June Reading Wrap Up – 2018

Hello Everyone!

June is coming to a close, so it is time for my monthly reading wrap-up! I have read slightly less books this month because I have been extremely busy with school, but I am still really proud of the 6 books I managed to read. I loved every book I read this month, so I definitely count this month as a success even though I haven’t read as much as I’d have liked to. That’s enough of the intro though; you came for the books, so lets start talking about them:

The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

I ADORED this trilogy! I absolutely flew through these books and I loved every second of it. I loved the characters and I thought the world was so unique and wonderful. I would sit down to read for 10 minutes and then look up to find it had been 2 hours and I’d read nearly 200 pages. Leigh Bardugo is now officially one of my favourite authors and this trilogy has gone straight to the top of the list of my favourite books of all time! I am going to be posting a full review of this trilogy on Tuesday, so if you want to hear some more in depth and well-put together thoughts stay tuned for that.

5/5

The language of Flowers by Mandy Kirkby

This is the first proper non-fiction book I have ever read and I really enjoyed it. I have always been interested in learning more outside of my formal education, but I just kept putting it off because ‘I didn’t have enough time’ or ‘I didn’t know where to start’, but I finally stopped making excuses and just started and I am so so glad I made that decision. This book obviously didn’t have characters to fall in love with or a plot to follow because it was non-fiction, but I did still really enjoy reading it and I feel like I have learnt a lot. I marked the pages I wanted to come back to and I made notes on the book as I was reading it like I would at school, which I also really enjoyed doing. I’m so glad I decided to take my learning into my own hands and I already know that this is going to be something I do for a long time. If any of you are interested in flowers, then I do highly recommend this book. It is easy to follow, but still tells you loads of information from lots of different perspectives and time periods.

4/5

Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Leah on the Offbeat is the companion novel to Simon vs the Homosapiens agenda, which I read and loved earlier this year. I bought the companion almost immediately after finishing Simon, but I never ended up reading it because I got sucked into my re-read of Harry Potter and then I was on a huge fantasy kick for a while. With summer finally here though, I am really getting back into contemporary, so I finally picked it up and I loved it! It was amazing getting to see all of my favourite characters again and to read the story from Leah’s point of view was amazing as well because she is such an interesting character that I always wanted more of. The reason I gave it 4.75/5 stars is because the beginning was a little slow for me, but other than that I loved every second of it. I will be doing a review for this books though, so I will give you more of my thoughts about everything in that, which I predict will be up in a couple of weeks time.

4.75/5

Girlhood by Cat Clarke

When I first started reading this one I wasn’t too sure about it because it had been several years since I had read a book like this one. When I was younger I loved reading books about boarding schools, friends and all the things they got up to, but I haven’t read one in a long time, so I wasn’t sure if I would still like it, but it turned out I loved it! I adored the friendships in this book as well as the brutal honesty about it and a lot of other things. There was so much representation in this book for LGBTQ+ people and mental illness. I am going to put a trigger warning on this book for Eating Disorders, mental illness, grief and suicidal thoughts though, so please be weary of those things when going into it. I wasn’t at all aware that this book was going to be as hard hitting or cover as many serious topics as it did and there wasn’t really any warning until it was happening either, so I was a little shocked. That was the reason I docked the book half a star, but other than that I really loved the book for all of it’s representation, serious commentary and humour. It was truly like being a kid again and reading Mallory Towers by Enid Blyton!

4.5/5

Those were all the books I read in June! I read slightly less books than I did last month, but 6 is still a really good amount for me and I am proud of it especially because I loved every book I read, so I count that as a definite win even though I read less. I am currently reading Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman (fiction) and The Periodic Table of Feminism by Marisa Bate (non-fiction), which I will finish in early July, so you’ll see what I thought of them in my July wrap-up. What have you read this June?

Goodbye for now!

Over and Out