September 2025 Reading Wrap-up

September was busy for me both at work and at school, so I read fewer books. However, I enjoyed all the books I read in the month of September. 

I started our strong by reading Up at the Villa, a murder mystery by Somerset Maugham. I have enjoyed this author since college where I had to read a couple of his novels for my English class. His novels usually include interesting commentary on morals, marriage and romantic relationships. This one was no exception. I definitely recommend it.

I have already reviewed The Austen Affair - this was a fun romcom that any Austen fan will appreciate. 

The Summer of Broken Rules by K.L. Walther was an unexpectedly fun and beautiful YA romance that  included themes of grief and coming of age. I am now really interested in reading more from this author.

I finally read Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and it lived up to all the hype. It contains beautiful nature writing and includes a murder mystery and a love story. I think I will check out the movie adaptation when I get a chance.

Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley was a bookclub pick for the month of November so I read it really early. This book is set in Upper Michigan on a Native American Reservation and we follow one girl's quest to bring back the remains of her ancestors and stolen artifacts from museums and private collectors.

Finally, Quicksilver by Callie Hart was book 1 in a romantasy series, and I really enjoyed it. Book 2 is coming out in November and am definitely going to pick it up soon after. 

"The Austen Affair" by Madeline Bell

This was such a fun romance! I definitely recommend it to any Jane Austen fan. Our main character Tess is an actress who gets cast to play a leading role in an adaption of Northanger Abbey - Austen's least adapted novel. She is supposed to act opposite a surly Colin Firth lookalike (based on the description), who both intimidates her and makes her secretly swoon. 

Unfortunately, they do not get along and after a particularly nasty argument on set, get electrocuted and find themselves in Jane Austen's Hampshire. I must say I used to love time traveling stories. Lately, however, they have been hit or miss for me. This one did not disappoint. The book was fun from beginning to end and I read most of it in one day. The ending I thought dragged a little, but overall, a very enjoyable, light romcom for fans for Austen.

A e-ARC was provided by NetGalley.com

August 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

August was by far the best reading month I've had this. year. I read 11 books, which is over 4,100 pages. I discovered a new favorite author - C.W. Farnsworth, who (bonus!) lives in RI. She writes romances and I really enjoy her characters and writing style. Usually, I am very annoyed by the third act break-up and miscommunication that happens a lot in this genre. Her books, however, somehow manage to avoid everything I dislike in romance novels. They were perfect summer reads. I read three of her novels and loved all of them. Let me quickly zoom through the other books I read:

• This month I re-read Lexi Ryan's YA fantasy duology and really enjoyed it. 
• Ali Brady's Battle of the Bookstores was a highly anticipated read for me, but I was fairly disappointed. It just dragged and I did not like the characters. 
• I listened to Britney Spears' biography and it was ok - I did not find it particularly genuine, but it was interesting. 
• I have mixed feelings about Beartown - I know it is a favorite for many readers, however, I did not like how it ended. I wanted real justice for the main female character.
• The Ministry of Time was an unusual take on time travel. Overall, it did not wow me.
• The Other Black Girl was an interesting take on how one might overcome structural racism in a Sci-Fi setting. 
• Daisy Jones and the Six proved to me once more that Taylor Jenkins Reid is just not my author. I do not like her characters. I listened to this on audio and so was able to get through it fairly quickly. I think I would have been bored reading it in paper.

July 2025 Wrap-Up

July by far was probably my best reading month this year. It was nice to be on break from school and just read for pleasure. In July I re-read Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros and finally picked up the sequel, Iron Flame. I did really enjoy both and was happy to be in that world. 

Another memorable read was One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune. It is a sequel to Every Summer After, which focuses on Charlie. Carley Fortune is definitely a favorite author at this point. I have read all four novel that she has out, and I am looking forward to re-reading them in summertime.

Finally, Rose in Chains by Julie Soto was surprisingly good. This book started out as a Drameone fanfic. I personally never shipped Draco and Hermione so was not sure if the book would work for me. I had a great time reading it and now, a month later, I still think about it. I will definitely be reading the sequel and am already looking forward to re-reading it. I would say the rest of the books I read were just OK and not worth a separate mention.

May and June 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

May and June were extremely busy for me as I began my doctoral program and the first semester was intense. I did manage read some fiction but the majority of time I had to do a lot of reading and writing for school.     

May

The best read of May was probably The Rose Bargain by Sasha Peyton. It is book 1 in a new YA fantasy series. If you like the Cruel Prince trilogy and the Selection series, you might like this. I will definitely be checking out book 2. The biggest disappointment was The Rebel Witch. It was better than book 1, but still overall the Crimson Moth series is extremely overhyped and I honestly do not understand what all the fuss is about.

June

In June, I continued with Jennifer L. Armentrout's from Blood and Ash series and book 2 was really good. I read it during the busiest time and it was nice to immerse myself in a fantasy world each day before bed even if it was only for a few minutes. I also read the new installment in Kelley Armstrong's A Rip in Time series - in this book we follow our characters to the Scottish Highlands where they end up solving a murder.  The rest of the books I read were not super memorable even though I enjoyed them at the time of reading.

April 2025 Reading Wrap-Up

April is probably my best reading month for a while. In May I started graduate school so I expect that both May and June will be light in terms of reading fiction. But going back to April: I read 8 books and two of them are new favorites The Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain and The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. 

The Dream Daughter is a suspenseful family drama that includes time travel. I listened to it on audio and was completely engrossed. The Villa is Rachel Hawkins' another thriller that includes an investigation into a murder that happened in the 70s at an Italian villa and involved famous musicians. Some say that Hawkins drew her inspiration from a time when Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley vacationed together in Italy and where Mary Shelley on a dare wrote Frankenstein. I can definitely see those parallels.

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose is a compelling fantasy novel that is rooted in Native American mythology. I read it for a bookclub and we had the author join our discussion, which was incredible. I am definitely planning to read the sequel. 

The other reads for the month were mediocre. The biggest disappointment was The Crimson Moth - a fantasy romance, overhyped on social media. I am happy to report that the second book is better (I read it in May). I have a separate longer review for Melania - what a disaster! And, I am glad I finally read Soulless by Gail Carriger. The entire Parasol Protectorate series had been sitting on my shelves for at least 10 years. After reading book 1, I decided I am not going to continue in the series and it's been donated to my local thrift store. I am sure if I read it when it was first published, I might have enjoyed it. But it does not hold up with time. The tone in particular seems trying to be funny way too hard, and characters seem more like caricatures than real personalities -- the book is just filled with stock images and twists. 

So I read Melania... Hear me out

I saw this book at my local library and decided to see if I can get a glimpse of Melania Trump’s personality. She always looks like a decorative art piece: beautiful and silent. As a fellow Slav from Eastern Europe, I was curious what she had to say about her upbringing in the communist Yugoslavia. The book is very short and it is badly written, at times sounding like a museum catalogue enumerating all the exquisite designer outfits and elaborate meals; and at times resembling a self appraisal or a college essay, aggrandizing her own accomplishments (my impeccable taste, my work ethic, my poise). Wow. If she wrote this in an attempt to be known, this is a failure. There is no personality that I can detect. I am not sorry I read it though. What you see is what you get: a carefully constructed mask with a huge ego who wants to be in turn a Jacky Kennedy or a princess Diana look alike but of course she is neither. She is also not a deep thinker at all. Jane Austen’s “improvement of the mind by extensive reading” is clearly not about her.

In addition, the descriptions of her childhood in Yugoslavia do not ring true at all. She was born in 1970 - the height of Soviet dominance in the region. Yet she waxes poetically about the picturesque country side and travels all over Europe. Not a single word about the decade long ethnic conflicts in the region - none. Then abruptly in the end she decides to compare the raid on Mar-a-Lago to surveillance under communism, “which her family was very familiar with”. So which one is it? What was her childhood like? Anyway the main sense I got is lack of authenticity and personality. Also curiously, no acknowledgements?