It’s officially July, and I can’t believe how quickly last month went by! Between moving again, and working a lot, I thought I’d be so slammed, I didn’t think that I’d get to read that much. Jokes on me, because I read and listened to 11 books last month, most of which were new to me, though almost all of them were released at least several months ago.

• The Hidden Oracle – Rick Riordan

  • I’ll be doing a full review of The Hidden Oracle on August 1, so keep an eye out for it! Until then… I enjoyed The Hidden Oracle. It was nice to see our usual favorites, but have a slightly different male character than we found with Percy or Magnus. There were still some things that bugged me with Riordan’s writing, but I liked that we got to know different characters in the camp.

• Melting Stones (audiobook) by Tamora Pierce

  • I’ve read this one before, but since I’ve read almost every book in Tamora Pierce’s Emelan series’, so when I saw it as an audiobook, I figured I’d give it a try. I really enjoyed the Full Cast audio recording, with music and all. It made the audiobook almost like an audio movie for me, which was great. Rosethorn’s voice wasn’t as severe as I thought it should be, but you can’t make everyone happy all the time, can you? I liked this book a lot more the second time around. Next up, to finish the entire series re-read, is Battle Magic, which will probably break my heart all over again.

• A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

  • I ordered this from my local library after years of hearing so much about it, but I didn’t love it as much as I wanted to. The only characters I really connected with were Lucien and Rhysand, neither of whom were supposed to be main characters, which bugged me. I’m going to use this for a mini-review soon, so I won’t give too much away here.

• Dawn’s Light by Terri Blackstock (audiobook)

  • This book has been on my TBR for what feels like eons. I read the rest of the series in early high school, but when I started having more issues with depression, it was too much for me to handle reading, and I never got back to it. When I saw that Hoopla offered it as an audiobook through my library, I downloaded it. The writing is great, but man, this book was depressing. There wasn’t a lot of hope for the dawn for the Branning family. If you don’t know anything about the series, it’s a super Christian dystopian America novel, caused by EMP’s. It’s been out forever, but I really enjoyed it.

• Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls by Jes Baker (audiobook)

  • I really wanted to enjoy this book, and for a while, I really did. However, I DNF’d this at 65 percent. I loved Jes’s parts, but some of the essays she included from others made me grind my teeth. I think I would have enjoyed this more if I were

• The Sea Keepers Daughter by Lisa Wingate

  • I picked this up as a whim from Hoopla through my library, and read it while I waited on phone calls, and I really enjoyed it, even though it was stressful from beginning to end. It ends happily, though, which was nice.

• P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han

  • This is the second of soon-to-be three books in the Lara Jean series, and I’m gonna do a series review once Always and Forever, Lara Jean comes out next spring. I liked this book. It was sweet, but less cotton-candy happy than To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before was, which was nice. I liked that Margot grew up a little bit in this, and the sisters were all able to work out their differences for now.

• First Comes Love by Emily Giffin

  • You can read my full review here! This book was released in hardcover on June 28, so if it sounds like your kind of book, please go buy it!

• Let’s Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

  • This is the first book by Jenny Lawson, whose Furiously Happy literally changed my life. It wasn’t quite as impactful on my life, but I learned so much more about an author I adore through reading it. I definitely need to buy this.

• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

  • This is another book that I’ve been hearing about for years, and I finally read it when I saw that it was $1.99 on Barnes & Noble. I read this one entirely on my phone, and while it was a sweet story, it didn’t really hit the mark for me.

• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (audiobook)

  • This book was interesting for me. It has some great principles, but I had some major issues with the method that really tempered my belief in it. However, it did help me do a deep-clean of my closet, and has been great with helping me not impulse buy now. Look out for my post about my isseu

• The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

  • This finale to a bombastic series did not disappoint me, at all. I thought the ending was perfectly emotional and respectful to the rest of the series. It literally had me clutching the book to my chest. I can’t wait to see what Maggie writes next!

I also got to  write about a book festival here in Danville for work this month, which was fun! Check out my article!

Things that I plan on doing this month:

• Changing up the blog schedule and adding more stuff to it!
• Listen to more audiobooks!
• Posting more on Instagram and Litsy – You can find me both places as CandidCeillie and I follow back!
• Continue using my lovely library to cut down my massive TBR list.
• Put more thought into maybe adding a video aspect. Would you guys enjoy hearing and seeing me physically talk about the books I’m reading?