July 2019 Reading Recap

Posted On July 31, 2019

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog! Today, since it’s the last day of July, I’m bringing you a wrap-up!

July was a great reading month for me, better than I’ve had in a while, honestly—and I give all of the credit for that to the two readathons I participated in this month: The Final Biannual Bibliothon, and the Reading Rush. Most of the books I’m going to be talking about in this post I’ve already talked about a little in one of my wrap-up posts for those readathons, so sorry if this is a bit redundant.

1. Truthwitch by Susan Dennard

This is the only book I read this month that wasn’t for a readathon (though I did technically read the majority of the book on the first day of a readathon). It really had no precedent. It wasn’t on my TBR for the month. Honestly, pretty much the only reason I picked up this book is because I love the Choose Your Own Adventure thread Susan’s been running on Twitter for almost 2 months now, and I wanted more of her writing. So I read this book, and I freaking loved it. Five stars amazing.

If you like fantasy and romance and kick-butt girls and great friendships, I would recommend this book. I plan on reading the next book in the series as soon as I can get myself to the library to check it out.

2. Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

This was the group book pick for the Biannual Bibliothon, so of course I read it for that readathon. I’d like to think that I would have read it anyway, though, because this author duo is one of my favorites. They wrote the Illuminae Files, which is just awesome, so I figured this would be great, too. And I was right. This was another 5 star read for me.

It’s sci-fi, and it’s got a great cast of characters and some great plot twists. I actually wrote a full review for this book, which you can read here, if you’d like to see my more in-depth thoughts on this book.

3. Lumberjanes vol. 1 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis, and Faith Hicks

This is a graphic novel, which I read for the Biannual Bibliothon challenge of reading a graphic novel. I read it really quickly and probably wasn’t paying as much attention to it as I should have been, which is probably why I ended up giving it 3 stars. It was just okay for me. Maybe if I’d spent a little more time with the book and actually gave it the focus it deserved, I would have liked it better, but oh well.

4. Every Day by David Levithan

I read this entire book practically in one sitting, but unlike with Lumberjanes, where I was just rushing through as fast as I could so I could get to the nest book, I read this book quickly because it sucked me in. It was addictive, for some reason, reading about this person named A who wakes up in a different person’s life every day. There were some things I didn’t love about this book, which is why I ended up giving it 4 stars instead of 5, but the reading experience was incredible, and the concept was so unique.

5. The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Bracken

You guys, I finally did it. I finally read The Darkest Minds. Well, listened to it, technically, but I’m not the kind of person who thinks audiobooks don’t count as reading. They absolutely do, and I feel like it was thanks to the fact that I listened to this book that I managed to get through it, because I have tried to read it in the past, and I could never get into it.

The audiobook was great, though. I ended up giving the book 4 stars, probably largely because of my gratitude for the audiobook’s existence. I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to continue on in the series. Some things happened at the end of this first book that make me want to do so, but I don’t have the physical copy of the second book, nor do I have the audiobook. So I’ll need to get one or both of those eventually.

6. To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo

This was the first book I completed for the second readathon I participated in this month. It’s a retelling of the fairytale The Little Mermaid. I thought the book was interesting. It’s set in a world where there are 100 kingdoms, and each kingdom has different myths about their rulers. We follow Elian, the prince of one of these land-based kingdoms, who wants nothing more than to renounce his kingdom and sail on the open seas, and Lira, the siren princess of the undersea kingdom (or queendom, really) and heir to the throne. There is a war going on between the humans and the sirens, and Lira and Elian are the biggest players. Lira, because she is the Princes’ Bane, having killed and taken the heart of a prince for every year she’s been alive. And Elian, because he kills sirens.

This book was gory and dark, and the world was great, but something about it fell flat for me. I ended up only giving it 3 stars. It wasn’t a bad book by any means, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes retellings and forbidden romance and all that stuff, but, at least for me, it was just okay.

7. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

As some of you may know, last year, I started reading the Harry Potter series, and this year, one of my goals is to finish it before the year’s over. I’ve been doing pretty good with the series since I got back from my study abroad. I read Prisoner of Azkaban in June, so I decided to motivate myself to read the next book by putting it on my TBR for the Reading Rush, and having it count for quite a few of the challenges, so that, if I didn’t end up finishing it, I would have failed really badly at the readathon.

I ended up listening to the audiobook of this book, partially because the book is long and intimidating, so the ability to listen to it at faster speeds was appealing to me, but also because I don’t know where my copy of the book is. I know we have it, because I’m reading my mom’s copies, and I know she has all seven. But Goblet of Fire isn’t on my shelf.

I liked the audiobook for the most part. I was listening to the version with Jim Dale, and while I did kind of cringe at some of the characters’ voices, especially female characters’ voices (mainly Hermione), after a while, I got used to it, and I ended up liking the book quite a bit. I gave it 5 stars. This is the first Harry Potter book I’ve read that I felt legitimately very invested in while I was reading it. I’m hoping that the trend continues.

8. Cinder by Marissa Meyer

This was a reread for me. I decided to pick it up on a whim, because one of the challenges for the Reading Rush was to read a book with purple on the cover, and although I originally put a different book, that I haven’t read, on my TBR for that challenge, I really didn’t feel like reading it, so I read this instead. And, of course, just like the first time I read it, I loved it.

Since I’ve reread this book, I’ve been considering doing a reread of the whole series, but we’ll see if I end up doing that. At any rate, I don’t think I’m going to put the series on my official August TBR, but I guess you’ll get to see if I do that tomorrow, when I post said TBR.

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Okay, that’s all I had for this post today! I hope you enjoyed it. I’m really proud of myself this month—I read 8 books! That’s twice the amount I normally read in a month.

Anyway, let me know down below how many books you read this month. Did you find any new favorites? Were any of them surprising in some way? I’d love to hear all your thoughts down in the comments.

Thanks for reading, everyone, and I’ll see you next time.

-Ariel