Hey everyone! It’s time for a wrap-up! This month, I completed 6 books, which is a lot for me, but considering that I only had to read the last half (or, in one case, the last 50 pages or so) of two of those books, I feel like I really only read 4.
I’m also currently reading a book (Enchantée by Gita Trelease), but I’m not very far into it and I highly doubt I’ll finish it before midnight tonight, so I’m not going to talk about it. But anyway, let’s get into the books I did finish this month.
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
4 stars
I finished this during the first couple days of the month, while I was doing the Series Crackdown readathon. Now I just have to read four more books and I will have officially read the Harry Potter series. I’m liking it so far, but I have to admit, I’m a little worried. The first three books were short and relatively quick reads, but the page count really takes a leap in the last four books.
I know, I’ve read Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive books—700 pages should be nothing to me compared to that. But, well, I’m a little nervous nonetheless.
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
5 stars
I read this during the same readathon as Prisoner of Azkaban back at the beginning of the month and I absolutely loved it. It was probably my favorite book I read this month, although the next book on the list came close.
This was such a beautiful, magical story. I’m still dying to read the next book in the duology.
I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
5 stars
For the first 100 pages or so of this book, I was not into it, so much so that I thought about DNFing it—but man, am I glad I didn’t. I will admit that I predicted the biggest plot twist well in advance, but that didn’t take away from my enjoyment very much. I’m sure most of you reading this have already read this book, since I was very late to the hype train on this book—but if you haven’t read it, you absolutely should. It was beautiful.
** Possible spoiler warning; read at your own risk**
I don’t actually know if this is a spoiler, but I’ve watched a lot of videos where people talk about this book, and I don’t remember anyone mentioning this, so I’m putting that there just in case. The reason why it took me so long to get into this book was because the book was not at all what I was expecting. The only thing I’d ever heard about this book was that it was a contemporary about twins trying to overcome a rift that’s built up between them, which is what it was, so that’s not wrong, but I was expecting a straight contemporary. In reality, this book felt much more like magical realism than regular contemporary, which threw me off. It had that touch of unreality that a lot of those kinds of books have. I ended up really liking that aspect by the end, but it took some getting used to.
Part of Your World by Liz Braswell
3 stars
This is a story about what would have happened if Ariel had never defeated Ursula in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. I was hoping to love this book so much, but it just ended up being okay. It was nice being able to see the characters from one of my favorite childhood movies in book form, and while there were some legitimately good parts of this book, a lot of it felt very forced, and I had issues with the way some of the characters were portrayed—especially Eric. I felt like the author made Eric seem a lot more like an idiot than I remember him being, which bothered me. Also, there were several places in this book where the dialogue was ripped straight from the movie, which was pretty cringey for me to read.
Overall, this was just fine. I don’t think I’m going to be trying out any of the other books in the Twisted Tales companion series.
His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik
2 stars
I feel like my rating might be a little unfair to this book. Honestly, it took me so long to read this (I started it in April) that by the time I finally finished it I just didn’t care about any of the characters or anything that was going on, and I couldn’t really remember what had happened at the beginning. Maybe if I had read it in a more compact period of time, I would have liked it more. Then again, part of the reason it took me so long to read this book was because I found it to be very boring. It just couldn’t capture my attention at all. I would have DNF’d it, but I only had like 50 pages or something left in my ebook this month, so I figured I might as well finish it off, so that’s what I did.
The Fill-in Boyfriend by Kasie West
4 stars
This is one of my most recent purchases, and I honestly kind of bought it on a whim, because one of my favorite BookTubers loves Kasie West, and even though my reading tastes are generally very different from that BookTuber’s, I decided to give it a try anyway, and it was good. It was mostly just a lighthearted YA contemporary romance. I liked it a lot, but it’s not a new favorite or anything. I did love the love interest’s family dynamic, though, and I really appreciated the main character’s growth throughout the story, since I kind of hated her at the beginning.
This is another book, like I’ll Give You the Sun, that it took me a bit to get into, though in this case it was just because I didn’t like the main character.
And that’s all the books I read in June! Let me know what books you read this month down in the comments. Did you find any new faves? I’d love to know!
I’ll see you all tomorrow with my July TBR!
-Ariel