July was a crazy month. I think I did more activities in July than I have the entire year, minus March/April when I was preparing for ApollyCon, dodging tornadoes while being sick, and attending ApollyCon. Most of the July events were family stuff, so nothing crazy. It was just stuff that took up my weekends. I am excited to have a quieter month in August, only for September to be another month of chaos. Hopefully, after that, things calm down for the rest of the year, but the holidays are always insane, so who knows.
In this wrap-up,
I’ll list the books I read, the books I reviewed, the books I bought/received,
and my TBR for next month. Now, let’s get this bookish party started!
Books Read in July
I read six books in July, which is way lower than what I've read in previous months. There are reasons for that, however. The major reason being that family stuff I talked about. I also read two of my favorite books of the year, What Fury Brings by Tricia Levenseller and The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem, and was in a slight slump after that. And that slump came back towards the end of July as well. Both of these two books were ARC reads, though I acquired What Fury Brings through a trade. Also, note that What Fury Brings is a fairly dark book. It has a lighter tone, but the subject matter isn't for those with significant triggers. Think Captive Prince vibes. I, personally, devoured it in like six hours. I couldn't stop myself. I also managed to finish the Kingdom of Lies series by Stacia Stark when I finally read A Queen This Fierce and Deadly. Now, I need to read the spinoff book. And, to make my sister happy, I read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. It was fun, but there was a lot of math. I did read it in less than 24 hours though. I read The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten as well in order to decide if I wanted to purchase the FairyLoot edition of the third book in the trilogy. (Spoiler alert, I did.) All of these books were physical copies, by the way. I mean, technically I read the Stacia Stark book as a Kindle Unlimited copy, but I own a special edition, so it still counts as getting a physical book off of my TBR. The only true ebook I read was Smoke and Scar by Gretchen Powell Fox, another KU download. It was fun. I do expect to read the sequel when it comes out soon.
Books Bought/Received in July
I thought July wasn't that bad. Well, it was bad. Very bad. Not for the number of books, but for the dollar amount. I think I have finally put myself on a budget. No more random book orders until I get my TBR down, and I have a strict monthly allowance. Very strict. Obviously, I have a lot of preorders from Barnes & Noble that are coming in, so I probably won't cancel those, but I just can't make any new orders for anything other than books I am super excited about until I get myself under control. I have been selling some books, so that has helped. It's still only put a small dent in the damage, though. Overall, I bought 32 books in July, and I received five books.
The five books I received in July that I didn't pay for in the month consisted of a variety of titles from random places. For preorders, I have Aurora Crate's editions of Dance with a Demon and Inner Demons by Stacia Stark and Bookish Box's edition of Between Fear and Favor by Jess Wisecup. I also used my trade credit to get a copy of Serpent & the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent for free at my local used bookstore. And the sole ebook that I received this month (that wasn't a KU copy) was To Cage a Wild Bird by Brooke Fast, which is a NetGalley e-ARC.
Now, for what I bought. I only received 24 of the 32 books I purchased. Those included 15 books from B&N: Wrath of the Dragons by Olivia Rose Darling, Looking for Group by Alexis Hall, The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigette Knightley, the Legend trilogy with novella by Marie Lu (not pictured), Avalon High by Meg Cabot (not pictured), Archangel's Consort by Nalini Singh, Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer (not pictured), Teacher of the Year by M.A. Wardell, The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood, Opal by Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Baby Dragon Cafe by Aamna Qureshi and A.T. Qureshi, and The Curse That Binds by Laura Thalassa. From FairyLoot, I also received three books from my subscription boxes: Dance of Lies by Brittney Arena, Arcana Academy by Elise Kova, and The Nightblood Prince by Molly X. Chang. I also ordered two books from Amazon during their Prime sale: The Will of the Many by James Islington and A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire paperback for a dust jacket I have. I've also done a lot of trading in July. Through trades, I got the FairyLoot editions of Divine Rivals and Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross and an extra copy of A Court of Wings and Ruin to replace my beat up copy. I also ordered The Jasad Crown UK hardback from Blackwells.
As for the remaining eight books, some of them should be on their way soon and others won't ship out for a while yet. The ones on their way include the Illumicrate edition of The Irresistible Urge and another book I'll talk about later. Others that might take a bit longer include the FBAA Acrylipics 3D edges edition, the Bad Women Books The Knight and the Moth edition, a German special edition of the first Zodiac Academy book, the FairyLoot edition of A Curse Carved in Bone, and the Indigo edition of Hollow.
Currently Obsessed With
The month of July was pretty quiet for new things to watch. The biggest thing I watched this month was the new Superman movie. My family saw it in theaters. I also watched a couple of episodes of Jensen Ackles's new show Countdown on Amazon Prime, but I haven't continued with the rest of the episodes just yet. I've been having a hard time lately getting into cop shows. Other than those, I've been re-watching Home Improvement episodes. Oh, and I don't think I ever mentioned it, but in June, I believe, I watched the '90s film The Rocketeer with my parents. It was fun.
August TBR
I've been slowly but surely chipping away at my very long TBR. The first major thing to get off my TBR is Voidwalker by S.A. MacLean. I need to review it before it's release date this month. I'm about 75% done as of the time I'm writing this post. I'm also about 60% done with Of Sky & Embers by Claire Butler (ebook). I think I've been reading this book since fall of last year. I just put it down and kept forgetting to pick it back up. I have a library Libby book, Destroy the Day by Brigid Kemmerer, that I need to start ASAP, and I would like to get to Our Vicious Oaths by N.E. Davenport (NetGalley copy). Other than those, I have some other books I'd like to read that aren't major priorities. Those include Salt in the Wound by Sierra Simone, The Sun and the Void by Gabriela Romero Lacruz, The Two Lies of Faven Sythe by Megan E. O'Keefe, Rain of Shadows and Endings by Melissa K. Roehrich, The Hemlock Queen by Hannah Whitten, Silver Elite by Dani Francis, Rebel Witch by Kristen Ciccarelli, and Lightlark by Alex Aster. I've also recently made a TBR jar. It's full of both reading prompts and specific books that have been on my TBR for a long time. I pulled from it a couple of weeks ago, and the prompt was "a first book re-read to finish a series," which basically means rereading book one in a series I haven't read the sequels of yet. I decided to go with A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske for this one. I'd really love to finish out this trilogy before the end of the year.
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Okay, well, that's the month of July, plus some August sneak peeks, all wrapped up into one post. Do you have a wrap-up post for last month? If so, share in the comments!
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