26 books

I didn’t do a May monthly book re-cap, but here we are at the end of June already. I read 26 books in June, and 5 of those were solid 5⭐️ reads for me, and there was some variety in there for me this month. Let’s look at them:

Unbreak Me, by Jesse H. Reign. This was a MM romance book, and a very sweet story about Englishman David who was sent to live on a remote farm in South Africa after a major depressive episode. Farmer Jonathan was nothing like what David was expecting, and he deals with his feelings and emotions by keeping a very detailed diary during his months on the farm. This book is the diary, so it is all a single POV story, which I really like. It’s a story about the struggle of coming out, the angst of wondering if what you thought was love was actually love at all. And what would happen if, after five years, you were to see that first love again? Could it possibly stand the test of time? This was a really lovely book and I’d definitely read it again. David and Jonathan were both wonderfully developed characters.

Out of the Clear Blue Sky, by Kristan Higgins. This was a good read, and I’m sure it’s a really popular book club book. Lillie and her husband are ready to send their only child off to college and she’s ready for the next phase of her life. But her husband instead drops the bomb on her that he’s leaving her for another woman. Already estranged from her mother and her sister, Lillie finds that this unwelcome new single life triggers all sorts of emotions and leads her down paths that she never could have seen coming. It really is a good story, complicated and messy, and Lillie ends up discovering strengths within herself she couldn’t have imagined.

The Conditions of Will, by Jessa Hastings. Oh, this was so good. The character development was really wonderful in this book, particularly with Georgia. I just loved her. Georgia was estranged from her bigoted, wealthy South Carolina family and had been living in London for a decade. She’s become a body language savant of sorts, an expert on human behavior, and she and her gay, alcoholic brother are the black sheep of the family. They stay in touch with each other but not with their other two siblings or their parents. One day she gets a call that her father has died and she has to go home. And what a reunion this turns out to be. Georgia returns to the states where she meets gay brother Oliver’s AA sponsor Sam Penny - and all hell breaks loose. The drama that ensues is crazy in this book. Sam and Georgia are drawn together from the moment they meet and she assumes that he’s Oliver’s boyfriend (which he is not). Then a shocking bequest at the reading of the fathers’ will leads the family down a completely different road where secrets threaten to tear the tenuous threads of the entire family apart. This was a great book!

When Life Happened, by Jewel E. Ann. This book was more morally complex than I was prepared for and I loved it all the more. Parker and her twin sister were inseparable growing up until Parker caught her boyfriend sleeping with her sister. Trust was shattered and Parker’s new motto was that all cheaters are the worst. She floundered in life while her sister married Parker’s ex and she finally moved into her grandparents’ house that they had left the twins across the street from her family home. She meets the next door neighbor, Gus and his wife Sabrina. Sabrina hires Parker as her personal assistant which puts Parker in the direct way of Gus on most days, and the two end up forming a bond that neither saw coming. It’s then that Parker realizes that she needs to stop judging people for things they can’t control. A lot more happens in this book, but suffice it to say that it was really well done. Loved this story a lot.

In Five Years, by Rebecca Serle. I love this sort of story! Dannie, a very type A New York corporate attorney, who has her life planned out very diligently, knows what she wants. And on the day she gets engaged to her long time boyfriend, she goes to sleep but wakes up in a different apartment 5 years later with a different man and a different ring on her finger. After a startling hour she wakes up again back in her current life, but she can’t get this crazy “dream” out of her head. She and her fiancee proceed with their lives and their careers and never seem to find the time to actually get married. And then fast forward 4 and half years, Dannie’s best friend Bella, an artsy, flighty type who’s always in love with a new man, introduced Dannie to her latest love interest - and it’s the man from Dannie’s dream. The rest of the story is a story of love, of heartbreak, of friendship, of destiny (if that’s what you believe in). It was a great read.

Those were my five favorites for the month of June! If anyone has any recommendations for me, drop me a line at [email protected]. I’m happy to broaden my reading horizons, always! Talk at you on Monday with my weekly wrap up.

Love, Karen