 Hello friends, a big welcome back to my channel. I hope you're all doing really well. So let's talk about all of the books we've read this summer, shall we? We're going to be talking June, July and August reads. It's going to be a long one, we've got tons of books to talk about. I'm going to try and keep this to synopsis, what I liked, what I didn't like, rating. I read a ton of great books this summer, loads of five star reads. I also read a good few very disappointing reads that definitely surprised me. So we have quite the range of books to talk about many, many exciting proof copies of brand new books, which are mainly literary fiction. But we also have some non-fiction, some queer YA novels, some modern classics and some poetry. It's been a wild reading time, so grab a drink, maybe some snacks, and let's cozy down and have some good book chat. First up, we have Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney. You probably don't need telling, but if you do, this is the highly anticipated new novel from the much-acclaimed, much-loved Sally Rooney. This is coming out on September 7th. It follows four characters, Alice, a novelist, and Felix, who works in a warehouse, who meets and travel to Rome together. And we also have Eileen and Simon in Dublin, two childhood best friends who slip back into flirting with one another. So I was overjoyed to receive this early proof copy from Faber and Faber. Of course I read it as soon as I got my hands on it. I actually vlogged the whole reading experience to share with you guys, so if you haven't checked that out yet, please go and watch it. I had so much fun filming it and sharing the whole thing with you. You probably won't be surprised to hear that I did absolutely love this novel. I can't give any kind of spoilers before publication, but rest assured that it is just the step up that I hoped it would be. This book feels slightly more mature than her other two novels. It focuses on slightly older characters and different types of relationships. It also feels a bit more bigger picture in terms of the world surrounding these characters. It feels a bit more high stakes. I loved these vibes. It felt like a very natural progression for Sally Rooney to me. I also loved the four central characters. They were all so interesting to me. The prose, as always, spot on. Sally Rooney just had me right where she wanted me while I was reading this book. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I don't think I loved this novel as much as I loved normal people, but that's okay. I really, really liked this for what it was, and I really do think other people are going to enjoy this as well. I cannot wait to hear all of your guys' thoughts on it soon, so in the end I gave this one 5 out of 5 stars. Next up we have The Henna Wars by Adiba Jaigada. This is a YA romance novel set in Ireland. It tells the story of 16-year-old Bangladeshi Nishat, who is coming to terms with her sexuality. She has a crush on a girl in her class named Flavia. But when a school competition invites the students to open up businesses, both girls set up rival henna businesses. I picked this one up in celebration of Pride Month, but also just because I'd had it on my shelves for ages, it sounded adorable, and everyone says it's amazing. Very pleased to report that this was basically just what I hoped it would be. It was so sweet and touching and dramatic in places. I loved the whole setup. The central idea of the rival henna businesses was genius, so much fun. I really liked the characters in here as well, particularly Nishat and her sister. Some of the family dynamics in here were so great, totally believable. I just loved going along the ride with this one. It was totally enjoyable, but it had a bit of grit in there too. It had some things to say about cultural identity and appropriation. This is a really great contemporary YA. I would totally recommend if that's your thing, and in the end I gave it four stars. Next up I read Feminism for the 99% and Manifesto by Cynthia Arruzza, Tiffy Battacheria, and Nancy Fraser. This is a non-fiction book that I was kindly sent a copy of by the publisher Verso Books. It is a very short little book. This Manifesto views feminism as being necessarily anti-capitalist, eco-socialist, and also anti-racist. It is not something that works within and inspires a select class of women to climb to the top of our current Western capitalist structures. Inspired by the Argentinian and Polish strikes of 2016 Onward, this book explores inadequate health care as a part of feminism, as well as climate change and poverty and border policing and more. I really, really liked this book. It explores so many things that are all so necessarily and urgently connected in such a fresh and impactful yet easy to consume and easy to understand way. Feminism is just such a huge topic. There is so, so much to it. And this book clearly and succinctly explores liberal corporate feminism, a feminism that is only useful to the 1% and then this more creative and radical feminism on the other side. This was very clear, very informative, and very motivating. A great one to read if you're just getting into reading about feminism, but also a great reminder, a great top-up oppush if you have read about feminism before. Perhaps this one will offer you a slightly different perspective like it did for me. So in the end I gave this one four stars. Next up I picked up The Mismatch by Sara Jafari. This is a new adult novel that came out at the end of June. I was kindly sent this proof copy by the publisher. This one tells a story of 21 year old British Iranian Soria who has never been kissed, and also the popular confident Magnus who is basically the opposite of Soria in every way. It explores cultural identity and love and difficult family dynamics. So honestly I had pretty mixed feelings about this one when I read it. I gave it a pretty meh rating, and the more time that passes, the more I'm just forgetting about it. I liked the setup here, I liked the central idea, it's very contemporary feeling, very character focused, but it's also kind of lighter plot-wise and a bit pacier than I'm typically used to reading. I did enjoy all of those aspects, and the book did pleasantly surprise me in some places. It kind of went to a couple of places I wasn't really expecting. There was a lot of good stuff in here to explore, but I'm just not convinced that the execution was brilliant. Some of the characters were definitely better than others, some were totally un-fleshed out and just felt a bit lazy. The pacing was certainly a bit odd in places. This is actually quite a chunky book. Really this wasn't the worst thing I've ever read, but I didn't find it to be particularly special at all. So in the end I think I'm just going to put this rating down to 2.5 stars. Next up we have Modern Medicine by Lucy Hearst. This is a new poetry collection that just came out in June. It explores the weirdness and discomfort of bodily suffering through experiences of medicine and disability and illness. I was really excited when I heard about this collection. A big thank you to Fly on the Wall Press for sending me this copy. I love the themes explored in here. I am fascinated by the notion of pain, especially female pain and how we view it as a society and how we treat it. And I really did enjoy this collection. The poems feel very visceral and honest. The writing in here is quite playful, which worked really well with exploring these themes so piercingly. I also really appreciated that this collection felt totally consumable. I feel like a lot of people could read this and really enjoy it. A really unique and interesting little collection. I would definitely recommend it if it interests you. And in the end I gave this one 3.5 stars. Next up I read Animal by Lisa Tadeo. Another June release, another proof copy I was kindly sent. This one actually being a really, really highly anticipated release of mine. This is the first novel by Lisa Tadeo, the author of Three Women. It tells the story of a young woman who flees New York after witnessing a violent act, and she ends up unraveling some traumatic event that happened to her as a child. So unfortunately this book did not work for me. We did not get on. This was a massive shame for me because I really, really thought that I was going to love this, but honestly I just couldn't connect to it on basically any level. I will say that I do think the writing in here is pretty good. Lisa Tadeo's prose is definitely interesting. It's very dry and dark, and I did enjoy this at the beginning of the novel. I felt like it set the tone quite well. But this book was just too much in the end. It was too grim, it was too dark, it felt like I was just being repeatedly hit over the head with shocking things, and the book couldn't really justify why. I just don't really get what the point was here, to be honest. The characters also were not good. I did not like the protagonist at all. I didn't find her interesting or engaging, so I just didn't really care about her story in the slightest. This whole thing just felt a bit forced to me, a bit showy, and I just ended up feeling really disconnected to it, unfortunately, so I think I gave it like two stars. If any of you have read this one and had a different experience, by the way, I would absolutely love to hear about it, so please do let me know down below in the comments. Next up is To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. This is a modern classic by the much-loved, glorious modernist writer Virginia Woolf. It tells the story of a family and their guests who are on holiday in the Isle of Skye, most prominently focusing on the character of the maternal serene Mrs Ramsey. I don't even know where to start with this one, really. This novel, this author, just brilliant. Pure pure gold. I'd read Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf previously, and I really loved it. I knew that I loved her writing, and I was super keen to read more by her, but I could not have anticipated just how brilliant this book was going to be. This book centres around the seemingly trivial postponement of a trip to the nearby lighthouse, but Virginia Woolf uses this to explore tensions within the family, the passing of time, people's capacity for change, male and female conflict. This is a masterpiece example of a character-focused study of a specific time and place set within a wider world. No one sees things like Virginia Woolf does and manages to translate it into the most glorious, perceptive, beautiful prose. I just came away from this novel totally inspired, inspired to reflect on things myself, inspired to write myself. This novel had such an effect on me. I absolutely loved it. I cannot wait to explore all of the rest of her work in the future. Of course, I gave this one five stars. Next up, I read Reputation by Lex Croucher. This is another new book that I was kindly sent a copy of. This one came out at the beginning of July. This is a Regency-era rom-com following the story of a middle-class young woman named Georgiana who goes and stays with her aunt and uncle. There she meets the wealthy enigmatic Francis and falls into the debauched upper echelons of Regency-era society. Everything about this book was a pure delight. It is exactly what you'd imagine from Bridgerton meets Jane Austen meets Gossip Girl. I think that's what it's being marketed as. The setting here is delicious. If you love Regency-era books at all, this is lush. The characters here are brilliant. We have the quiet, sheltered, young heroine seeking adventure. We have the illicit, sexy, disgustingly rich folk. We have the dreary relatives. All of the relationships in here are so entertaining. The dialogue is brilliant. Tons of scandal and rumors and sex, but also dashes of real sobering emotion throughout as well with more serious topics coming up in just the right places. This whole thing was very well crafted, I have to say. Lex Croucher clearly knows how to write her editor, clearly knows how to edit, and their vision of what they wanted to achieve in here was very, very clear. It was just the engaging, entertaining, rollercoaster of a story that you'd hope it would be. Can you tell I liked this? Obviously I need you all to read it. Obviously I gave it five stars. Next up we have The Hierarchies by Ross Anderson. This is a relatively new novel by Dead Ink Books. It is set in the not too distant future exploring themes of artificial intelligence and synthetic humans. It tells the story of Sylvie, a fully sentient robot, and her relationship with her husband and his family and child. I was really excited for this book. For those of you who don't know, I do have a philosophy degree. I am fascinated by the notion of personhood and the philosophy behind artificial intelligence. And this book did start off really strong. I loved the different characters, I was really interested in the different dynamics between them. The writing was very solid, the pacing was good, I was quite engaged as I read. Unfortunately though this book did kind of end up going in a direction that I wasn't really hoping for. I wanted to stay with the characters in the first half of the book. I really wanted to stay there and focus in on their relationships and the consequences of all of that. But the book kind of went elsewhere, it became a bit darker and a bit more plot driven. Ultimately I just wasn't as invested or engaged in the second half of the book as I was in the first. So this was a bit of a shame to be honest, but it wasn't bad by any stretch and there were definitely really good moments. So in the end I gave it three stars. Next up I read 100 lockdown sonnets by Jacqueline Safra. So this is described as a poetic journal and in it Jacqueline Safra writes a sonnet a day for 100 days during the first coronavirus lockdown in the UK. Each sonnet is dated and is inspired by some kind of quote from the news or social media or from literature from that day. Ball tracking the progress of COVID-19 and the lockdown and the state of the country and the world. This is such a special little book. It is such a great snapshot in time. What we've all been through is crazy. It is so so strange and I am so in awe of Jacqueline Safra for having the creativity and foresight to write a poem a day during the first lockdown. The poems in here are unique and insightful and hopeful and hopeless and totally intimate and weird. Anyone who experienced the first lockdown in the UK will be able to relate hard to what is going on in here. This is so well articulated, totally full of feeling. I would definitely recommend it and in the end I gave it four stars. Next up we have The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald. This is a famous modern American classic written and set in the 1920s. Set in the Jazz Age, this one tells the story of the wealthy Jay Gatsby and his persistent love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. So this was technically a reread for me. I first read it years and years ago but recently Cameron and I were going on a trip. We had a lot of driving to do and so we listened to the audio of this one together. It was so much fun. I love this book. I love it even more now than I did when I first read it. Just the vibes. The vibes that F Scott Fitzgerald creates. This is a really short novel. It's only got like nine chapters but everything is so intentional. It packs a punch. The writing is stunning. So many lines are just perfection. The themes explored in here of desire and obsession and the American dream and how all of this is mirrored and heightened by the descriptions of colour and heat and the perceptive biting dialogue. This is a perfect little novel. It is so captivating and effective but totally consumable. Of course I gave it five stars. Next up we have Cinderella is Dead by Kaelin Bayron. This is a YA fantasy novel set 200 years after Cinderella found her prince. The world is far from a fairy tale and in it young girls are forced to attend an annual ball in which the young men get to choose their wives. Protagonist is 16 year old Sophia who would much rather marry her female best friend than play by any of these rules. She ends up fleeing and essentially plotting to take down the kingdom. So unfortunately I did not love this book as much as I wanted to. I was totally in the mood for it when I started. I wanted something fun and pacey and a bit magical and kind of kick ass but unfortunately this one just fell kind of flat for me. I really liked the central idea and they did enjoy Sophia at the beginning of the book but really this book just did not go anywhere. Character development did not happen. The characters basically ended up with the same stances that they started the book with and plot wise it just wasn't that exciting. There was a whole world to be explored here but really everything just stayed so linear and predictable for me. Honestly I just ended up feeling like was that it? The central romance in here was also honestly so weak. I saw absolutely no evidence of the development of their relationship throughout. I didn't buy it for a second. So some good ideas in here perhaps you would enjoy it more than me if this is the kind of thing you typically like to read but for me I just found it to be quite disappointing. So in the end I gave this one 2.5 stars. Been going so long my lip gloss has literally disappeared. Next up I read To Kill a Mockingbird a graphic novel by Harper Lee and Fred Foreman. This is a graphic novel adaptation of the famous modern classic To Kill a Mockingbird exploring the childhood of young scout in a small southern town in America in the 1930s. Many of you will probably already know that To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite novel of all time. I read it like six plus times at this point. I think it is so so perfect. I'd had this graphic novel adaptation on my shelves for a while. I suddenly felt the urge to be back in this story again and so I thought I would give this one a go and I loved it. Obviously I loved it. The 5 out of 5 stars that I'm giving this is kind of in virtue of the fact that I could never not give this story 5 stars. I didn't love this as much as I loved the original novel. I think all of Harper Lee's words are intentional and beautiful and obviously they had to miss some of them out in here but I do think this was done well. I think it was edited well, selected well. I think the art style was really beautiful. A really great way to experience the classic. I would definitely recommend it and of course I gave it 5 stars. Next up I read The Service by Frankie Mirren. This is a pretty new novel from Influx Press. It tells the story of three different women whose stories converge when brothels in London are raided. Laurie has a young daughter and is working illegally in a rented flat. Freya is a student and she makes money through being an escort and Paula is a journalist who is running a campaign against prostitution. This was such a great book. I know it is a big popular recommendation within the books about sex workers realm and I can totally see why. I loved the whole setup here. I am so interested in sex work and learning more about it and about all of the different stances people take on it and all of the nuance there. The author herself has been involved in sex work. She is also a journalist and a sex work activist so it was really great reading this novel knowing her experience within this area. I learned a lot through reading this. It definitely opened my eyes and made me think more actively about this topic. It definitely challenges notions of sex and women's bodies and entitlement. But this is also just a really great read. We get to know all of these different women and all about their different situations and positions. They're all so fascinating. It's obviously very character focused and deeply humane but it's also really exciting and tense and kind of plot driven. It all comes to a bit of a head. Honestly this is just such a great read all around. I will be recommending it to people left right and centre and in the end I gave it 4.5 stars. Believe it or not we are not nearly done. The next book I picked up was Honorifics by Cynthia Miller. This is a relatively new poetry collection kindly sent to me by the publisher. It primarily explores Malaysian, Chinese cultural identity, immigration and family. The best thing about this poetry collection by a mile was its strange and beautiful and experimental imagery. We have jellyfish and Greek gods and outer space. This whole collection felt very mesmerizing while also exploring these really contemporary and grounding issues. There were of course poems in here that I loved more than others. I will say that I didn't personally connect to many of these poems so I'm not sure that it's going to leave too much of a lasting impression on me. That being said I do just think this is personal experience and personal taste. There was a lot that I really enjoyed in here and really admired. As such definitely give this one a go if it sounds like something you're interested in. In the end I gave it 3 stars. Next up we have The Women of Troy by Pat Barker. This is the highly anticipated sequel to The Silence of the Girls, the popular Iliad retelling from a couple of years ago. Still focusing in on the same protagonist, Briseus. This one takes place after Troy has fallen when the Greeks are trying to return home victorious. So unfortunately this book was a massive disappointment to me. Honestly I just don't think it was that good. Obviously Pat Barker can write. She definitely knows her craft. The central idea here is interesting. I do like a Trojan War retelling. It's interesting that we get to see the aftermath of the war but it just didn't feel like the book ran with any of this. I found Briseus as a character to honestly be quite dull. I didn't get the sense of any kind of development from her throughout. The pacing wasn't there for me. I wasn't engaged in the storyline at all. There was the odd side character that I was quite interested in because there are a lot of interesting characters in this story but it just felt like the book didn't work with them. We could have spent so much time exploring all of the different female characters around this camp and really getting to know them and their stories and it could have been great. I don't know, this one just didn't work for me. It was a massive, massive shame. I'd be really interested to hear if other people had similar experiences especially if you really enjoyed the silence of the girls but in the end I had to give this one 2.5 stars. Next up I read Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. This is a backlist book that I've been meaning to read for ages now and I'm so pleased that I finally picked it up. Set in a small town in America in the 1950s this book is told through one long letter that an old reverend is writing to his son as he nears the end of his life. Among many other things this novel explores themes of the relationship between fathers and sons and an individual and their religion. So I loved a lot about this book. The small town setting, the character, focused nature, the ins and outs of local politics and different people's relationships are all something that I love. Pair this with the more life reflective nature of the book, the fact that it's very personal but also looks a lot of wider philosophical musings. This book is just me all over. I loved the slow pace of this novel, the ambling feel, the kind of piecing together nature of it, and I do have to give a special mention to the pros in this novel because my god Marilyn Robinson is a stunning writer. All the way through this book I just wanted to underline things and read sentences aloud to Cameron. I could just eat these words. I will say that this book didn't finish up quite as strong as it started for me. I lost interest a little bit in where the story went and what became the central focus. That being said I still think it's brilliant. I will definitely be reading the later novels in this series at some point and in the end I gave it four stars. Next up I read The Country of Others by Lila Slamani. This is Lila Slamani's latest novel. It was translated from French by Sam Taylor. It came out last month and I was kindly sent this gorgeous copy by Faber. This novel is set in the 10 years leading up to Morocco's independence in 1956. It tells the story of a young French woman, her Moroccan husband, who fought for France in the war and the family that they create. So unfortunately this was another one of my disappointing reads and I really really didn't think it was going to be. I love Lila Slamani. She is one of my all-time favorite translated authors. I adore her prose and her characters. I have always found her novels to be so intelligent and distinctive. Granted this is a divergence from her earlier novels. This is her first foray into historical fiction. It feels much more plot-driven and outside influences driven than her earlier novels. But yeah for me unfortunately that just didn't work as well. This isn't a bad book. Don't get me wrong, there are some beautiful moments in here. The prose is truly stunning. The setting is lush. The political and geographical context was very interesting. She did manage to kind of work in this sense of ever building tension throughout. But for me I just couldn't really connect to the characters. I never really built up a full clear picture of the protagonist in my head and so I never really cared about her. I just wasn't invested as I read for whatever reason. If this sounds like your thing then it's probably worth giving a go. But if you are just reading this because it's Lila Slamani then do bear in mind that it is quite different from her earlier novels. Not my favorite so in the end I gave this one 2.5 stars. Next up is All the Names Given by Raymond Antrobus. This is an upcoming new poetry collection releasing later this month. I was kindly sent a copy by the publisher. This collection explores so much. We have poems about family and cultural identity and belonging, conflicting social and cultural identities, childhood and memories, and also adolescence and marriage. This collection is also punctuated with captions throughout to describe the transitions and the silences inspired by a deaf sound artist. So I read Raymond Antrobus' first collection last year and fell in love. I was so excited to read this new collection by him and this didn't let me down at all. This is stunning. I love how Raymond Antrobus always explores such a vast range of themes all with such vulnerability and insight. This collection is totally engaging and startling from start to finish. The craftsmanship here is impeccable. This was definitely an emotional read, just so tender and aching with feeling. As always I loved the insight into deafness in here. I also really loved the addition of the marriage poems. This is just full of humanity. Raymond Antrobus is such a talent and in the end I gave this one 4.5 stars. Next up I read Dinner Party A Tragedy by Sarah Gilmartin. This is another upcoming new release, this one from the indie Pushkin Press. Thank you so much for sending me this copy set between the 1990s and present day both in Rural Island and in Dublin. This one tells the story of a family who gathers for the anniversary of a death. This ultimately uncovers old tensions and sends the host Kate spinning completely out of control. This is such a good novel. I loved this. Firstly big, big and on-right vibes from this book. The rural Irish setting, the suffocating family, the exploration of childhood and memories and loss. I love all of this stuff and I do think it was executed really well in here. This book definitely has that kind of tense, painful atmosphere. It had me sat on the edge of my seat, it had me turning the pages. I loved the setting, it worked really well. All of the different characters and their dynamics were really interesting. I will say that I did enjoy the first half of this book slightly more than the second half of the book. I kind of wanted to spend more time at the dinner party and to learn things bit by bit to compliment and give insight into this overarching scene and kind of piece things together little by little. I think that structuring would have worked a bit better but nevertheless a really interesting and engaging read. I think Sarah Gilmartin is going to be a fab author and in the end I gave this one four stars. Camera just died before talking about the last book. Bloody typical. So the final book that I read recently was The Poppy War by R. F. Quang. Ending on a big one, this is the first book in a very dark, historical military fantasy series inspired by 20th century China. It tells a story of war orphan Rin who despite all the odds passes the test to attend the most elite military training school in the empire. Here Rin discovers her unearthly lethal power for shamanism, accessing the gods. All the while the piece of the Nican empire is looking more and more fragile. So this fantasy trilogy was insanely popular at the end of last year, especially here on booktube. I've been meaning to read it ever since just waiting until I was in the mood and I was really in the mood recently. So I have very mixed feelings about this one. It started off brilliantly. I loved the dark, gritty setting in here, totally unique, totally fascinating. The book also had tons of traditional fantasy tropes which I absolutely loved. I was here for the whole ride but this book wasn't great all of the way through. The plot takes a turn around halfway through and I'm not afraid to say that it was badly done, completely cutting you off from everything that the book has taught you to care about up until that point. There are pacing issues throughout, there are certainly character development issues, the writing isn't amazing. That being said, I do think this book ultimately ended up where it needed to be. I have heard that the series only gets better after this book and that this is a good foundation block for the second and third books. But boy, we have taken a rocky road to get there. So overall, not the best fantasy book I've ever read. I really really really liked some aspects of it. I really disliked some of the execution. I do think this has huge potential. I do believe that the next two books are going to get better so I will be carrying on with this series. Fingers crossed it all pays off. In the end I gave this one a three stars. So there we go, we're finally done. Those are all the books that I read in June and July and August. If you've made it to the end of this video, you are an absolute saint. Thank you so much. I really hope you've enjoyed hearing me chat about all these books I've read recently there. Really was quite the range, I told no lies. Please let me know if you've read any of these books, how did you find them. Please also let me know what you've been reading recently. Tell me about something amazing you've read down below in the comments. Thanks again for watching everyone. I hope you're doing really well and I look forward to seeing you in my next one. Bye.