My Monthly Wrap-up: June 2023

June has come and gone, and it was a good month. A little bit happy and a little bit sad with my retirement at the end. There are days that I can’t believe that I have really done it and will not be returning in the fall. But it is all good, and I am enjoying it so far.

Amazingly enough I have been keeping up with the reading. Last week was a little hard as I was in Connecticut visiting with family and enjoying my niece’s wedding. There wasn’t as much time for reading as I would have liked, but I did manage to squeeze some in. The only thing that really suffered was my audiobook. I got a few hours in on the plane yesterday, but I still have a long way to go before finishing this one.

I read 14 books this month, which is pretty average for me. Two of them were over 500 pages, and there were many that were over 400, but I still managed to get them read in a timely manner. Less television watching this month I guess. I enjoyed almost all of them. As usual I have put them in the order that I have read them, with links to either my reviews (marked with *) or to their Goodread pages.

*One of Us is Next was a reread in anticipation of the last book in the series coming out. I enjoyed this one just as much the second time around.

*To Have and To Heist was such a fun book. Lots of great characters, a riveting plot and a really nice romance to boot. I hope there is a sequel!

*House of Salt and Sorrows was also a reread. I enjoyed this dark retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princess just as much as the first time I read it.

*Cherish was the biggest disappointment this year so far. It was just such a mess, and the narrator of the audiobook didn’t quite work for me.

*One of Us is Back was a great ending to this series. I really liked how the author brought the series full circle and finished with a flourish.

*House of Roots and Ruin was amazingly good. That ending almost broke me, and I really hope that there will be a sequel and we won’t have to wait three years for it.

*Greymist Fair was also a really good read that I quite enjoyed. It was dark and based on some lesser known fairy tales. I also liked the format of the book.

The Pallbearers Club was kind of weird and I was always second guessing what was going to happen next, but I ended up really liking it.

The Singles Table was also a delight and a lot of fun to read. I really enjoy this author’s writing and I hope to pick up another of her romances soon.

The Sea Detective was a really interesting mystery thriller. I really liked the characters and the story left me mostly guessing until the end.

The Sun and the Star is a middle grade book set in the Percy Jackson world. I really enjoyed it and I loved to see how both Nico and Will grew in this one and how their relationship grew stronger.

Untethered Sky was a novella, but it certainly crammed in a lot of world building into such a short book. I really enjoyed the characters and the story.

Paladin’s Strength is the longest of the three books, but I really enjoyed this one as much as the others. I liked Clara and her abilities and the slow burn of her relationship with Istvhan. I also liked that we got to see more of this world than we do in the other two books.

Paladin’s Hope was maybe a close second for my favorite. I really enjoyed both Gavin and Piper and their relationship. The labyrinth they had to go through was also scary, yet cool.

The weather is finally cooperating around here and has decided that it is time for summer. Hopefully it will last. I am really looking forward to the books I have lined up for July. I hope they are just as good as the ones I read this month.

Happy Reading!