Here we go again…..another month wrapped up.
July was a much slower reading month for me with almost every book read being on audio. I have found myself in a little slump, only reading in the car. I read quite a few books that have been on my TBR for quite a while, focusing less on romance and returning to a little literary and historical fiction.
Books read:
- The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley– ★★★★
- Kin by Tayari Jones – ★★★★
- Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash – ★★★★
- Wyatt by Jessica Peterson – ★★★
- Pictures of You by Emma Grey – ★★★★
- Brighter than Before by Catherine Walsh – ★★★★
Pages read: 2097 pages
Most read genre: Literary Fiction
Most read format: 5 out of 6 books were audiobooks
Favourite read: The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
The Blurb: Adela Woods is sixteen years old and pregnant. Her parents banish her from her comfortable upbringing in Indiana to her grandmother’s home in the small town of Padua Beach, Florida. When she arrives, Adela meets Emory, who brings her newborn to high school, determined to graduate despite the odds; Simone, mother of four-year-old twins, weighs her options when she finds herself pregnant again; and the rest of the Girls, a group of outcast young moms who raise their growing brood in the back of Simone’s red truck.
The town thinks the Girls have lost their way, but really they are finding it: looking for love, making and breaking friendships, and navigating the miracle of motherhood and the paradox of girlhood.
Full of heart and life and hope, set against the shifting sands of these friends’ secrets and betrayals, The Girls Who Grew Big confirms Leila Mottley’s promise and offers an explosive new perspective on what it means to be a young woman.
Honourable mention: Kin by Tayari Jones
The blurb: Vernice and Annie, two motherless daughters raised in Honeysuckle, Louisiana, have been best friends and neighbors since earliest childhood, but are fated to live starkly different lives. Raised by a fierce aunt determined to give her a stable home in the wake of her mother’s death, Vernice leaves Atlanta at eighteen for Spelman College, where she joins a sisterhood of powerfully connected Black women and marries into an affluent family. Annie, abandoned by her dissolute mother as a child, and fixated on the idea of finding her and filling the bottomless hole left by her absence, sets off on a journey that will take her into a world of peril and adversity, as well as love and adventure, and culminate in a battle for her life.
A novel about mothers and daughters, about friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.
Goodreads Reading Challenge: 51/100 books
Audiobook Challenge: 36/50 audiobooks
What was your favourite read this month?
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Your two featured books sound terrific! I already knew I wanted to read Kin, but I”ll go ahead and add The Girls Who Grew Big to my TBR too. Thanks for sharing!
Hope you enjoy them as much as I did Lisa. Happy reading!