Summer Book Wrap-up 2025

Everything that I finished reading from June through August! Definitely a lot of ups and downs, but the ups are GREAT!

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn (5 stars)

This is a sequel, so I won’t say much about the plot for spoiler reasons, but this is just such an incredible book and series. The explorations of its themes of racism, legacy, and the experience of being a black teenage girl in the south, are so masterfully done. The characters are still just as, if not more, amazing and the twists in this book left me absolutely flabbergasted. It’s just a fantastic read and I highly suggest the Legendborn Cycle to everyone I know.

Make Room for Love by Darcy Liao (3 stars)

I read this for a book club that one of my local bookstores hosts (highly recommend going to these if you have any in your area, they’re very fun). I probably would have dnf-ed this book if I wasn’t reading it for a book club. The first about 45% of the book was very slow for me and even after it picked up and started getting more interesting it still had its problems. The main problem that I experienced while reading the first half was that it was structured and paced like a 50-75k word fanfic while being much longer than that. So it felt both rushed and slow at the same time while also being written like you already inherently care about the characters and just want to see their interactions with each other. Someone in the book club discussion said that it almost felt like reading something that was originally designed to be a stage play because of how much of the book takes place in not location.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (4.5 stars)

I genuinely don’t know if there’s anything I can say about this book that hasn’t already been said. The characters are super compelling and it’s so easy to root for Alex and Henry as the main couple. It’s just a fantastic book that took me on a journey of hope that I really needed in the current trying times.

All of Us Villains by Amanda Foody, C. L. Herman (3.5 stars)

I have so many thoughts about this book (and unless it gets fixed in book 2, the whole series) I might make a whole separate post about all the things that I found disappointing. I started the series because one of staff at a local bookstore recommended it based on another series I liked. Based on my opinions about the series they either had a very different experience than me, or they liked very different things about the original series I got the recommendation based on. The writing itself is pretty good, and I generally like a lot of the main characters, but I definitely started running into the problem of not being super invested in the twists or reveals. This first book also has almost no discernible greater themes that it’s trying to tackle or reflect on. The closest it comes is the parallel between the stories that two of the main characters were told about the tournament growing up. But even that has almost no tie in to anything else, at least not yet. That’s all I’ll say for now, but I definitely have more thoughts about this series.

The Cottage Around the Corner by D. L. Soria (4 stars)

I got this as a blind date with a book a while ago and went into it hoping for a little break between the first and second books of the All of Us Villains duology, and it was perfect for that. It’s a cozy delightful romcom of a read that follows a witch who works at her Moms’ struggling magic shop, and a mage who moves to her small town to open a competing magic business. If you’ve ever seen the romcom “You’ve Got Mail” it’s very similar. To the point where they even reference it in the text of the book. The magic system is very fun and well done, yet simple. Overall I would totally recommend it if you want a cozy, witchy romance read.

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston (5 stars)

I actually liked this book more than I liked RW&RB. I liked the bisexual and non-binary representation, but I especially like the way that McQuiston refuses to flatten their queer characters. They don’t need to fit into neat little labels or boxes or stereotypes. They’re allowed to be complex and fluid, and to me, that’s to future of queer representation.

When the Tides Held the Moon by Vanessa Vida Kelly (3.5 stars)

I read this for a local bookclub and during the discussion we kept circling back to the feeling we had that this book shouldn’t have been classified as an adult romance book, it should have been YA (or possibly new adult). The other main vibe we got from the book was how much of the pacing is explained when you find out that it stated as fan fiction (to be specific its actually au fanfic for a book that started as a harry potter fanfic, so fanfic all the way down). It felt like the plot dragged a bit because the character interactions were more important than having things happen in the plot. The characters were pretty fun, and it touched on some of the intersectionality very well in my opinion, but for sure not my favorite.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (4 stars)

If you’ve been in almost any book circle online you’ve probably heard of The Song of Achilles. I’ve certainly been hearing about it since it exploded on TikTok during the pandemic. I feel like I had a similar experience to Red, White & Royal Blue, although I liked this book less than that one, of hearing for years that everyone LOVED it so much and then reading it a being a little underwhelmed. There were sill parts that I liked, and I still totally cried at the end, I just felt like a lot of the decisions about changes and interpretations of the source material were not my favorite. Like why make Patroclus not a fighter at all? There’s literally a line where Achilles says Patroclus can’t fight, which makes no sense on so many levels. Why make Thetis’ character worse in this version? I get that everything culminates in her coming around to Patroclus because she realizes that he actually loved her son the whole time and saw him as more than a hero or a warrior. That could have been accomplished in a different way. That’s my main takeaway. I feel like it could have been done better, or at least in a different way that felt more satisfying to me. A the end of the day though I definitely understand why people like this book so much, I just had a couple things I didn’t like personally.