June Wrap Up

I think I read almost everything I planned to.  I didn't read as much as I wanted to, but I was on vacation for 2 weeks and reading wasn't the priority.  I still did a pretty good job and got all of my ARCs reviewed.  I hope to get the few outstanding reviews up in the next few days but I make no promises.  

What did you read in June?  Any recommendations for me?  Do you have any exciting vacation plans?  My family an I went to Orlando and went to Universal Studios and Disney.  It was ridiculously hot, but we had a blast.  It isn't much cooler here in Pennsylvania.

Books/Ebooks/ARCs

• The Fragile Ordinary by Samantha Young
• Review
• This is a great coming of age story with a ton of character development.  It is heavy on the teenage angst, which I don't love.  I love Samatha's writing and the way she develops her characters and identifies their flaws.  The main character starts out pretty unlikable but she grows so much.  I also really loved the poetry in this.  This will be out on June 26th.
• Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
• Review
• This was pretty dark and creepy.  It was a pretty wild ride.  I would never imagine a child doing some of the stuff that happens in this book.  This has some major shock value for sure.  This comes out July 17th.
• Born of Legend by Sherrilyn Kenyon
• I've been a huge fan of this series for a very long time.  The main character Jullien has been a villian for the entire series up until this installment.  We get to know him and his backstory.  While he isn't perfect, we learn that he isn't exactly the jerk everyone thinks is.  He's no teddy bear, but he has a softer side that he only reveals to a trusted few.  
• Dark Water by J.A. Armitage
• Review
• This is a Little Mermaid retelling.  it is a reverse fairy tale and keeps in the spirit of the original tale of The Little Mermaid with its own twists and turns.  It is a YA retelling and I found it enoyable but predictable and kind of tropey.  Is tropey a word?
• To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo
• Another Little Mermaid retelling, I have one more to read after this one.  This one is dark and instead of a mermaid the main character is a siren who kills princes instead of falling in love with them.  She has no desire to be human, but as a punishment her mother the Sea Queen turns her into a human.  To gain back her status as a Siren Princess she must fight her humanity and obey her mother.  This was awesome.  I really loved it.   

Audiobooks

I'm taking the same approach I did last month, I'm going to see what is available and what I'm in the mood for.  I have a ton of  challenge books I want to get to, and audio seems to be the best way to get to my challenge books and the other stuff I want to read.  If only there were more time in the day to read.

• The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
• I kept hearing great things about this and I'm so glad I picked it up.  I really enjoyed this and I'm anxiously awaiting the next installment.  I found some of the plot to be fairly predictable, but I was still very entertained.
• Till Death by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Review
• This is another book I have a copy of but haven't gotten to yet.  Hoopla had it and it wasn't terrible long on audio so I was able to tackle in just a few days.  I love Jen's thrillers and this was no exception.  She keeps the elements of the crime pretty vague throughout.  I really loved the reveal at the end and while I had my suspicions of who the villain was, I wasn't quite sure until the end.  
• Restore Me by Tahereh Mafi
• Review
• I had this on hold on the library in e-book format, but I keep pushing it off.  My library finally got it in audio so I grabbed it.  This has a totally different feel than the original series.  The characters feel different, and it is almost as if we are restarting with Juliette and Warner and the rest of the cast.  I'm not sure if it is because I listened to it or if it really is because it has been so long since the original series.  Then again, they've been through alot and they were broken to begin with.

Review: Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage

Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was provided an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.  A huge thank you to St. Martin's Press for sending me an advanced copy.  this releases July 17th. 

This book was a trip. I loved that it was set in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. It was kind of cool to read a book set in places I actually knew. When the author referenced a street or a neighborhood, I knew exactly where the characters were. When I was a teenager, I used to babysit not far from where the Jensen’s lived in the book.

This book is quite the thriller. You aren’t ever quite sure what is going on with the family, and the ending left me scratching my head. Not a bad thing though. I wasn’t quite sure who the true villain was when I closed the book.

The story follows Hannah a seven year old terror who wants nothing but her mother to go away permanently. She loves her father, mainly because he dotes on her and doesn’t see any of the nasty things she does. Mommy on the other hand never quite measures up to Hannah’s standards, and is always hogging Daddy’s attention. Hannah doesn’t speak, she can make noises, and she is very intelligent. He lack of speech is alarming to her parents, but they have had her checked out and there doesn’t appear to be anything medically preventing her speech so they are trying different things to unlock her voice. Hannah isn’t having any of it though. Little do they know the devious things going on in her head, she wants to say plenty but the words just won’t come out. She is constantly plotting and scheming ways to get Mommy out of the picture so she can have Daddy all to herself. She has plenty of inner dialogue, and it’s pretty disturbing given her age. The things she thinks and does are pretty alarming for a child of her age.

Suzette is Hannah’s mother. She does her best to keep up appearances. She wants to appear to be beautiful so her husband wants her, she wants to appear to be the perfect wife and mother so people don’t judge her, and she wants everything to be clean and tidy. She also has Chrohn’s disease which comes up a lot in the novel, and is a major cause of emotional and physical distress in her life. While Suzette is forcing everything to be perfect, everything is falling down around her. Suzette did not have the model mother growing up, so she fears that she is failing at motherhood at every turn. Hannah doesn’t exactly make it easy on her. She manipulates people and situations to get what she wants, and because Suzette is with her most of the time she is the target of most of Hannah’s outbursts. Alex, Suzette’s husband, lives in blissful ignorance of his daughter’s strange behaviors. His life is perfect; pretty wife and a beautiful daughter who just needs the right challenges because she is too smart for regular education. His daughter never does the horrid things Suzette claims she does, he just can’t believe that of his angel. This causes a rift between them and Suzette to become even more emotionally exhausted from dealing with Hannah all day and keeping up the pretense of perfection.

I found many aspects of this book to be unrealistic as opposed to physiologically thrilling. Some of the stuff Hannah does to Suzette is pretty serious, and they just put her to bed and never call the police or put her in the hospital for psychiatric treatment. I mean it know its fiction, but she does some scary stuff and they don’t do anything about it. The characters just don’t have any common sense, and they make dumb decisions. The things Hannah does in the book aren’t thrilling, they are dark and have shock value. There are some aspects and twists that caught me off guard for sure, but those were too sparse to make this entirely a physiological thriller in my opinion. I wanted more of those moments than the outlandish, shocking ones. I liked the book, it very much reminded me of the movie The Good Son. Overall, there were some flaws with the book but I found myself wanting to know what happened and not wanting to put the book down.


View all my reviews

June TBR

I have a couple of ARCs I want to get to in June, and a couple of Popsugar Challenge Prompts I want to get to.  I'm not going to put too many things on my TBR this month because I just don't know what I want to read.  I need to get my ARCs read and reviewed, but I don't want to put too much pressure on myself and find myself in a reading slump.

Books/Ebooks/ARCs

• The Fragile Ordinary by Samantha Young
• I received an ARC of this via Edelweiss+.  Sam is one of my favorite authors, and while contemporary isn't my favorite genre, I'll read it if she wrote it.  I just love the way she writes and develops her characters.  This will be out on June 26th.
• Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage
• I have a physical ARC of this.  Its a perfect family thriller.  It sounds awesome and creepy.  This comes out July 17th.
• Sea Witch by Sarah Henning
• This comes out in July as well, but I've had the ARC for a while and I want to get to it.  It is a Little Mermaid retelling and it looks amazing.  
• Attitude by Jay Wright
• We are hugh NCAA basketball fans in my house.  We've been to the tournament several times, and there is a game on atleast one TV once the season starts each fall.  I admire Jay Wright, I watched a documentary about how he develops his players on and off the court at Villanova.  He said he's developing young men not just basketball players, and I really respect that mentality.  His book was recommended to my son.  The reading challenge this year has a prompt for a book involving sports, and I can't think of a better book to fill it with.  

Audiobooks

I'm taking the same approach I did last month, I'm going to see what is available and what I'm in the mood for.  I have a ton of  challenge books I want to get to, and audio seems to be the best way to get to my challenge books and the other stuff I want to read.  If only there were more time in the day to read.

• The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
• I've heard great things about this series, and I just got the book in from the library, so we'll see how it goes.  It is narrated by one of my favorite narrators so I'm sure it will be great.
• Till Death by Jennifer L. Armentrout
• This is another book I have a copy of but haven't gotten to yet.  Hoopla has it so I'm hoping to get to it in June.  I'm a fan of Armentrout's thrillers.