July Reads

July was a good month for reading - 10 books! Mainly because I decided to read in the middle of the night during Miles’ feedings instead of scrolling social media.  My favorites were Black Buck and Know My Name.

Read:

The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver (★★★☆☆) -  This was my Books and Booze book club book for June, so you can see how hard it was for me to get into.  Lydia loses her fiance in a car accident and takes sleeping pills to help deal with the pain.  The sleeping pills bring her to an alternate storyline where Freddie is still alive and she is making her life with him.  The book goes back and forth from her awake and asleep state.  The book was very slow at the beginning when she is drowning in her depression and goes to the asleep state quite often.  I did like the ending when she starts to come out of the grief state and it stays in her awake state more often.

The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain (★★★☆☆) - Riley believes her older sister committed suicide when she was just a toddler.  Her father leaves his house to her when he passes away and she discovers lots of secrets, including that her sister may still be alive.  I got really into this book but then was very underwhelmed with the ending.  The 'twist' was pretty obvious. 

Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (★★★☆☆) - This was the Books and Booze book club book for July.  Maggie moves back into the house that her family fled when she was a young girl due to it being 'haunted'.  Her father wrote a best selling book about the haunting of the house and leaves the house to Maggie when he dies.  The book is a little creepy in some places.  It bounces back from current day to when Maggie was a child (narrated by her father via his book)  I found the ending a little underwhelming with the twist and a little too quick to wrap up for all of the build up - but it was still okay.

Know My Name by Chanel Miller (★★★★★) - This is the memoir by Chanel Miller. Chanel was sexually assaulted while passed out after a party behind a dumpster by a Stanford student athlete. It’s heartbreaking and very well written. She talks about her struggle to move on from the assault and all the hurdles she had to go through to even get a little bit of justice.  It is just awful the way we treat sexual assault victims and how society sees them, how because the assaulted was a good swimmer and a good kid, he shouldn’t be punished harshly and ruin his life over one mistake and dehumanize the victim…. 

The Quiet Girl by S.F. Kosa (★★★☆☆) - This book is written in dual story lines - one of the husband and one as a female who went through a fugue event. The husband goes to patch things up with his wife to find that she is not at her Cape Cod home and her rings have been taken off.  The story line of the trouble woman is so manipulative, but the twists of the storylines coming together was good. I hated the mom character. The book kept me reading but just was not overwhelmingly great. 

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (★ ★ ★ ★ ☆) - This book was very eye opening to how the system can imprison people with very little evidence - or even evidence that proves they are innocent! The book is written by a lawyer for an Equal Justice Initiative and chronicles cases that he has seen and worked on.  One in particular is Walter, who is imprisoned for years for a murder that he didn't commit with many people providing an alibi for him.  The eye witnesses that placed him at the scene later comes forward to say he lied about details but the whole story that got him convicted is just heartbreaking.

Black Buck by Mateo Askaripour (★★★★★) - I loved this book, the first half definitely more than the last half because it did get a little far fetched. I appreciated the ending since it definitely didn’t end like I thought it would. The book follows a young black man whose life changes one day while he is working at Starbucks. A tech start up CEO takes a chance on him and teaches him the world of sales. It follows his rollercoaster of rises and falls in the cut throat environment.

It’s Been a Pleasure, Noni Blake by Claire Christian (★★★☆☆) - This was a quick, light read about a woman who gets out of a long term relationship and then makes a To Do list of people she would like to meet up with that were ones that got away, in a sense.  It goes through her different encounters with the different people and the adventures she goes on to find herself.  Quite a few detailed steamy encounters in this book. 

One by One by Ruth Ware (★★★★☆) - Reminded me a bit of the Agatha Christie book And Then There Were None.  The book goes between two different characters that have a secret and has you questioning which one is going to be the unreliable narrative.  A corporate retreat to the mountains turns deadly when an avalanche occurs and then members of the company are murdered, one by one.  I enjoyed this book, it was sort of predictable but entertaining.  

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg (★★★★☆) - This book walked through studies of how powerful habits are. The ones that really stood out to me were the ones with changing little things in diets and exercise can set off a chain reaction of other habits. It was also interesting about the football coach that tried to train his players to have a different habit on a queue - and eventually it paid off. 

In Process:

Nomadland by Jessica Bruder 

Need to Know by Karen Cleveland

Abandoned: 

Too Good to Be True by Carola Lovering - This was our May book club book that finally was available through the library.  I started it and got a little ways into it when I remembered (SPOILER) a kid drowns.  Since kids drowning gives me recurring nightmares, I decided it was better to just quit reading it and move on...

Next Up:

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen by Joanna Faber

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner