July Reading List

*None of these reviews are completely spoiler free, please read at your own caution!

July was a pretty book-filled month for me, especially since I have so many books on my BTR (books to read) list. Here were the standouts I had this month that I have been itching to talk about, for better or worse!

Six Scorched Roses 

In order to save her town, and her sister, from an illness that rots the skin and kills, Lilith enters into a deal with the local vampire, Vale. In exchange for six vials of his blood for testing and extracting a cure, he’ll receive six special roses from Lilith’s garden. What follows is a tense romance in a town on the brink of ruin. 

This one was a pretty short read given that it’s a short novel, but it was a really enjoyable experience. Lilith and Vale’s relationship progresses quickly but steadily, and the central conflict that brings them together feels real and impactful. How Broadbent describes how the illness taking over the town slowly makes people wither away was eerie yet beautifully done, like the withering and skin turning to dust was almost an hourglass representing how much time Lilith had left to cure the town and her sister.  

However, while I appreciated the storytelling and romance of it all, the whole narrative felt rushed, like it was meant to be a full-length novel but Broadbent kept chopping at it. The previous fling with a side character barely gets a side glance, Vale goes from morbid curiosity and mild annoyance to fierce protector and twin scientist, and the big confrontation between Lilith and Vitarus feels short-lived and inconsequential in the grand scheme of the narrative. For that, it gets 4 stars. 

None of This is True 

Upon going out to dinner with her husband for her birthday, Josie comes across a woman, Alix, who completely enraptures her, only to find out they share the same exact birthday. Seeing how different their lives are, Josie asks Alix if she can be featured on her podcast — because she’s about to change her life and start over, no matter the cost. 

I really wanted to like this one more than I did because Lisa Jewell is one of my favorite thriller authors along with Riley Sager, but this one just fell flat for me. The mystery between Alix and Josie feels intriguing at first, with the whole “born on the same day at the same hospital living a few miles away from each other” of it all, yet the tension is... lacking. I felt the pangs of it, when it’s casually revealed that Josie’s adult daughter only eats baby food and never leaves her room, or how Josie’s husband is about 30 years her senior and they started their “love affair” when she was 14, or even how Josie keeps stealing little things from Alix and basically worshipping her, but it’s so spread out in the narrative that it feels like these details were thrown in right when Jewell felt the reader losing interest so they wouldn't put it down. That didn’t work for me. I had to switch to the audiobook a quarter of the way through just to finish it. 

But when things pick up, they pick up. Josie starts snapping and making snide comments, Alix and her husband get more and more wary of Josie’s behavior, and all the details that felt thrown in start to slot into place, weaving this tapestry of lies and manipulation that almost feels too complicated to ever untangle. But as good as the climax of the story was, the ending felt messy.... Everything we think we know about Josie, her crimes, and her mindset gets flipped and switched right at the very end. And given that the characters revealing the details are clearly unreliable narrators, it makes the information we’re getting all the more jarring and confusing. It ends with a clear open to sequel, but I’m not sure I’d pick it up. Considering the lack of tension, the weird messy ending and the handwaving of inappropriate age gaps and grooming, this one’s getting 3 stars. 

Roommate Risk 

When Jasmine’s room in her shared flat gets unexpectedly flooded leaving her nowhere to go, she knows she can always count on Rahul, her best friend, to save her. But after she moves in waiting for her room to get fixed, old feelings between the two start to rekindle in a way neither of them can deny. Now it’s up to Jasmine if she’ll break her cardinal rule: don’t ever get into a serious relationship. 

I love a good steamy romance novel, and this one hit the spot. The yearning! The spicy scenes! The friends to lovers! Even the miscommunication and things not said felt like the perfect balance of frustrating but not infuriating, which feels like a delicate balance to hit. I also preferred how the sex scenes were written in this story. Some authors kind of beat around the bush and use flowery replacement words to avoid talking directly about genitalia, which I’m not a big fan of. It makes it feel juvenile somehow and makes some of the movements hard to follow. Hibbert just dove right in! Not only was it a relief, but it made the story all the more juicy. I also liked how Rahul is a character who actually needs his glasses. Every time he or Jasmine takes them off he notes how everything gets blurrier, which is cute and funny. 

The classic third act break up confused me a bit, but given how avoidant and skittish Jasmine was and how borderline desperate Rahul was, the argument felt authentic and real. The only issue I really take with this book is that Hibbert makes a point to highlight how Rahul hasn't been living his life or even being a real person because of his obsessive yearning for Jasmine, but does very little with it. Rahul makes a new friend and throws himself more into fitness, but he was always into fitness, so that’s not really him finding out who he is outside of molding himself to be perfect for Jasmine. Jasmine makes tangible changes like sobering up, going to therapy for her avoidance, and learning how to open up. I wish there was more done to show how Rahul had grown into his own person and changed after the breakup. All in all, it was a great read, so it gets 4.5 stars. 

The House Across the Lake 

A recently widowed famous actress, Casey, is sent to her family’s lakeside cabin to sober up from her descent into alcoholism. While there, she befriends a retired supermodel, Katherine, she saves from drowning in the lake and begins watching her house from across the lake. But when Katherine turns up missing after a late-night fight with her husband and the police do nothing to help, it’s up to Casey to get to the bottom of things. 

This is another one I really wanted to like more than I did, As I mentioned before, I absolutely love Riley Sager’s work in the thriller space, but this one... just doesn’t work. I’m all for supernatural novels, but supernatural thrillers and horrors just don’t usually do it for me. This would be a “so why did you read it” moment but none of the promotional material, blurbs or online copy for this book that I saw before reading it said anything about supernatural elements, which I assume was to preserve one of the twists of the book, but it would have gone a long way in me accepting or even liking the book more if I had sufficiently prepared myself for that fact. 

There wasn't really even a moment in reading the book that I was bored, but the last third of the book was a bridge too far for me. The twist of Casey murdering her husband because she found out he was a serial killer felt completely out of nowhere, since she had just accused Boone of having done something to Katherine to the detective, which she knows would inextricably link him to the disappearances they had just discussed with her in confidence! If she’s so grief stricken that these women will never see justice because instead of turning in her husband she killed him, why would Casey then point cops in the wrong direction? Why would she study the victims’ faces as if she’d never seen them before? Why would she constantly lament about how Len was a good man, so much so that she couldn't fathom keeping him much longer than she had? 

And the altercation with Tom after everyone gets their stories straight makes no sense whatsoever to me. Why would Tom be in her house? How did he get in if she now locks the basement door? If Tom is now aware that his effort to murder Katherine in a way no one would suspect is now thwarted because of Casey’s actions which put a spotlight on him, why would he be lying in wait to murder Casey? Wouldn’t this put a giant wrench in his plan to make things less suspicious? And if that's not the reason he’s there, and he’s actually there because he has to stop Casey from alerting Katherine, how did he know Casey knew if she had only found out after he had presumably already entered her house? As soon as Casey calls Katherine, Tom is there, in her house in the span of a minute, to silence her for good. Why? How?? 

With the supernatural twist, the serial killer husband twist, and the Tom of it all, I can only give this one 3 stars, and that's being generous.

A Kiss of Iron 

DNF 

When Katherine finds out that the crumbling estate she has been stealing from locals to keep afloat has been thrown into foreclosure because of her detestable husband’s debts, she is determined to do anything she can to pay it off. Such an opportunity comes when she’s forced to become a lady-in-waiting/spy for the Queen and her court, but her target is none other than the mysterious fae, Bastian, she robbed the night prior. Now Kat must walk a delicate tightrope of bureaucracy and desire as she tries to stop her life from collapsing. 

I was willing to give this book a chance. Usually high fantasy romances aren't my thing, but I was proved thoroughly wrong by the Malice duology, so I figured my tastes may have changed over the years. Sager had a pretty solid start. The mystery surrounding Kat’s family life and her current way of living as “the wicked lady” was intriguing, as was the abrupt shift to palace living and Kat trying to recalibrate to the “proper” way of conducting herself. The romance with Bastian also felt like it was off to a good start, he immediately cuts the tension by recognizing her, but it still continues to mount as she lies about what she’s done with his belongings and why she’s interested in him. There was also a bit of forced togetherness which I’m a sucker for (although in this scenario it leads to a bit of dubious consent, which I’m not a fan of). 

That’s where the good things end, I’m afraid. The romance feels like it stalls out for a random “murder mystery” and palace mount race, the sex scenes felt a bit awkward with a mix of crass and flowery language that felt at odds with each other, and while there are things I’m still curious about (like her fear of her uncle, what happened to her that she can’t remember, and the inevitable fallout of when Bastian finds out she’s a spy) none of it feels like it will be broached anytime soon, and that’s with me more than halfway through the book. There’s just a huge lack of tension. I may pick this book back up in the future, but as of right now this one's going back on the shelf. 

But what do you think of these books? I know I can be a bit more more nitpicky about the novels I read (call it editor brain!) so I'm more than glad to have discussions about details I might have missed or dissenting opinions. Leave it all in the comments!