The family drama is entirely relatable. The romance is adorably unrealistic. The entire time while reading this book I kept thinking about how this would be such a fantastic movie, and lo and behold I find out that there's going to be a Netflix movie based on this book. I'm not going to dwell too much on my thoughts on this book because my friends and I just started a book club podcast and our first episode was about this book! If you want to hear more of my thoughts on this, make sure to check out the podcast here!

You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld - 🍦

I keep saying I don't like short story collections, and then I end up reading them and then being pleasantly surprised by them. This one is no exception. There's no real coherent theme to all the stories. Almost all of them are told from the perspective of a woman, but the characters in each story are in varying stages and situations in life. 'Gender Studies', 'A Regular Couple', and 'The Prarie Wife' were my favorites, but I thoroughly enjoyed almost every single story in this collection. 'Gender Studies' is about a female professor attending a conference in Kansas City who decides to have a one-night stand with her bus driver. It's so hilarious and weird and I found myself cackling at the inner thoughts of this professor. 'A Regular Couple' is about this couple on their honeymoon when the wife runs into an old classmate from high school who she really hated. 'The Prarie Wife' is about a woman who is obsessed with this famous blogger who she happened to know from a camp she attended when she was a teenager. The woman hate-reads her blog because she feels that the blogger is hypocritical and a liar. Curtis Sittenfeld is a fantastic writer and each story was filled with so many great characters and one-liners. Highly recommend even if you're not into short story collections. 

The Other Mrs. by Mary Kubica - 🙅  

Alas, all good things must come to an end at some point. This book ended my 4-5 star reading streak. And what a way to end. Honestly, I only finished this book because I was too far into it before realizing how bad it was going to be. The story follows a woman named Sadie who has recently moved with her husband and two sons to Maine. When their neighbor is murdered, an investigation is held in which Sadie is considered a suspect. She decides to do her own pseudo-investigation to learn more about the murder victim's life and how she fits into all of this. 

My main problem with this book was Sadie. She was so annoying. This woman is so ridiculous. She sees one minorly suspicious thing about a person, she's like 'They did it. They're the murderer' and I'm like ??? where's the evidence for this? What if they're just weird? What if they're throwing a surprise party and don't want to ruin the surprise? Sadie's husband Will was also super annoying. They both were annoying by themselves, but when they got together they were even more annoying, it was terrible. This book also had this one trope that I absolutely despise and if I go into it, it will mean spoiling the entire plot twist of the book. So I'm putting a spoiler label here: 

*SPOILERS*

There are multiple perspectives in this book. At first, you are led to believe that one is the perspective of the murder victim's daughter, one is some lady stalking the family, and one is Sadie. Eventually, you come to know that all three perspectives are Sadie's because Sadie suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. You don't know Sadie has this disorder until practically the end of the book, although it is constantly hinted at that there is something wrong with Sadie's memory and that she blacks out a lot. Then you come to know that Will, her husband, knows all of this, and actually manipulates one of Sadie's personalities to commit murder for him, cause turns out he's a murderer too. Like...what? I hate the multiple personality trope because it feels like it's villainizing a mental health disorder, and I particularly hate when someone else abuses someone's mental health disorder to do something villainous and bad. It's just all-around terrible. The only situation I would forgive this in is if this was published in 1985 because people talked about mental health in this way back then and it would be a product of its time. HOWEVER, this book was published in 2020 so no forgiveness from me. 

*END OF SPOILERS*

Anyway so because of this trope, I hated this book and I would not recommend it to anyone. 

Writers & Lovers by Lily King - 🍦

I guess the reading gods decided to take pity on me cause, after the roller coaster of a book that was The Other Mrs., I got to read this one. Oh, what a book, what a book. This was immediately added to my all-time favorites list because I cried at the end. We're following this woman named Casey, whose mother has recently passed (Don't ask me how I ended up reading so many books about grief this month. I didn't intend for it to be like this. It's legitimately just a coincidence.). So Casey's an aspiring writer who's been working on a novel for the past 6 years. Casey is just such a wonderful, insightful character. I want to be friends with her. We follow her life in the year after her mother's death. We watch as she grapples with her job as a waitress at a restaurant with a terrible boss but great friends, her dwindling financial situation, her writing struggles, her relationship with her brother, her budding relationship with two different men, and how she deals with everything in the wake of losing her mother. Not much happens plotwise. It's just the story of a woman living her life, and it's bloody fantastic.  This book gets all the stars. Go read it, please. 

So those are all the books I read in July. Did you have any good July reads? Let me know. I will be back in August with another reading wrap-up. So until then, happy reading!