This year continues to be really weird. I’ve been mood reading a lot still, finding it hard to focus on any of my many book lists I have going on for various challenges. I didn’t finish any of the books from my June TBR. Welp.

The breakdown:

• 13 total novels and 3 webtoons
• 9 speculative fiction books and 1 speculative fiction webtoon
• 4 romance (3 historical, 1 contemporary) and 2 romance webtoons

I’ve been having a lot of fun with webtoons lately. They’re easy reading and they are super easy to get sucked into as well. I’m surprised I didn’t read more romance this month but I’m forgetting some of the speculative fiction I read has romance or is romance/spec-fic combo.

Favorite Reads of the Month:

• Race the Sands by Sarah Beth Durst. This was quite fun and I was surprised it was more than just monster racing. I loved the way it was a story about characters with their own stakes but it somehow ended up involving larger stakes anyway.
• Freaking Romance by Snailords (webtoon). This webtoon. It starts out very much a standard romance with a meet cute and such. But it ends up being a lot more queer than I thought it would be (yay!) and it also ends up being a lot more science-fiction-y than I thought it would be (double yay!). I really got caught up in this one and I’m looking forward to the final season. 🙂

June’s Book Reviews:

I managed 6 reviews this past month–not quite my usual number of reviews (usually come out at 8 at least) but one of these posts was a bunch of mini reviews and one was a review for an entire series so I still feel good about the amount of material I reviewed this past month overall. I’m also still relatively caught up on reviews–only have one or two in my drafts waiting for me so I not doing too bad staying on top of things either.

• Mini Reviews – Yona of the Dawn vol 21 by Mizuho Kusanagi (5/5 stars), Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker (4.5/5 stars), Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe (5/5 stars)
• Night Shift Dragons by Rachel Aaron – 3.5/5 stars
• Blood Pact by Tanya Huff – 4.5/5 stars
• Captive Prince Series by C. S. Pacat – 5/5 stars
• Radiance by Grace Draven – 5/5 stars
• Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater – 5/5 stars

Other Posts:

Because of various things going on I wound up having a lot of ‘other’ posts this month–things other than reviews or weekly memes. I’m still very proud of myself for keeping up with my 1 discussion post per month personal challenge. I have a couple in my drafts that I need to write up for future months so I should get cracking on that as to stay ahead. I’m not great at writing discussion posts at the last minute haha.

• 20 Books of Summer Announcement
• The Currently Reading Book Tag
• What We Read – Are Older Titles Worth Exploring?
• The Awesome Blogger Award
• Guest Post: Prophecy: Eve of Darkness by D. Ellis Overttun
• 2020 Audiobook Challenge – Mid-Year Update
• Scarlett Odyssey Summary
• Ultimate Book Tag

20 Books of Summer:

Let’s see how I’m doing with my Summer reading challenge so far! Here’s my list. Crossed off books are ones I’ve been able to read.

• The Shores of Spain by J. Kathleen Cheney
• The Waking Land by Callie Bates
• Written in Red by Anne Bishop
• Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker
• The Many-Colored Land by Julian May
• The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso
• The Death of the Necromancer by Martha Wells
• A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland
• In the Garden of Iden by Kage Baker
• Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko
• Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey
• Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
• The Spirit War by Rachel Aaron
• Valor’s Choice by Tanya Huff
• The Queen’s Road by R. S. Belcher

Well, only ONE so far hahahaha. But I’m working on three others at the moment so hopefully will be done those soon. I don’t know why I keep signing up for reading challenges lol.

Plans for July:

Let’s first see how I did with June’s plans! For June I started the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge. So far I managed to finish one books from my list–not a fantastic start but at least three is better than none! I also wanted to read at least one book for the r/fantasy bingo challenge. I did manage to check off my short story square with Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker (even though I’m not finished the entire book, I finished 5 of the stories) so, yay! Also, let’s check in with my June TBR:  I only had THREE books on my TBR and I managed to read NONE of them. Oh, Lisa. HAHAHAHAHA. Other than that I just wanted to mood read and keep things chill–mission accomplished!

For July I plan to once again keeps things pretty chill. I have a lot of reading goals and challenges this year and I’ll be talking about how I’m doing with those in a couple of days (spoiler: not well hahahaha) so I think my only real concrete plan is to work on my 20 Books of Summer pile and maybe read some books for the r/fantasy book bingo while sticking to my mood reading. I might also take a gander at two unread library books I’ve had since the beginning of the year since they’re now due back at the end of August. We’ll see!

And, that about sums things up. This year has felt like forever, I can’t believe we still got six more months of 2020. Let’s hope things improve!