So… I read three books in July. Is it a slump? Maybe? I don’t know. All I know is that’s a pretty shitty reading month, even for someone reading for quality over quantity.
Okay, maybe it’s not so bad. Two of the books I read this month I gave five stars. But you know what’s really crazy? I also reviewed every book I read this month. Talk about being an overachiever (or just doing my job as a book blogger)! Anyway, let’s talk about the three books I read in July.
Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
Summary: Meet Roger. Skilled with words, languages come easily to him. He instinctively understands how the world works through the power of story.
Meet Dodger, his twin. Numbers are her world, her obsession, her everything. All she understands, she does so through the power of math.
Roger and Dodger aren’t exactly human, though they don’t realise it. They aren’t exactly gods, either. Not entirely. Not yet.
Meet Reed, skilled in the alchemical arts like his progenitor before him. Reed created Dodger and her brother. He’s not their father. Not quite. But he has a plan: to raise the twins to the highest power, to ascend with them and claim their authority as his own.
Godhood is attainable. Pray it isn’t attained.
My Thoughts: How can you explain a book that is so inexplicable, but in the best way? Everything about this book— from the plot to the characters to the writing— worked for me. I am so glad I gave Seanan McGuire a second chance. Check out my review!
My Rating: 5/5
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
Summary: It’s been eighteen months since the Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine. Since the Tox hit and pulled Hetty’s life out from under her.
It started slow. First the teachers died one by one. Then it began to infect the students, turning their bodies strange and foreign. Now, cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their island home, the girls don’t dare wander outside the school’s fence, where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They wait for the cure they were promised as the Tox seeps into everything.
But when Byatt goes missing, Hetty will do anything to find her, even if it means breaking quarantine and braving the horrors that lie beyond the fence. And when she does, Hetty learns that there’s more to their story, to their life at Raxter, than she could have ever thought true.
My Thoughts: I wanted to love this book so bad, but alas it’s just okay. There are parts I really like, namely Byatt’s POV and the F/F romance (though, admittedly, I’d have liked more of it). I found Hetty to be quite hypocritical and difficult to root for at times. I would’ve preferred the entire book be in Byatt’s perspective were it not for all the gay being in Hetty’s.
This book has strong hints of the Southern Reach trilogy, which is super cool. I just didn’t love this book. I’m also unsure if it’s going to be a series, as the ending was way too open and seemingly unfinished. All in all, I enjoyed this book fine but it’s not a new favorite. Check out my review!
My Rating: 3/5
Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
Summary: All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery— magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.
Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.
As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught— about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.
My Thoughts: I just… I loved this book so much. The characters, the romance, the plot, the world— everything’s flawless! This is how you glo up! Check out my review!
My Rating: 5/5
What books did you read? Did you have a better reading month than I did? Let’s have a discussion in the comments!
Strange Storyteller 