July 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

Need some new books for your TBR?

I’m sharing with you what I read (and am currently reading) for the month of July

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Full Show Notes (Transcript)…

Hi there, I'm Stephanie Leopold and I am excited to welcome you to the Readerly Collective Podcast, where bookworms unite and geeking out is highly encouraged. Join me as we explore the world of books in the reading life, celebrating all types of readers and all types of genres. Grab your favorite beverage, cozy up in your reading nook, and let's dive in.

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Hey there readers, hope you're doing well. Since this is the last Monday of the month, I thought I would do something a little bit different and do a reading wrap up for the month of July. I would love to know if you want more books in the podcast or if you like the tips and tricks. There are a lot of great podcasts out there and I also want this to be helpful to you for you and your reading. I thought it would be fun just to go back through and share the books I read in July. They were all great, and maybe it'll give you some new ideas, introduce you to something maybe you haven't heard before, or maybe you've already read them and we can start a conversation about them.

The first book I read in July was on audio. It's called Margo's Got Money Trouble. It is by Rufi Thorpe, published in June of 2024. It's a William Morrow book if you care about publishers, and narrated by Elle Fanning, who I love and I thought she did such a great job.

This book, I've been prefacing like, “listen, it sounds crazy. It sounds like it could be real dirty. It sounds like it could go all over the place.” But it was so good. So, I'm just going to copy the synopsis, because I can't do it any better:

As the child of a Hooters waitress and an ex pro wrestler, Margot's always known to be a she'd have to make it on her own. So she enrolls at her local junior college, even though she can't imagine how she'll ever make a living. And she's still figuring things out and never planned to have an affair with her English professor. And while the affair is brief, it isn't brief enough to keep her from getting pregnant. Despite everyone's advice, she decides to keep the baby. Mostly out of naivete and yearning for something bigger. Now at 20, Margo is alone with an infant, unemployed, and on the verge of eviction. She needs a cash infusion fast, and when her estranged father, Jinx, shows up on her doorstep and asks to move in with her, she agrees in exchange for help with child care. And then Margot begins to form a plan. She'll start an OnlyFans account as an experiment and soon finds herself adapting some of Jinx's advice from the world of wrestling, like how to craft a compelling character and make your audience fall in love with you. Before she knows it, she's turned into a runaway success. Could this be the answer to all of Margo's problems, or does the does Internet fame come with too high a price?

This was so great. It's wonderful. It deals with a lot of big ideas and some heavy ideas, but it's all lighthearted and funny. We're dealing with OnlyFans, so there are some parts of the book that got a little explicit, but it was hilarious. Again, I listened to it on audio, loved it. I highly recommend it. It was just something completely different. also, word on the street is that this is going to be made into a movie with Elle Fanning. Last I saw, I think that was like October of 2023, they were talking about that, and I don't know where they're at with that, but it might be a movie. So loved it.

The second book I finished is The People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry. This was published in May of 2021 and it is a Berkeley Press, if you want the publisher. This is rom com, if you are on BookTok, Bookstagram, you've probably seen Emily Henry books. They have the cutest covers and think she comes out with one a year, right around summer, they're perfect “beach reads.” She actually has a book called Beach Reads. this is my first one of hers that I've read.

People We Meet on Vacation follows Poppy and Alex. They met in college and have become such close friends and they take a summer trip every year to someplace new. And of course, because this is a rom com, I don't know if I need to tell you, but feelings come out and (spoiler) they get together in the end. I thought this was cute. What I really loved about it was the writing about their trips, and the places they went. I thought that writing was a great kind of armchair travel for me. I have talked briefly, I think in some episodes, that I love a mystery suspense. I need a plot twist. I want to be kept guessing. So sometimes rom coms are difficult for me because of the predictability. And I know that that is what draws people to rom coms is just the comfort and the predictability that we know what's going to happen.

So for me, I gave this three and a half out of five stars, which is good; I enjoyed it. And it’s not that I thought it was bad, it's just personal preference, but it's cute. And if you do like a rom com, lighthearted, story, this is a friends to lovers trope, and I would definitely recommend this. I do want to read more Emily Henry, and I think it will, but it won't be my next read. Uh, I gotta get some mystery thriller suspense in there, (which I did!) . But that is The People We Meet on Vacation, charming and predictable, but I liked it.

The third book I finished was The Midnight Feast by Lucy Foley. It came out June of 2024, a William Morrow book. And I listened to this one on audio as well. I’ve listened to another one of Lucy Foley's books, The Guest List. I listened to that a couple years ago on audio and the thing I found at least with that book and this one, the Midnight Feast, is there's a lot going on for an audio book, there's a lot going on in terms of like multiple point of views, and back and forth timelines. And sometimes I found myself becoming distracted and then I feel like I've missed something or it takes me a while to get back into, wait a minute, who is this person? What just happened? But if you like that in your audio and can manage, which I do, It was very enjoyable, I just for whatever reason, was a bit distracted this time around. The audio did have multiple narrators, so even when I got distracted that was helpful in bringing me back to whose POV we were in at that moment. So, again, a lot happening in this book. his is like snotty, rich people behaving badly, which I'm so fascinated by and also like, oh, when they get their comeuppance in the end, it usually feels pretty good. For this one, I’ll also read the synopsis:

It's the opening night of The Manor, the newest and hottest luxury resort, and no expense, small or large, has been spared. The infinity pool sparkles, the manor mule cocktail, , may have a dash of CBD oil in it and it's being poured with a heavy hand. But under the burning midsummer sun, darkness stirs. Old friends and enemies circulate among the guests and just outside the manor's immaculate kept grounds, an ancient forest bristles with secrets and it's not too long before the local police are called and it turns out that the past has crashed the party with deadly results.

This was great. I do love listening to Lucy Foley on audio. I gave this four out of five stars and recommend to anybody that likes a good mystery that'll kind of keep you guessing.

All right, the last book that I read in the month of July was The God of the Woods by Liz Moore. I was highly anticipating this book. I read her book Long Bright River. I read it in 2020 and it has stuck with me. It was, So good, and if you haven't read that one, go check it out! The God of the Woods is her newest release, and was released July 2024, and it’s from Riverhead. Let me tell you - I was reading God of the Woods while I was listening to the Midnight Feast and there is some overlap. And so I think that was also part of what was causing my confusion. They both deal with secrets, multiple point of views, alternating timeline from past and present and creepy woods. I think that's maybe I felt distracted while listening to The Midnight Feast. Anywho, The God of the Woods:

It's 1975 and a camp counselor discovers one of her campers has gone missing and that kid was Barbara Van Laar. And Barbara isn't just anybody. She is the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region's residents. And this isn't the first Van Laar child to disappear from the area. Barbara's older brother vanished 14 years previously and was never found.

I don't know if I need to say anything else. I was just like, yes, I need to read this. It was just so good. This was a five star read for me. I think also because I was highly anticipating it and it just was everything I wanted it to be, with unexpected twists and turns and some things that I did not see coming, which I always love in a book. So if you love suspense and kind of trying to piece together a puzzle, this is amazing.

So those are the books I read, and since this is actually not the end of July, I still have a couple of books that I'm currently reading, I don't know if I'll finish them this month, but I might, and that is Humor Me by Cat Shook that came out earlier this month in July. It is a Celadon, which is an imprint of a Macmillan. I fell in love with Cat Shook last year. She came out with her debut, which was called If We're Being Honest, and that was one of my favorite books of last year. I will tell anybody to read it if they like a good family dysfunction, and it was lighthearted. If We’re Being Honest opens as the patriarch of the family has died and everybody is gathering for his funeral. And the first couple paragraphs are each child and grandchild's point of view and why they are not appropriate to provide the eulogy at their father or grandfather's service. So his best friend does the eulogy and he shows up drunk and announces to all the mourners that he and the patriarch were lovers. That is how the story starts! So I knew when Cat Shook was releasing a new book, I didn't care what it was about. I was going to buy it and read it.

This book, Humor Me, is being compared to Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld, if you have read that. What this book is really about is female friendships, unexpected love, stand up comedy. She works at a late night show and is scouting new talent for the show. I'm not that far into the book, but we are finding out, the main character, Presley, named after Elvis, her mother has passed away. Her mother was an alcoholic and not always the stable figure for her and so things are starting to happen where you see her starting to kind of process her mother's passing. Presley runs into one of her mother's best friends from high school and they start a friendship, of sorts. And then I think there might be one or two, love interests. So, again, I'm currently reading this, so I'm not sure what happens, but I love Cat Shook, and so far so good. I was joking with my husband that on page 11, the characters made reference to You've Got Mail, which is my favorite movie of all time, and so I said 5 out of 5 stars! I don't need anything else! So it started off good for me. Hopefully I can talk about that maybe next month if you guys like these wrap ups.

I am also in the middle of listening to a book called Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny. This is book number 11 in the Inspector Gamache series or the Three Pines series. There are, I believe, 18 and I think the 19th book is coming out this year. So this one, number 11, was published in 2015 and it is a Macmillan book. I had been hearing so many good things about the Inspector Gamache series and started. I read the first one, and because they are set in Canada, and they do have French words in them and it's just easier for me to listen to the audio. This series is oh, so good. I think the first couple could possibly be standalones, but as the series has progressed, the story arc of the characters, the big overarching stories are just amazing and I just love it. I have a hard time describing the Inspector Gamache books because I want to refer them as cozy. I tend to call them a comfort mystery because they're they are not a cozy mystery. They are dark, yet the characters and the setting of three pines are are just so comforting. I think anybody who's read these could say I want to go to the bistro and the B& B and sit in front of the fireplace and wrap myself in a blanket, and go to Myrna's bookstore, and see Ruth Zardo with her duck walking the streets. If you have read these, you know what I'm talking about! I'm continuing on with the series, and if you're looking for a good mystery series, those are great. Louise Penny, the Inspector Gamache series. And then Amazon did do Three Pines adaptation series. I think it came out the end of last year and it got cancelled after the one season. It’s was okay, but definitely read the books for sure.

And that, my friends, is what's going on in July. Let me know if you have read any of those, if any of those have sparked your interest. Let me know what you're reading. If you liked this wrap up episode, I would love to know if you want more of that, more information on the books I'm reading. And I just want to reiterate that these are just my tastes. I read what I like to read as I think we all should. Let me know what you're reading and until next week, friends, take care.

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