Hey Bookish People!
Happy July!! Happy 4th of July! Happy Halfway Reading Checks!
This is always a fun month despite the crazy heat that is starting up. Going into this month, I have so many trips planned – business trips, family trips, day trips on the weekends, I’m going Everywhere! You better believe that my kindle and physical books are ready for some traveling too. The goal is to not pick up any that I have designated for those trips before it’s time. We’re going to Thomas the Train this and “believe we can” not pick those books up early. Let’s see how strong my self-restraint is.
With it being the halfway mark for the Reading Challenge on Goodreads, how’s everyone doing? I’ve hit 54 books and I am on track! I was a beautiful 10 books ahead about 2 months ago, but I got into a reading hangover and haven’t found the book to pull me out of it yet. But I love that I’m on track for this year’s goal! I need to find some more audiobooks that I can have going while I’m doing some of these driving trips.
I hope everyone has a fun 4th of July and stays safe during the parties and fireworks. I’m looking forward to hanging out with friends this year and enjoying the shows. Or maybe stick at home and listen to the fireworks while I read snuggled up with my dogs.
Also, if anyone would like, I have a monthly bookclub on Fable. I am absolutely obsessed with how much fun this app is! (I am not backed or supported by them at all. This is me just gushing over it) I’ve got the polling up for this month’s book at this moment or jump in whenever you find a book we are reading and it looks fun. My bookclub is called Pages & Paces. Feel free to join!
Have a wonderful July everyone! Talk to you all next month!
Reading Theme: Summer Reads
While not everyone is out traveling or heading to their summer vacations, we can still join the fun through some books! Find those summer reads this month. It can be literal summer reads and the vacations or trips the characters are going on. Or it can be simply the TBR list you have for this summer. Whatever the needs, this is the month to read it! If you want a bit more of a challenge, try finding a book that is a part of a series. Are you ready to make a mid-year commitment to a new book series?? I don’t know if I at the moment. I already have so many book series that I am entangled in. Good luck if you accept the challenge though!
Happy Reading Everyone!
My Reading List for July 2025:
You and Me on Vacation By Emily Henry
Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book. And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends. For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.
Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven’t spoken since.
Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex. And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.
Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?
Lowcountry Boil By Susan M. Boyer
Private Investigator Liz Talbot is a modern Southern belle: she blesses hearts and takes names. She carries her Sig 9 in her Kate Spade handbag, and her golden retriever, Rhett, rides shotgun in her hybrid Escape.
When her grandmother is murdered, Liz high-tails it back to her South Carolina island home to find the killer. She’s fit to be tied when her police-chief brother shuts her out of the investigation, so she opens her own. Then her long-dead best friend pops in and things really get complicated.
When more folks start turning up dead in this small seaside town, Liz must use more than just her wits and charm to keep her family safe, chase down clues from the hereafter, and catch a psychopath before he catches her.
Dreams of Falling By Karen White
On the banks of the North Santee River stands a moss-draped oak that was once entrusted with the dreams of three young girls. Into the tree’s trunk, they placed their greatest hopes, written on ribbons, for safekeeping–including the most important one: Friends forever, come what may.
But life can waylay the best of intentions….
Nine years ago, a humiliated Larkin Lanier fled Georgetown, South Carolina, knowing she could never go back. But when she finds out that her mother has disappeared, she realizes she has no choice but to return to the place she both loves and dreads–and to the family and friends who never stopped wishing for her to come home.
Ivy, Larkin’s mother, is discovered badly injured and unconscious in the burned-out wreckage of her ancestral plantation home. No one knows why Ivy was there, but as Larkin digs for answers, she uncovers secrets kept for nearly fifty years–whispers of love, sacrifice, and betrayal–that lead back to three girls on the brink of womanhood who found their friendship tested in the most heartbreaking ways.
The Inn on Harmony Island By Anne-Marie Meyer
After I returned to my small hometown six months ago to attend my estranged grandmother’s funeral, I swore I would never go back. That is, until my grandmother’s lawyer calls me up. If I don’t return to Harmony Island and fulfill my grandmother’s stipulations, the generationally owned family inn will be turned over to the state and sold off to the highest bidder–my grandmother’s rival and mother to the man who broke my heart, Missy Willis.
I’m not sure I’m strong enough to return home, but I also know, I can’t let Miss Willis win. So I pack up my belongings and head for North Carolina.
I’m determined to stay distant, living in the small cottage next to the inn, and keep my head down. But in a small town where everyone knows your name, that becomes difficult. Soon, my past catches up with me and I’m faced with the history I’ve buried for so long. Just when I reach my breaking point, Miles, the single dad living at the inn, swoops in to my life to rescue me. He was my protector in my childhood, my enemy in my teenage years, and now?
Now, I’m not so sure. Especially when his love for his daughter is contagious, or the way he looks at me when he doesn’t know I see him. I’m so confused and I want to run away like I did in the past, but I can’t. And when Miles touches me like that…I don’t want to.
Luckily, I find a friend in Abigail, the local bookstore owner. She’s one of the only residents who doesn’t know about my past and seems to be looking for the same thing I am, a place to belong.
Robinson Crusoe By Daniel Defoe
Robinson Crusoe runs away from home to join the navy. After a series of adventures at sea, he is shipwrecked in a devastating storm, and finds himself alone on a remote desert island. He remains there many years, building a life for himself in solitude, until the day he discovers another man’s footprint in the sand.
