Books Read
1) The Hellion’s Waltz by Olivia Waite (★★☆☆☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sapphic romance that just never really got going for me.
2) The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo (★★★★★ – print, owned, Amazon) – A beautiful story-in-verse about a teenager who is trying to find her place in the world.
3) Book Lovers by Emily Henry (★★★★★ – print, owned, indie bookshop) – A very buzzy romance that lived up to the hype for me.
4) The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – A sweet story about found family, friendship, and love.
5) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (★★★☆☆ – print, library) – Maya Angelou’s memoir about the early years of her life; beautifully written, but a little hard to get into at times.
6) Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Solomon (★★★★★ – e-book, Libby) – A wonderful romance that takes place in a newsroom. The characters were just delightful!
7) To the Brink by Cindy Gerard (★★★★☆ – e-book, owned, Amazon) – One of my favorite romantic suspense books that I reread for the third time, and finished in under 24 hours.
8) Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado (★★★☆☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sweet YA romance involving a fat protagonist that had excellent representation but the story wasn’t executed as well as I wanted.
9) The View Was Exhausting by Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta (★★★★☆ – audiobook, Libby) – A really fun romance involving a Hollywood starlet and the fake romance she has with a famous playboy.
10) Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Book of the Month) – Such a great thriller involving some paranormal elements and a very creepy old house.
11) Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert (★★★★☆ – e-book, Libby) – A sweet romance involving an autistic man who is running a B&B and needs a chef, and the girl who answers his ad and turns his life upside down.
12) The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti (★★★★☆ – print, owned, Thriftbooks) – An excellent primer on purity culture. It’s a bit dated (written in 2009), but most of what is discussed in the book still holds true.
Book Challenges
1) Book Club – Our book club book this month was All the Lonely People by Mike Gayle, a book that I read earlier this year! I always love when I can “skip” the book club book, feels like cheating! We had a range of opinions on this book: I gave it 5 stars and loved it wholeheartedly, but we had a few people who gave it 3 stars and weren’t as sold on the book as I was.
2) Unread Shelf Project: The prompt for August was “a book chosen by your friends or family” and I turned to Instagram for this prompt, selecting four books off my shelf and running a poll on Stories. The overwhelming winner was Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton. I read a little over 100 pages and then abandoned it because I just cannot deal with backstabbing female characters or anorexia subplots. No thank you!
3) Goodreads Challenge: I knocked four books off my Goodreads Challenge this month! Two I read and two I abandoned. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti were good books that I’m glad I finally got around to reading. I abandoned Missoula by Jon Krakeur because I just don’t know if I’ll ever be in the mood to read about a rape case (it’s certainly not in this weird emotional space I’ve been in lately). I also abandoned The Names They Gave Us by Emery Lord, which was more of a “wrong time” kind of book. I’m keeping it on my Goodreads TBR and hoping there will be a time in the future where I can read this book (the plot involves a teenage girl’s mom having a cancer recurrence and I started this book during a week where I learned of four people dealing with loved ones dying from cancer, and I just could not.)
Book Stats
- # of books read: 12
- # of pages read: 4,010 pages
- Genre breakdown: Romance (42%), Nonfiction (17%), Fiction (17%), YA (17%), and Mystery/Thriller (7%)
- Format breakdown: e-book (42%), print (42%), and audiobook (17%)
- Fastest read: To the Brink (1 day)
- Slowest read: The Authenticity Project/The View Was Exhausting (14 days)
- Star average: 4.0
- % of books by or about BIPOC or the LGBT community: 50%
- Abandoned books: 4 (Tiny Pretty Things, The Anthropocene Reviewed, The Names They Gave Us, and The Spanish Love Deception)
- Goodreads goal check-in: I set a goal of 135 books this year and currently, I am 4 books behind schedule.
Superlatives of August
- Favorite book of the month: Book Lovers by Emily Henry
- Least favorite book of the month: The Hellion’s Waltz by Olivia Waite
- A popular book I didn’t love: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- A popular book that totally lived up to the hype: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo
- The book that I was most surprised to love: Weather Girl by Rachel Lynn Soloman
What was the best book you read last month?
What a good month for you! I have been really struggling to find a romance novel that hits with me, so I’m a bit jealous of your romance reading.
I read the first book in the Green Bone trilogy by Fonda Lee, Jade City, and I had zero expectations of it going in and I found it riveting and irresistible and I’m reading the second book right now and it’s also amazing. That was the best book I read in August, by far.
Isn’t so fun when you start a series that’s so good and you have lots more books to read to enjoy?! I’m glad the second one is reading just as wonderfully as the first!
You had a great month of reading! You already saw my list, but I had a great reading month too. All but one were 4 or 5 star books. This has been an excellent reading year for me. I’ve added in some recommendation sources that are really working for me (Sarah’s Bookshelves and Currently Reading). I really loved Book People, too. I loved the snappy, sarcastic dialogue and the conflict was just right for me and didn’t stress me out.
Book Lovers was just so good. I loved it so much more than I thought I would!
I love that you’re having such a great reading year!
That’s a lot of really great books! Amazing job! August was good for me too, in terms of lots of winning books. I loved the Elizabeth Strout books I read, a collection of short stories, and I gave a five-star to Thick as well.
Hooray for wonderful reading months for both of us!
OK, putting Book Lovers and The Poet X on my list. Thanks! I never would have considered a novel-in-verse – you are expanding my universe! <3