Another month, another I-can’t-believe-all-these-books-were-read-in-this-same-month feeling. Haha, but seriously that always happens to me. It feels like ages ago that I read some of these from the beginning of June.
This was a pretty good and diverse month for reading. I knocked out some titles that have been on my radar for a good while, and that always feels nice.
My two book of the month picks were amazing this time around. I scooped up Malibu Rising and People We Meet on Vacation – you can read what I loved about these two below! If you are interested in BOTM, this is my referral code in case you’re interested.
My goal for the second part of 2021 is to read more nonfiction books. We got so close to finishing Atomic Habits by James Clear, but the library loan ran out right before we were able to finish it. Hopefully we get it back next month!
What I read in June 2021
Present Over Perfect, Shauna Niequist: 5 Stars
Description: Living a life of meaning and connection Instead of pushing for perfection
A few years ago, I found myself exhausted and isolated, my soul and body sick. I was tired of being tired, burned out on busy. And, it seemed almost everyone I talked with was in the same boat: longing for connection, meaning, depth, but settling for busy.
I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, writer, and I know all too well that settling feeling. But over the course of the last few years, I’ve learned a way to live, marked by grace, love, rest, and play. And it’s changing everything.
Present Over Perfect is an invitation to this journey that changed my life. I’ll walk this path with you, a path away from frantic pushing and proving, and toward your essential self, the one you were created to be before you began proving and earning for your worth.
My thoughts: This was really good. I think devotionals and books of that nature are pretty personal, so it’s hard for me to come on here and try to sell this book to you if you don’t necessarily “need” this topic right now, but for me it was much needed. I liked the realistic approach the author takes to this, acknowledging that it is so valuable to be present over perfect, but it’s also extremely difficult to live your life this way.
In my opinion, this wasn’t heavily faith-based. I think it’s definitely more applicable if you do believe in God and He and His presence in all our lives is woven throughout the book, but it’s not the entire theme of the book if that is helpful to know.
The Ex-Talk, Rachel Lynn Solomon: 3 Stars
Description: Shay Goldstein has been a producer at her Seattle public radio station for nearly a decade, and she can’t imagine working anywhere else. But lately it’s been a constant clash between her and her newest colleague, Dominic Yun, who’s fresh off a journalism master’s program and convinced he knows everything about public radio.
When the struggling station needs a new concept, Shay proposes a show that her boss green-lights with excitement. On The Ex Talk, two exes will deliver relationship advice live, on air. Their boss decides Shay and Dominic are the perfect co-hosts, given how much they already despise each other. Neither loves the idea of lying to listeners, but it’s this or unemployment. Their audience gets invested fast, and it’s not long before The Ex Talk becomes a must-listen in Seattle and climbs podcast charts.
As the show gets bigger, so does their deception, especially when Shay and Dominic start to fall for each other. In an industry that values truth, getting caught could mean the end of more than just their careers.
My thoughts: This was really good, especially because I have a podcast and find anything in that area so interesting. If you have no interest in podcasts though, do not worry because it’s not like the entire book revolves around podcast lingo or theming. Do you appreciate it a little more if you are a podcaster or podcast listener? Probably.
The reason I took points off for this book was mainly because of the steam factor. It just felt kind of too descriptive at times for me, but so many romance books are that way right now, it’s hard to find ones without! If you like a steamy book, I think this one has plenty.
Loved the ending, related to the characters, overall a great book! I liked how some of the biggest plot points were easy to predict, but the details woven throughout kept me guessing. I also really like that one of the main characters dealt with the very relatable topic of not having dozens of friends. This is getting unexpectedly deep, but I have never had a large number of close friends, and it was just nice for that to be brought up in a book!
The Summer of ’69, Elin Hilderbrand: 4 Stars
Description: Welcome to the most tumultuous summer of the twentieth century! It’s 1969, and for the Levin family, the times they are a-changing. Every year the children have looked forward to spending the summer with their grandmother in Nantucket: but this year Blair, the oldest sister, is marooned in Boston, pregnant with twins and unable to travel. Middle sister Kirby, a nursing student, is caught up in the thrilling vortex of civil rights protests, a passion which takes her to Martha’s Vineyard with her best friend, Mary Jo Kopechne. Only son Tiger is an infantry soldier, recently deployed to Vietnam. Thirteen-year-old Jessie suddenly feels like an only child, marooned in the house with her out-of-touch grandmother who is hiding some secrets of her own. As the summer heats up, Teddy Kennedy sinks a car in Chappaquiddick, a man flies to the moon, and Jessie experiences some sinking and flying herself, as she grows into her own body and mind.
My thoughts: This was my first Elin Hilderbrand book, and I definitely think I will be reading more from her. I listened to this on audiobook, and at first I definitely wasn’t getting pulled into the story, but then it overtook me and I was hooked. I liked how seamlessly it brought in moments from history and brought a new perspective on some really infamous moments and conflicts during the time period.
At first I found many of the family members extremely annoying, but they really do develop in the best way. By the end, I was rooting for each one of them and hoping their story would turn out the way I hoped. This gave me All Adults Here vibes if you have read that book!
The Unraveling of Cassidy Holmes, Elissa R. Sloan: 3 Stars
Description: Cassidy Holmes isn’t just a celebrity. She is “Sassy Gloss,” the fourth member of the hottest pop group America has ever seen. Hotter than Britney dancing with a snake, hotter than Christina getting dirrty, Gloss was the pop act that everyone idolized. Fans couldn’t get enough of them, their music, and the drama that followed them like moths to a flame—until the group’s sudden implosion in 2002. And at the center of it all was Sassy Cassy, the Texan with a signature smirk that had everyone falling for her.
But now she’s dead. Suicide. The world is reeling from this unexpected news, but no one is more shocked than the three remaining Glossies. Fifteen years ago, Rose, Merry, and Yumi had been the closest to Cassidy, and this loss is hitting them hard. Before the group split, they each had a special bond with Cassidy—truths they told, secrets they shared. But after years apart, each of them is wondering: what could they have done?
Told in multiple perspectives—including Cassidy herself—and different timelines, this is a behind-the-scenes look into the rise and fall of a pop icon, and a penetrating examination of the dark side of celebrity and the industry that profits from it.
My thoughts: I am just honestly the biggest sucker for music-focused fiction, music biopics, etc. The Jersey Boys movie was my favorite movie for many, many years, haha. I liked this but not nearly as much as Daisy Jones and the Six. I literally never just flat out buy books from somewhere besides Book of the Month. I either borrow them from friends or from the library, but I had been looking forward to reading this one so much, I finally just outright bought it from Amazon. I have to say, I’m slightly disappointed in this one, but maybe only because I had hyped it up so much in my head.
If you’ve read the Daisy Jones book, this one had the same power of making you desperately wish the band and characters were real so you could look up every magazine article, music video, performance and award show fashion mentioned. I would seriously reach for my phone to look up something the girl group did in the book, only to realize and catch myself quickly because it’s very fictional, haha.
I didn’t rate this book as highly as Daisy Jones and the Six because the ending felt very rushed to me. Maybe this was intentional to mimic how quickly the band fell apart, but I just didn’t think it went well with the rest of the book. Also, I liked the news articles and different clippings included in the book, but I thought they were a little too randomly dispersed throughout. Sometimes I would be reading, come across one of the clippings and felt like I had just zoned out for a couple pages because I wasn’t sure where the clipping was coming from or leading to? That wasn’t always the case but definitely a few times.
People We Meet on Vacation, Emily Henry: 5 Stars
Description: Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
My thoughts: Oh. My. Gosh. This book!!! If you want to feel like you’re going on vacation, read this book. Especially if you like traveling a lot. This had everything I need in a book and more- romance, travel, friendship, everything you need.
The main character was a travel blogger, so it was right up my alley. I think you would like this even if you weren’t huge into influencers though. I also appreciated that there weren’t too many steamy scenes in this one, just a lot of good chemistry. There’s nothing to dislike about this book for me.
Stranger on the Beach, Michelle Campbell: 2 Stars
Description: Her spectacular new beach house, built for hosting expensive parties and vacationing with the family she thought she’d have. But her husband is lying to her and everything in her life is upside down, so when the stranger, Aiden, shows up as a bartender at the same party where Caroline and her husband have a very public fight, it doesn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.
As her marriage collapses around her and the lavish lifestyle she’s built for herself starts to crumble, Caroline turns to Aiden for comfort…and revenge. After a brief and desperate fling that means nothing to Caroline and everything to him, Aiden’s obsession with Caroline, her family, and her house grows more and more disturbing. And when Caroline’s husband goes missing, her life descends into a nightmare that leaves her accused of her own husband’s murder.
My thoughts: I listened to this on audiobook which I always want to disclose because it definitely changes the experience. This book just never brought me in, I always felt like it was jumping all over the place. I couldn’t tell who was telling the truth, who was lying, who was really good at any point. Sometimes that’s preferable in a book, but this wasn’t that type of experience for me.
I also thought the ending was just really unrealistic.
Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid: 5 Stars
Description: Malibu: August 1983. It’s the day of Nina Riva’s annual end-of-summer party, and anticipation is at a fever pitch. Everyone wants to be around the famous Rivas: Nina, the talented surfer and supermodel; brothers Jay and Hud, one a championship surfer, the other a renowned photographer; and their adored baby sister, Kit. Together the siblings are a source of fascination in Malibu and the world over–especially as the offspring of the legendary singer Mick Riva.
The only person not looking forward to the party of the year is Nina herself, who never wanted to be the center of attention, and who has also just been very publicly abandoned by her pro tennis player husband. Oh, and maybe Hud–because it is long past time for him to confess something to the brother from whom he’s been inseparable since birth.
Jay, on the other hand, is counting the minutes until nightfall, when the girl he can’t stop thinking about promised she’ll be there.
And Kit has a couple secrets of her own–including a guest she invited without consulting anyone.
By midnight the party will be completely out of control. By morning, the Riva mansion will have gone up in flames. But before that first spark in the early hours before dawn, the alcohol will flow, the music will play, and the loves and secrets that shaped this family’s generations will all come bubbling to the surface.
Malibu Rising is a story about one unforgettable night in the life of a family: the night they each have to choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind.
My thoughts: This was so, so good. If you want to feel like you’re on an around the world in 80 days kind of vacation, this is the book for you. I really felt like I was going on so many trips to amazing locations.
Eight Perfect Murders, Peter Kershaw: 4 Stars
Description: Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack—which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”—chosen from among the best of the best including Agatha Christie’s A. B. C. Murders, Patricia Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, Ira Levin’s Deathtrap, A. A. Milne’s The Red House Mystery, Anthony Berkeley Cox’s Malice Aforethought, James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity, John D. MacDonald’s The Drowner, and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History.
But no one is more surprised than Mal, now the owner of the Old Devils Bookstore in Boston, when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door one snowy day in February. She’s looking for information about a series of unsolved murders that look eerily similar to the killings on Mal’s old list. And the FBI agent isn’t the only one interested in this bookseller who spends almost every night at home reading. The killer is out there, watching his every move—a diabolical threat who knows way too much about Mal’s personal history, especially the secrets he’s never told anyone, even his recently deceased wife.
To protect himself, Mal begins looking into possible suspects . . . and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead—and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he might never escape.
My thoughts: Wow, this book was so unique. I seriously don’t think I’ve read anything like this, and I still had to keep double checking it wasn’t a true story. If you like great story telling and a more unique take on the classic whodunnit type of book, this is it!
If you read this one, please tell me what you think about it. I am dying to talk to someone about it.
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