Hello everyone! We are definitely in the second part of the year now, no denying it. I did managed to stick to one of the two goals I made for July. I have managed to make a dent in the double lined tbr shelves I have but I didn’t manage to not buy any books. This month I bought 12 Kindle books and 12 paperbacks from Amazon just days apart from each other!

The Llama walk, you’ll be pleased to know, was fantastic. The theatre outing was on the hottest day of British weather this year, (Thursday 25th July) and was laugh out loud comedy. The Hen Party was alright, I survived and my anxiety didn’t turn out to be as bad as I had thought it would.

I was excited to have read 13 books in June but in July I managed to read 16! At the time of writing this, I have now read 92/100 books and will hopefully smash through my target of 100 by end of August.

Of the 16 I read this month, 9 made it onto my ‘loved list’ and only 1 fell into the ‘passable’ list.

The Good – I was very lucky with my Kindle purchase of ‘Vanishing Girls’ by Lisa Regan and that I decided to read it soon after purchase. It opened me to the series that I read obsessively through July. I’ve enjoyed the series so much that I’ve resigned myself to buying it in paperback because I know the series is one I can read over and over and still get joy from it. I read five detective books this month, three psychological thrillers, four young adult books, two books that tell stories from two different time streams, and two children’s books.

Outside of the detective series that I enjoyed so much. Standout books for me this month were: ‘Sleep’ by C. L. Taylor – which I read with adrenaline pumping through my veins over the course of two days. The story was so deep and explosive to me and the characters secrets were like a drug that I needed to conquer.

‘What You Did’ by Claire McGowan was far darker and intense than I had thought it would be but it was very riveting to read and made me second guess not only the characters in the book but the people in my life and what secrets they might be hiding.

I have been wanting to read David Walliam’s ‘The Midnight Gang’ since the BBC Christmas adaptation of it last year and I was not disappointed. I don’t really like David Walliam’s as a comedian but his writing style is so different from his persona that I actually got on with the book very well. I enjoyed the character journey’s, the adventure and the imagination.

Lastly, I discovered Lauren James earlier in the year when I read her book ‘Loneliest Girl in the World’ and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on ‘The Quiet at the End of the World’. I really loved this book and ended up passing it onto my Dad to read because he enjoys magical realism. The story didn’t seem that far fetched to me and made me think about the future.

The Bad – The blurb for Sophie McKenzie’s ‘Girl, Missing’, sounded very promising and I thought it must have been a good book to have warranted a 10th anniversary printing but I found myself most disappointed with this book. The plot felt unrealistic and far-fetched and I couldn’t get behind Lauren as a character. The more I read, the more I wanted to kick Lauren, so I started to focus on the secondary characters and that allowed me to keep reading and make it to the end of the book. I guess I just couldn’t get past how a character could be so selfish and narrow-minded and not really grow away from that during the course of the book. I don’t feel that Lauren learnt much or even grew from the experience.

Below you can see the 16 books I read this month and find the links to the reviews (some aren’t posted yet):

Review 1 – The Forgotten Ones by Steena Holmes ★★★

Review 2 – Sleep by C. L. Taylor ★★★★★

Review 3 – Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo ★★★★

Review 4 – Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo ★★★

Review 5 – What You Did by Claire McGowan ★★★★

Review 6 – Vanishing Girls by Lisa Regan ★★★★★

Review 7 – The Forgotten Village by Lorna Cook ★★★★★

Review 8 – Wildspark by Vashti Hardy ★★★★

Review 9 – The Girl With No Name by Lisa Regan ★★★★★

Review 10 – Try Not To Breathe by Holly Seddon ★★★.5

Review 11 – Her Mother’s Grave by Lisa Regan ★★★★★

Review 12 – Her Final Confession by Lisa Regan ★★★★★

Review 13 – The Bones She Buried by Lisa Regan ★★★★★

Review 14 – The Midnight Gang by David Walliam’s ★★★★★

Review 15 – The Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James ★★★★

Review 16 – Girl, Missing by Sophie McKenzie ★★★

Moving into August I have another two goals.

(1) Read all 11 books I have earmarked from my tbr shelves.

(2) Don’t buy any books.

Outside of books, I am going to The Globe for the first time this month to see ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’. I have a house warming party to go to, an ever unpleasant dentist appointment, am dog sitting for my friend who has a staffordshire bull terrier called Doris and it’s my best friends birthday at the end of the month!

Let me know your August book goals below!