So, July was...not a great reading month for me. I kept starting books and finding they either weren't for me or just weren't for me at that moment. Which is so frustrating. I hate it when I can't find what I'm in the mood to read. I did read a few books that I enjoyed this past month, though:
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older (SF/Mystery with F/F romance): I've been looking forward to this book for...well, since I finished the previous book in the serious. And now I'm looking forward to the next! I've talked about the previous two books in the series (and I'd recommend starting with the first—the mysteries stand alone but the relationships and other ongoing plot points carry over and develop). The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti take us to a future in which humanity has created a new home on platforms and rings surrounding Jupiter after Earth became uninhabitable. The mysteries are good, but the character development and progression of the second chance romance between Mossa and Pleiti is even better.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by VE Schwab (Fantasy): What to say about this sapphic vampire novel that will tell you how good it is without spoiling it? The story brings us three women born in three different centuries, who all have one thing in common: they want more than the world wants them to have. They want control of their lives and hunger to be more, to have more, to have choices. And the pursuit of that takes them to some dark places. It twines their stories together, jumping back and forth between time periods, letting us discover them and their stories through lush writing. This one stuck with me.
Legend of the White Snake by Sher Lee (YA M/M fantasy romance): This is a really lovely, emotional, and romantic retelling of a Chinese folk tale. Many years ago, Prince Xian's mother was bitten by a white snake and has been ill and in pain ever since. Xian has vowed to find a cure, and with her near death, he travels to another city where an oracle has told him he will be able to find a white snake that will be the cure for his mother. There, he meets and feels an immediate connection to Zhen. But Xian doesn't know that Zhen is actually a snake spirit—a white snake who transformed into a human—and the snake the oracle sent him to find.
Justice & Liberty by Sam Burns (Paranormal cozy mystery with F/F romance): This book was so fun. Jaycie has been drifting along, which has left her in a dead-end retail job and with a cheating girlfriend. When her mother dies and leaves her everything, she decides to return to her childhood home in Iowa and see if she can start fresh. So many things surprise her when she gets there, but maybe most of all that her mother was a witch and now she is too. Everyone is relying on her to reopen her mother's shop and provide them with her (magic) teas, and when her friend is suspected of murder, people start relying on her to help solve that too. There are two fantastic cat familiars, a teenage ghost, and the beginning of a romance too. I'm definitely hoping for more in this world soon.
What have you read and loved lately?
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