July Book Wrap Up

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Still in summertime reading mode, which for me means reading very few books because I’m doing other warm weather things, BUT I did finish a few books in July so here’s my monthly wrap up!

Wolves by Simon Ings

This is my standout read for the month. To be honest, I probably read so few books in July partially because I wasn’t really enjoying what I was reading. Wolves is the exception because this genre-defying book was just delightful.

Which once again makes me question Goodreads ratings because this is the lowest rated of all 3 of my July reads by far!

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Read this as an ARC. You can check out my review here. This was a 3-star read for me. I love TJR, but I couldn’t get over how much this book is just about tennis. Like, yes, of course the book is going to have tennis in it, but the fact that the first 20% or so is just tennis matches and tennis gameplay is way too much for this non-sports fan.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

This was my first book by this author and I was really expecting a lot given all I’ve heard about her work. Unsurprisingly, her writing was wonderful. I love short chapters and beautiful prose. This book delivers on both fronts. What was missing for me was connection with the characters. I just didn’t feel like I was getting a good sense of them. I also didn’t love how much this book screamed “2020 pandemic.” It really seemed like something that was written with the thought of, oh, we’re in a pandemic, I should write a book about that. I’m not sure how well that element of the story stands up even just a couple years our from the start of the pandemic.

August Book Release Radar

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Yes, it’s August next week. No, I don’t know how that’s possible. It feels like it was just now April. Either way, here are some new book releases I’m looking forward to next month!

Husband Material by Alexis Hall

I finally got an ARC of this sequel to Boyfriend Material and I’m SO excited! I’m currently 10% of the way into this book and really enjoying it. If you’ve read the first in the series, this one picks up 2 years into Luc and Oliver’s relationship with the whole cast of side characters intact. Same old banter and Luc is full of sarcasm as to be expected. So far so good! ❤

Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I’ve already read and reviewed TJR’s new book, but I’m really looking forward to seeing what other readers think. This historical fiction epic about the career and life of a world champion tennis player didn’t hit me as well as others in TJR’s catalogue, but then again, I’m someone who doesn’t care at all about sports. I knew the tennis scenes wouldn’t be the best for me, I just didn’t know how many of them there would actually be.

How to Survive Your Murder by Danielle Valentine

I haven’t read a YA thriller in a while and the plot of this one piqued my attention. Alice Lawrence is the sole witness to her sister’s murder. On the first day of the trial, Alice is knocked unconscious by a Sidney Prescott lookalike and wakes up a year earlier, on the day of her sister’s murder. Invoking the final girl from Scream is always a good way to catch my attention.

Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

My request for an ARC of this one was declined, buuut I still want to read it lol. It’s basically a rom-com about a true crime-obsessed phd candidate who goes from thinking her new neighbor is a serial killer to falling for him. So, not enemies-to-lovers but potential serial killer-to-lovers?? Either way, sounds like great fun.

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy

I’ll have a box of tissues nearby when I read this memoir from former iCarly actress, Jeanette McCurdy. Obviously the title is attention grabbing, so for those like me who were unaware, McCurdy endured extensive abuse at the hands of her mother while growing up as a child actress. I’m hoping for an unflinching and unapologetic memoir with this one.

Question: Are you looking forward to any new releases in August?

ARC Book Review: Carrie Soto Is Back

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ARC book review time! Today I have a spoiler-free review of the much anticipated Carrie Soto Is Back from Taylor Jenkins Reid. I’ve been slowly whittling down my list of outstanding ARC books and doing an excellent job of not requesting any more until my current TBR pile is gone.
Thank you to Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine and NetGalley for an ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.

I think TJR has established that she can tell a pretty epic story. A lot of her books center around strong women, their lives, loves, and pitfalls. Carrie Soto is no exception to that rule. The tl;dr version of this review could easily be boiled down to: Are you interested in reading about someone’s tennis career or not?

PLOT

Carrie Soto isn’t just great at tennis; she’s the greatest of.all.time. And she has all the records to prove it. Trained by her father who is a former champion himself, Carrie blitzes through the tennis ranks capturing every title along the way. By the time she retires, Carrie is indisputably the best but also faces a lot of public backlash for her lack of humility and fiercely competitive playing style. Not that she cares.

But Carrie doesn’t get to enjoy her retirement long. Six years after, she finds herself watching the stunning Nicki Chan make a run for her Grand Slam record. Never one to be beaten, this prompts Carrie to come out of retirement for one more run at reclaiming her title under the tutelage of her father, just like the old days. It won’t be easy though with the media not forgetting or forgiving “The Battle Axe” persona she’s built, a distraction from her past, and Carrie’s own body slowing her down. But not of that has ever stopped her before.

Characters

I personally wasn’t as much of a fan of Carrie as I was of Evelyn Hugo, for example. I have to commend TJR for creating complex, flawed characters though. Her characters feel real and multidimensional. Yes, Carrie can come across a bit cold, especially in the beginning of the book, but as with other TJR books you start to understand the characters more and more as the story progresses.

Spoiler-Free Review

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I was hoping that the tennis aspect would be more of a backdrop than a focal point of the story. In Evelyn Hugo, for example, you get a good picture of Evelyn’s Hollywood movie career background. You learn about her rise to fame and things that happen throughout her career. Still, the focal point of the story was more centered around Evelyn’s personal life, her relationships, and the Hollywood starlet part was sort of seamlessly weaved into that.

Be forewarned that Carrie Soto is not this way. The first 25% of the book is almost all just her career leading up to retirement. Various competitions she attends, opponents her and her father strategize against to beat, the particulars of specific tennis plays, a glimpse into her attitude in the public spotlight… and that’s about it. We’re talking roughly 100 pages of tennis competitions that all start blending together and feeling pretty repetitive.

The next 75% picks up a fair amount. We start getting a lot more from the story, seeing Carrie’s support system, including her relationship with her father, a friendship and a budding romance. While there’s still a ton of tennis action, as is to be expected, there’s also a lot of heartfelt writing that I’ve come to expect from TJR. I found myself still wanting to skim some of the tennis play talk, but it does get a lot better.

Another thing that may or may not affect you is the fact that Carrie’s father speaks in Spanish quite frequently. If you know Spanish or enough Spanish to get by, this may not be of concern to you at all. But just know that TJR does not translate this Spanish at all. If pausing your reading to google Spanish sentences doesn’t bother you, great! If that sounds like something that would take you out of the story or bother you, there’s your warning.

Overall, I think TJR tells a good story of perfection and self-acceptance. This isn’t one of my favorites of hers, but I think if you have interest in sports or competition you’ll find the first fourth of the book more palatable.

Recommended for:

• Fans of TJR’s storytelling style
• Readers with a special interest in sports and competition themes
• Readers who enjoy heartfelt lessons about self-realization

My 2021 Books in Review

I wasn’t the best about tracking my reads in 2021. As in, I can’t even pinpoint exactly how many books I read this year because I just didn’t keep up with tracking. I would say the number is somewhere around 35 books though. I wanted to do a quick recap of my top-rated books that I read in 2021. And here’s to better book tracking in 2022!

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

Imagine Me Gone is an exploration of multigenerational mental illness and how it affects a family. It’s an honest and brutal story of our attempts to support each other through successes and failures. It’s the nonlinear path that is mental illness. It’s seeing your own darkness reflected in those you love. Above all, it’s a story of shared trauma.

This was by far my most reflective book of 2021. It’s not for the faint of heart. It’s devastatingly sad. It’s challenging. The timeline skips around and you feel the confusion and distress that the characters are feeling. I still think about this family sometimes and I imagine I’ll continue to do so for a long while.

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Educated by Tara Westover

Educated is a memoir about a woman who was raised as a survivalist in the mountains of Idaho. She didn’t step foot into a classroom until she was 17 years old. Education wasn’t valued in her family where the most basic essentials, like medical care, were not allowed. Tara taught herself mathematics and grammar. She got herself into a great university.

This book is amazing. Tara overcame so many things that I couldn’t even fathom as someone who grew up in a family that put an emphasis on education. This book will horrify you. It will make you sad and angry. Tara tells it with the maturity of someone who has made peace with their past. It’s really a well-written and engaging story.

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Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

Anxious People almost needs no introduction at this point. If you’re in any book circles, you’ve probably seen it a million times. That’s actually why I read it in the first place. I had to see what I was missing. This book is about a failed bank robbery that turns into the most bizarre hostage situation possible. It’s lighthearted and funny with the zaniest characters I read this year.

Honestly, I didn’t love the plot of this book. I just didn’t really care about the “hostage” situation for pretty much the entire book. It’s Backman’s ability to write characters that simultaneously seem absurdly impossible and also like someone you’ve met in real life that drew me into this book. The chapters are also short enough to keep you engaged and flipping the pages.

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The One by John Marrs

Okay, picture this. No need for a bunch of dating apps or failed relationships. You can take a simple DNA test to find your one true soulmate. In The One, a gene has been isolated that matches you directly with the person you’re biologically destined to be with. With multiple perspectives and storylines between alternating chapters, we get to see all of the “what ifs” of this new world. What if you were matched with someone of the same sex? What if you were matched with someone who was ill? What if you were already married and that person wasn’t your match?

I was obsessed with the concept of this book. What would happen in all of these scenarios? What if you were matched with someone who was majorly out of or under your league? What if your match was on the other side of the world? The chapters in this book are like 4 pages long so you will fly through it. I did like some storylines more than others, of course, and I wished I got more detail on those storylines because they were more interesting. Instead the book would skip forward several months so that it could wrap up all the storylines by the end, which sucked for the couples that I wanted a lot more detail on. But overall it was a great mildly suspenseful drama.

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The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

You didn’t think you’d escape a 2021 wrap up list without seeing this book, right? Is it overhyped? Probably. But it actually mostly lives up to the hype! In The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, a magazine reporter is selected by an aging Hollywood icon to tell her hidden life story. The reader sits with Monique as Monique sits with Evelyn Hugo and listens to the tales of her life, spanning several decades and marriages.

This book is heavy. The story is told in sections, each husband representing a pivotal point in Hugo’s life. This book tackles serious societal issues as it goes through the decades- sexism, racism, homophobia. This book doesn’t shy away from any of society’s grittiness. If I weren’t mistaken, I would believe that Evelyn was a real old time Hollywood celebrity confessing her soul before us. I still think about this book occasionally despite finishing it months ago, so it’s safe to say that it’s worth checking out all the hype on this one.

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Have you read any of my favorite reads of 2021? What were your favorite books this year?