ShayKay's June Wrap Up

June was a fantastic reading month! The summer months always seem to better reading months for me than any other time of the year. I don't typically have school or anything else going on other than work so it leaves me with a lot more free time. But this summer has been sort of flipped. I have online classes but I'm still looking for a new job so I have some free time to read. Anyways this month I've read a total of (9 how many books)! That's amazing! Out of those books, there were (audiobooks), (6 comics), (ebooks), and (3 physical books). I think I read so much over the summers because I love going on the boat or just float somewhere and read while my dogs and family play in the water. It's just relaxing and I can't take my electronics so it's freeing and it leaves me with just physical books to read. 

A little more break down before we jump into a little detail of what was read, I had (how many 1-stars), (2-stars), (3-stars), (4-stars), and (5-stars).

Each of the sections is broken down first by their star ratings, and then in order of when I read them. I did the lowest ratings to the top-rated this month.

The links to all of the Goodreads pages for each of the books listed below should be on the picture, just have to click the picture of the book to be taken to the Goodreads page if you are interested in the book itself, and I'll list out the ones that have blog posts too. This month I think I blogged a lot! I think the HouseCupAThon really helped with that.  

2-Star Read

I actually had a 2-star read this month! I didn't hate this book! To be honest my review came from the fact that the synopsis gave everything away! If that didn't happen I would've at least gave it 3-stars because I did enjoy a lot of the book. I also hated how Bailey and Porter had so many chances to come clean and tell each other who they were so many times that it drove me nuts! Then there was some pretty cringy parts that I don't think needed to be in the book, it could've been like assumed instead of went through if that makes any sense. They had some intimate moments and I'm not opposed to that stuff in books but I don't think this book needed it, at least not how it was done in this book. To be completely honest I totally forgot that I even read this book until I looked back on my Goodreads to see what I read this month to make this post. Like I said in my review for the book I was really looking forward to this book and I went in with full intentions to love it but unfortunately, that isn't how it went and I'm just done talking about this thing now. 

3-Star Read

Since I just wrote the 2-Star read for June I was thinking maybe this book should've been a 2-star but then I was comparing the Safe Place and Alex, Approximately and I'm sure this book is still a 3-star read for me. I did a full book review on this one as well. Again I had so much hope for this book because it was an ARC and I love it when I get ARCs, and only apply for books that I know that I want to read. This book sounded so fun and interesting to me and as I was reading it I kept getting The Wife Between Us vibes, but it fell short of that and I definitely hated how the book ended. I just felt let down there. I go more into detail over on my post about it. 

I read/listened to You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen really late last night and I liked it. It was okay, but it wasn't The Wife Between Us level. I don't think it had that shock value that the first book did. Now I did enjoy this one more than An Anonymous Girl. I think their books are just something that I need to listen to through audiobook to enjoy, but I don't think I'll love them like I did The Wife Between Us. That book had its dull moments too don't get me wrong but they were for a reason and it picked up really fast. This book I think was good, but not something I'm going to reread. I got really annoyed with Shay and the whole time we knew something was going on with the sisters. The 'big reveal' I don't think was shocking, it really fell flat for me. I kept saying that this book was going to be the tiebreaker for me since I loved The Wife Between Us and I hated An Anonymous Girl. I decided that this one was going to tell me if I will continue with the authors or that my love for their first book is just a fluke. I think if I do continue with them it will be through audiobooks since I really seem to like them through audiobook more than reading it myself, but the new book needs to sound really good and have amazing reviews before I pick it up. 

4-Star Read

 

Saga has quickly become my favorite comic book series and I've never left one without loving it. Even though this is a 4-star read it doesn't mean I didn't love this book. I just finished what the series has out and I was incredibly lucky enough to by the last 6 volumes that I didn't already have so I could just binge read them all. There is literally 9 volumes and my lowest rating for any of them is a 4-star and even this one I still loved. I just got a little bored with it and to be honest, not all of them could be 5 stars. I did a little post about the whole series a little more in-depth a couple weeks ago. 

5-Star Read

This was the perfect book to start June off with! I had so much fun reading the Beach Read and my only regret is if I would've read it while I was at the beach because I so wanted a picture of it on the beach, but I got married instead. I did a book review for this too and it was such a fun read. It was just a light read and it was the perfect one to start June off of with. 

   

I talked a little more about this series above and also in its own post from a couple weeks ago but here are the other four that I read this month. I loved how the last one ends even though it is sad and a huge cliffhanger. I hope there are more for this series but it has been a while since any has been published for it. But I'll be hoping for something else for it! 

Oh, Bea! I definitely adored this book so much. I've made a post about my reading experience and I would check it out because my book went through hell pretty much, hint it involved a river. I Was lucky enough to finish it and I'm in love with this book! It was so fun and cute. But as you can see in my review I struggled with how to rate it even though I loved it so much! Since my other post is so long I'm just going to leave it with the fact that I loved it overall, but we had some rough moments in the end.

This is the first Riley Sager book that I've ever read and it definitely won't be my last. I really enjoyed it and had so much fun reading it! I really could not put this book down. I've ranted on and on about this book over on a review post for it. So I won't put much on here since it just came out the day before. It was such a great way to end out this readathon. I had so much fun with it. I have one more book that I'm trying to finish before the end of the month so we'll see if it makes onto this list. I can't wait to read Home Before Dark now since I already have it. 

May 2020 Wrap Up

Since it has been a little hard getting content up I'm going to start doing a little wrap-up post at the end of the month because I don't always talk about all of the books that I've read throughout the month, especially my audiobooks. This is something that I've probably should've been doing all along but oh-well let's jumps into it! 

In the month of May, I've read 9 books! I've been in a big reading mood plus I went on vacation this month. I went to a local beach for a weekend to get married so it wasn't a huge vacation, it was a nice small getaway. Out of all of the books I read this month, there were 3 comics, 1 audiobook, 3 ebooks, and 2 physical books. As for star ratings, there were 1 3-star, 2 4-star, and the rest were 5-stars! Here I think we only talked about one of the books so there were a lot of miss opportunities for me to post about but I couldn't help it. I'm a mood reader and none of these were the books that I planned on reading for the month. For the month I planned on at least finishing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because I had a lot of fun things planned for it but I haven't finished it yet, hopefully, June will be the month for that. 

Let's break these down into star ratings this month!

3-Star Read

My only 3-star read for the month was a book that I had to read for school. I had to do a book report and in complete honesty, the book wasn't bad. I really loved the historical spots of the book, and this book is How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. The book talks about different ways that democracies can be torn apart throughout the world and it was really interesting. This first part of the book was definitely 5 stars for me, it was hard to put the book down. But at the same time, this first part was very historical based. The last half of the book was rough getting through it. I've honestly just tired of hearing and reading about Trump I have no opinion of him as president and I'm just really over politics in the United States right now and would rather focus on news that's not about celebrities or politics. This was an e-book the physical book that I got for this assignment I felt like it didn't fit well so I switched to this book instead of finishing the other one. So I guess we technically have a DNF for the month, I'll post it at the end of the month.

4-Star Read

I believe this next book I've talked about on the blog already but here is my only 4-star read during the month of May, Incomparable by Brie and Nikki Bella. I love the Bella twins and to be completely honest Total Bellas, along with Total Divas, is what pulled me into the WWE world. The twins are amazing and this book was something I didn't even know about until watching Total Bellas and an ad popped up for it so of course, I had to go look at it. I had to get it and I was going to get the physical book but I was in the mood to read it, I had the money so I bought it on my kindle and tore through this thing. I never read nonfiction books, the last one I optionally chose to read was Tia Torres book about her dogs. Anyways the Bellas' book was really interesting and would take turns between Nikki and Brie's perspectives. Much like the last book my biggest complaint about this book is that I really enjoyed like 3/4 of the books, it was definitely a 5-star read. But the last 1/4 of the book just dragged for me. I loved learning about their lives and their companies that they were able to forge together but the end took a turn towards sexuality which I'm not a prude or anything, I don't care about reading about it either. But I feel like it just didn't fit into the book I guess. The whole book talked about their past and what they went through either together or on their own but then the last chapter or two just stopped and they started talking about feminism and stuff. I'm all for feminism but it just didn't fit with the rest of the book and I just got so bored reading the last couple of chapters. That's why it ended with 4-stars. I find it really hard to rate books based on people's lives too so it was just rough figuring out who to rate it. So I went with 4-stars because like I said the first 3/4 of the book was really interesting to read about but then the last 1/4 I just dragged trying to read it all. 

I really struggled with where to put this book because I had no clue how to rate this thing! I finished it earlier today (5/31) but then I sat on my rating all day trying to contemplate what it's rating is. The first part of this book I was for sure going to give this book a 5-stars and I thought it was for sure going to be my new favorite from this author! But it took a wrong turn somewhere and it just felt like the book was cramming in so much stuff that it just couldn't deliver everything. Ultimately I was left wanting more of something and less of others. I ended up giving the book 4 stars overall, but in my head, I think it is more of a 3.5-stars. I try to keep the books in order according to its GoodReads review and on there I put 4 stars because you can't do half stars, and for everyone who knows me knows I hate half stars. I prefer to always have whole stars and round up or down whenever I end up in this predicament. Especially if I loved half of the book and the second half fell flat I just meet i the middle. But with this book, I finally found a reason for a half star! I really wanted to love this book and I had so much hope for it! We even got off on the right foot but then we fell hard! By the way, the book I'm talking about is Hideaway by Nora Roberts.

5-Star Reads

Most of my books for May were 5-star reads so let's jump into the first one that I read this month. Since I've been home I've been looking into my library's ebooks and the first one I got was Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. This is a book that I know I've talked about already on here so I'll keep this short and sweet. I've been wanting to read this series for a long time but I've been wanting the physical books because they are so cute, but they are so expensive so I've just not got around to getting them. But let me tell you I loved this first book! It was so good and had so much fun reading it. Like I said in the post all about this book it is really hard to explain this book because one is so small but then two it's hard to explain because it is so different than anything else I've ever read. This book was really good I plan on finishing the series, the ones that are already out. But I have no clue when I'll get the physical books. 

My next 3 books are comics so I'm going to count them all right here. I never get to talk about my comics on here! I'm a huge comic fan I love the pictures, how fast they are to read, and I just love them. But I hate the price of comics. Since they are so short it's always a hard buy for me because I can't justify spending the money on them, most of the time they are about $15 here in West Virginia, plus tax. So when I splurge on comics I've usually gone on a Thriftbooks splurge. I love buying my comics from Thriftbooks because I feel like I'm getting a good deal for them. But this time I did buy it from the bookstore because I've been dying to read another book in this series. The series is called Saga! Saga is a comic that I found over on BookTube, I'm not sure which YouTuber I saw talking about it because it been a couple years since I got my first one. Saga is a series that follows this family that basically shouldn't exist. The mom and dad are two different species and their races have been at war for forever, so they are kind of living out their Romeo and Juliet love story just by being together. So far I'm only 3 books in and it's because I can't always justify spending the money on them. I kind of want to buy a bulk order of the 4 or 5 of them soon. I'm obsessed and I always go back and reread them whenever I get a new one, and so far they have all been 5-stars. The story is amazing and the illustration is beautiful so it's hard to not love these books. Now I will say that these are graphic comics, they are not for kids so if you are looking for comics for your kid these aren't those. 

  

My next read I just finished and it was an audiobook. It's pretty funny how I fell into this book because I bought Aby Jimenez's newest book first, which is The Happily Ever After Playlist and I started reading it immediately and I was in love with it! I bought it at the beach and was binge reading it out on the deck all day, but the next day we were driving back home so instead of getting the same book as an audiobook I got her first on, The Friend Zone, on audiobook. I've never read anything by this author and to be completely fair I did read the synopsis of the Happily Ever After book because I was determined to buy something from this bookstore I found and was really having a hard time finding something, so since I was enjoying it so much I didn't read the synopsis to the Friend Zone. It turns out the books follow the same characters! Now you don't have to read them in order, but I will say that if you don't read them in the order you will learn things that happens in the first book, so I suggest reading them in order. I loved the Friend Zone! I had to give it 5-stars. It is definitely a romance book and it is fun to read. 

Even though I started reading The Happy Ever After Playlist first, I ended up finishing it after I finished the Friend Zone. The Friend Zone was an audiobook and the Ever After was a physical book. I loved every second of this book, and it is honestly my favorite book in this duology. I think I just connected with Sloan a little more plus the dog played a bigger role in this book and I'm a huge dog lover. But it was a 5-star read too. This book and the Friend Zone I haven't talked about on my blog so far because it was a spur of the moment read and they actually are what pushed me to post this because this is something that you don't get to see since I don't make a post about them. They are also a prime example that sometimes my 5-star reads don't end up on here. I'm just a mood reader and I try really hard to maintain the layout of my posts on here so if I don't get a 'before reading' or  'halfway check-in,' it can be hard to make the posts. So I think this helps to look back in the month just to see what I read when I read it and a little insight into why I liked it. But both of these books are something fun to read and just easy. I have noticed that I've really started loving romance books more and more now.

DNF

I have one book that ended up being a DNF, did not finish. This book I picked up for school and it was pretty interesting but I put it down because the book wasn't really fitting the criteria I needed for the book report and I just stopped reading it to pick up the book I ended up reading. It was an accidental DNF, but at the same time, I don't see myself going back to it. This book is In the Shadows by Mitch Landrieu. I didn't get that far into the book.

October's Audiobooks

I'm trying to keep a little log of the books I read through the audiobook, which audiobooks are my favorite way to reread books! I can get through them so fast and I just love being able to listen to them while I work. I really try to leave spoilers out of these and just talk about why I'm rereading them.

I only listened to two this month and honestly, I have a love/hate relationship with audiobooks because I can get into the people narrating them I fly through them even if I can't get into the story. But at the same time, there are books that I can get into reading but I can't get into because of the narrator. So this month there are only two audiobooks because I just wasn't in the mood to listen to books until the last week of the month. Let's see how many I can get into next month.

This was one of my favorite books last year! I love the twists and turns in this book and I really cannot tell you why I picked it up because thrillers aren't my normal genre. But I'm so glad that I did. This is the first time I'm rereading it and it's crazy rereading it and knowing the twists and turns! Let me tell you it is insane! A lot of people either love it or they hate it, I haven't seen much that is in the middle of the lane for it. I think a lot of people who read thrillers kind of get bored with this one but let me tell you it is crazy for the ones who don't normally read it. Now seeing other people review this book or talk about it makes me so proud because I can have my input and talk about how much I love this book. These authors wrote another book together that came out this year and it was okay but nowhere near as amazing as this beauty was.

I'm so glad that I read this book! Guys this book does something that is so incredible, at least to me! It takes every loose end to every part of this story and they are tied up by the end! I love the twists and turn, even in the epilogue you get hit with one final whammy that you honestly weren't even expecting. Even re-reading it now and knowing all of these things, the book is still so amazing! I'm so glad I reread this book. Guys check this thing out!

One thing I've been really wanting to do lately when it comes to reading is to reread some of my old favs, especially Nicholas Sparks books. I keep gravitating back to Dear John! This story was so intense when I first read it and I loved everything! It was one of the first books that I ever made me cry! I can't wait to get back into this book!

I'm so glad that I picked this up! I read it so long ago and I loved listening to the audiobook. It was fast and easy to get through it and there was so many little details to this story that I really didn't remember! So glad that I picked this one up in Overdrive this month.