june reading wrap up | 2024 (original) (raw)

hi hi friends! i hope you’re all doing well. june was a little bit of a whirlwind for me, but i was still able to read six things that i can’t wait to talk about with you! june is also my army anniversary with bts, and this year was the fifth! which feels very insane to type! but jimin also dropped a song the exact day, so the month for sure is ending on a happy note! but let’s get into the six books i read this month! 💜

✨ Jujutsu Kaisen, Vol. 04 by Gege Akutami ⭐⭐⭐
➛ vol. 1 ★★★★
➛ vol. 2 ★★★
➛ vol. 3 ★★★

i really am loving every itadori and sukuna interaction/moment. honestly, sukuna was my favorite character in this fourth installment, and im not sure what that says about me, but here we are. my heart @ junpei, fully and utterly. mahito, after my fave scene with sukuna, thinks up a new mission to steal some remaining cursed fingers of sukuna. but besides that, we get to see the start of the good year event, which is a team battle of different schools, where the most exorcisms win. but obviously, itadori is a target all on his own. so, so, so excited to continue on, probably extra because of the cliffhanger ending feeling of this, too!

trigger + content warnings: fighting / battle, violence, blood, gore, death, talk of bullying

✨ One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware ⭐⭐

i feel like i really can’t talk about this book without getting into a little spoilery territory, so please skip over this review if you wish to know nothing about this thriller! (and i do say thriller and not thriller mystery because there really isn’t much mystery to this story whatsoever, which is also probably a reason i didn’t enjoy it as much!) but i picked this up because 1) i have enjoyed ruth ware in the past and 2) the girls were saying survivor meets love island and i will always be here for that set up! But instead of love island and survivor, we get lord of the flies and men’s rights activists.

our main character, lyla, reluctantly agrees to go on a reality tv dating show, set on a secluded island, because her boyfriend is an actor and really begs her to do it because it could be very good for his career. lyla’s lab contract is up next month, and the funding renewal isn’t looking too good, so she also agrees under the condition that she can work on her paper and that she can only be on the island for two weeks. but after filming for only 24 hours, a big storm comes that is not only deadly but has completely made the people on the island not be able to contact anyone to come save them. And then she and the rest of the people are trying to survive while… red pill lord of the flies ensues.

i really do respect making the villain who it was, and i respect the talk of the manosphere and the following these mens right activities accumulate on youtube and other platforms that also leads to the perpetuation of violence against women. but oh my god, i just hated reading about this man with all the sum of hate i have in my body. after that storm, that man would have been GONE by me and me alone and i would not have… done what they did at the end (even though that’s an important discussion too, and it does make sense, but again – i just hated reading about it!) i hope if you pick this one up, you have more fun reading it than i did, friends!

trigger + content warnings (these will content some plot spoilers so please use caution or do not read if you do not need to know any tw/cws): extremely bad storms, talk of fear of water, extremely abusive relationships, blood, death, drowning, talk of loss of parent in past (one sentence), suicide mentions, not having the insulin that you need, grief, depression, loss of partner, grooming in past, and discussion of men’s rights activists throughout (always in a negative light but it is a lot)

✨ Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3) by Sarah J. Maas (reread) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“You cannot pick and choose what parts of her to love.”

listen, 2015 melanie gave this two stars and i am 99% sure that was just because i shipped celaena with chaol so very much! but i’ve grown (well, maybe not that much because i’d still pick chaol) and i had such a good time with this third installment. especially after rereading the assassin’s blade right before this. (yes, i very much agree that that is the best way / the right time to read that anthology collection!)

so many people have already said, that heir of fire is when the throne of glass series really shifts and starts becoming a more complex story with a lot more stakes falling into place left, right, and center. we learn so much more about the king, his agenda, and how long his plan has been in the works. we learn more about the fae, the valg, and the three wyrdkeys which maybe have a lot in common with the king’s plans as well. and i feel like i keep saying this in all my reviews this reread, but sjm really plotted and laid the foundation for this series in all her early books, and i really am appreciating that and giving her so much credit for it in 2024.

this is also the book that we finally get to learn about the witches, which means i finally got to read from manon’s (my favorite character of all tog) pov! her and abraxos are still my favorite parts of this book. from his love for flowers, to her getting him iron spikes like hers, to the spider heist that had me giggling because i had forgotten, their connection and love for one another is truly one of my favorite aspects of this entire series. and we also get to finally meet aedion, celaena’s cousin, who was one of my favorite characters back in the day, and he still is this reread. (also, i had forgotten his ring plotline and the gasp i let out hahah! ahhh, i really love him so very much!)

i know these reread reviews are a little all over the place, but let me attempt to be as vague as possible about the end of this book – but also please know that i was hanging off my chair reading because i was so enthralled and captured by the insanity that went on in that throne room. again, aedion 11/10 always. my heart is always breaking for dorian, but the frost imagery of that entire scene had me gasping for breath. chaol saying “i love you” before fleeing, and me knowing everything he is about to go through, ahhh… see, i am still an apologist for that man haha! But yeah, the emotion of that scene is just back to back to back – it really makes me want to pick up queen of shadows right this second!

overall, this was a really good book and i feel like it was also exactly what i needed right now. truly, a very special and happy reading experience with penny and i am very grateful for it. this experience is really unique because i remember so much about this series, but i also forget so much (like the entire kitchen staff and even the skinwalkers plot!!) so it really makes for a fever dream reading time. even seeing manon inside this little cottage surrounded by three men? i would have never been able to tell you that that was her tog debut! but yeah, i’m just having a really good time rereading this and i highly recommend if you haven’t read them in a decade as well!

trigger + content warnings: grief, depression, loss of friend in past, loss of family in past, loss of partner (in past and present), loss of animal companion, slavery, drinking, blood, abuse, parental abuse (grandparent), homelessness, violence, vomit, bullying, needles, talk of drugs, spiders

✨ Goblins & Greatcoats by Travis Baldree ⭐⭐⭐⭐
♡ download and read for free from subterranean press

fourteen pages of cozy fantasy murder mystery meets a d&d campaign perfection. we follow zyll (with her greatcoat of many pockets), and her pony (named round boy 🥺), come to an inn one rainy night and slowly solve the closed circle mystery. i really adored this and i really hope travis blesses us with more from within story in the future (please more zyll and round boy adventures).

trigger and content warnings: talk of murder / death + blood

✨ Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood ⭐⭐
ARC provided by the publisher via Libro.fm

this is the first book by ali that i haven’t loved and i am really sad about it. i feel like everyone has been begging for her (and emily henry) to give us that dual point of view, but man oh man i wish ali never did. I think a lot of it is because one of our main character’s povs is 1st person, and then the other is 3rd person, and even though i did find a groove while reading, each time i picked up the book it was jarring getting to that groove again.

but the basic premise of the stem romance is that one of our main characters, rue, is a biotech engineer who has a passion for fermentation and extending the shelf life of foods because of immense poverty trauma in her past. she is currently working with a company she really loves and she is also working on her own patent for food preservation. after a night with an attempted app hookup that kind of goes really wrong (but also really right despite not hooking up), the next day she goes to work and realizes that this mystery guy, eli, is part of another tech company who is going to buy the loan contract of her current company and that leaves a lot of uncertainty for her and her coworkers/friend’s futures.

i see a lot of people disliking this one because of the more explicit sex, so please know that going in, but that truly didn’t bother me. well, maybe it did just because i didn’t love eli in this, so i always would want to be in rue’s head, even during the sex scenes. what i really didn’t like (which i didn’t even talk about in the premise because it feels like the only time i was brought up was to further the mc’s love story), is a subplot with rue’s brother that just left a really bad taste in my mouth. i talk in a lot of reviews about how much my little brother means to me, so maybe i was just being extra sensitive, but it just felt really bad to read (and really bad to not really have a conclusion for). and honestly? i felt like the big storyline (view spoiler) was done much better in love, theoretically, and felt a lot better for the reader, too.

i really enjoyed seeing rue realize that she doesn’t deserve bad things, and her healing and slowly feeling safe in her vulnerability, but besides that? i just couldn’t connect with the romance of this one, on top of the brother storyline not feeling good to read. I still will very much be picking up deep end , but i hope you all enjoy the reading experience of not in love more than i did.

content warnings from the author(please use caution for potential spoilers): I know genre definitions can be a bit blurry, but I consider Not in Love to be an erotic romance, so… lots of sex scenes, explicit and graphic. More than usual. An unnecessary amount, perhaps. It’s how these two emotionally constipated people communicate, at least at the start. Childhood poverty and food insecurity. Anxiety around food, mostly due to past food insecurity. Mentions of addiction (secondary characters). Social anxiety. Parental death (accidents, illness) (off page, in the past). Parental neglect. Power exchange (pre-negotiated, during sex. Attempted assault of the FMC by her brother (she is unharmed). Pregnancy of a secondary character. Cursing and vulgar language.

other trigger + content warnings i found while reading (ali’s books really do have such good tws – i am always so thankful and impressed): grief, infidelity in past mentions (not mcs) but also a weird comment about cheating made my the mc once, childhood abandonment, one sentence mention of an animal dying during animal testing.

✨ A Rose Among Thorns (Hall of Thorns, Book One) by Ash Fitzsimmons ⭐⭐⭐

i have been very vocal about my new found love of the r/fantasy bingo , and one of the challenges (with hard mode activated) is to read a self pubbed or indie book with less than 100 ratings on goodreads. And as of typing this review, i am number 43! but also, i really love Mark Lawrence’s spfbo awards that he (and a team of so many cool sff bloggers) holds every year, really honoring and uplifting indie and self published authors and their stories! So this very long preamble is to inform you that i knew i had to pick a crossover book for this challenge and this one was on the list of spfbo x books and was free on kindle unlimited!

this was a really charming story about a girl named rose, who very unexpectedly gets a message from her aunt lily, asking her to come take care of her flower nursery for her, because she has to leave immediately. and basically, once rose arrives she thinks everything is normal and what she has always known to be true, but a magical elf inspector comes and shows her a secret magical greenhouse and teaches her about a whole new world filled with magic. but together, they also need to figure out where lily went and how to get her safely back asap!

this was really cute and i easily fell in love with both characters. rose is also an artist, and i really loved that about her, and just her finding happiness and being able to navigate the new and old world a little less lonely. i liked the small town, i liked meeting all the side characters (i loved* a faun in a blazer), and i really liked learning about all the magical plants and potions that can be made with them.

this story also just reminded me how much fun it can be to pick up a book not really knowing anything about it and just being able to have a good time with it, without any expectations. yes, the writing and banter was a little cheesy at times, but sometimes cheesy isn’t bad. and i hope this just really helps me reach for more unrated indie stories, because this really was a fun and cozy reading experience!

trigger + content warnings: mention of loss of grandparents and parents in past (illness and car accident), brief talk of addiction, brief mention of bullying in past, talk of drugs, magical compulsion / slavery / captivity, gun violence, drinking, grief, vomiting, unexpected loss of consciousness, magical overdose

reading statistics 💖

okay friends – that’s everything i read in june! but you will have a quarter two wrap up and my mid year book freak out tag over the next few days, too! june has been a loooooong month for me, and i hope july brings both you and me a lot of lightness. and if you’re reading this as it is being posted, i would really appreciate some good thoughts and vibes for the next few days! 💗 but please let me know what your favorite read of the month was! and, as always, i’m sending you all so much love and i hope you’re having happy reading! ✨