Here we are with my first round of recent reads for August. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I have been reading quite a lot this month. But most of those books are for a video and wrap-up post that’ll be out at the end of the month, so I haven’t had many things to add here.
But for now, let’s just jump straight into this.
Part of Your World (Part Of Your World #1) by Abby Jimenez
I talked about this one somewhat recently in this post I did about recent romance additions to my TBR. Well, my library hold came in, and I finally got the chance to read it. I want to say off the bat that the romance in here is really sweet—Daniel is adorable, and Alexis is a genuinely nice character. Daniel’s little town is literally wonderful, and I love all of the townspeople. However, there’s also a pretty intense side to this book. Alexis has just gotten out of a mentally abusive relationship, which we continue to hear about and see, and her parents may be the worst people to exist. At times, this was just too much for me, and I had to take a break from reading. This also weirdly felt like it was maybe the second book in the series rather than the first—we hear about another couple’s recent romance, but it really felt like it was rehashing a previous book. That story sounded so cute that I was devastated to see it wasn’t actually a book and the small snippets were all we had. I’ll be interested to read the next book in the series and to see where that takes us, as well as reading some of Jimenez’s other books.
The Lost Hero (Heroes of Olympus #1) by Rick Riordan
I FINALLY got around to rereading this, and I’ve just got to say that it is so good to be back in this world. I reread the first PJ series at the end of 2020, and I’d been saying I’d get to this ever since, but I kept putting it off. I’d been doing that because I was nervous about this one in particular—I hated Jason with a fiery passion the first time I read these back in 2015/2016. Honestly, he wasn’t as bad in here as I remembered but maybe he goes worse as the series goes along. However, Piper (and the small glimpses we get of Annabeth) steals the show for me—I don’t remember a whole lot of her storylines after this one, but I’m excited to rediscover her. But let me tell you, I’m even more excited to be back with my true love, Percy, for book two—I’ve missed you seaweed-brain.
The Other Miss Bridgerton (Rokesbys #3) by Julia Quinn
It’s been a few months since I read book two in this series, but I finally got around to picking this one up this week as well. With every book in this series, I’m like ‘no, this one is definitely my favourite’ and it’s no different today. I love that, like book two, the action of this one takes place mostly outside of England. I think most of the romances I’ve read that take place on a ship are fantasy romance, rather than historical so I really enjoyed that angle. I also like that we got to see a little of Portugal, though I wish there’d be more. I loved both Andrew and Poppy—they have some great banter with one another and I always love reading that. I loved that they’re far more similar than they realise, it made for a really interesting dynamic between the two of them. I will say, this is pretty light on the romance but I don’t know if that’s just because I’ve been reading a lot of reverse harem fantasy romance lately and literally everything seems light compared to that. Overall, it was very sweet and I’m happy I did end up picking this one up this week.
The Memoirs of Emma Courtney by Mary Hays
Just to really mix this round of mini-reviews up, here’s this mostly forgotten classic! This was required reading for a class I’m taking this semester about Romanticism, and honestly, before this, I’d never heard of this book or Mary Hays, but she’s quite the fascinating figure. I actually ended up really enjoying this as well—it’s a bit of a wild ride at times, but it was really interesting to read and research. It’s really hard to discuss this without going into a full academic essay explaining all the little intricacies that are in here—like I said, Hays was a really fascinating subject to read about, especially in terms of looking at this as semi-autobiographical or deciding to look at it from a different lens. This is sadly the only thing we’re discussing from Hays this semester, but I’ll definitely be looking into her other works in my own time. Now here’s hoping I enjoy some of the other works I’ll be reading for class as much as I have this.
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
It’d been a while since I picked up a Shakespeare, but I’ve been reading a lot about Ancient Rome and mythology lately, and it just seemed like a good time to read this. A few years ago, I saw (half of) a terrible rendition of this, and it turned me off it for a while. Shakespeare’s tragedies are by far my favourites of his, so I always struggle with his histories like this one. Honestly, my biggest struggle with these is remembering who the characters are—obviously, there are easy ones like Brutus and Marc Antony, but the others were definitely lost on me. Other than that, I don’t really have any other thoughts on this. I didn’t hate any of this, but there also wasn’t really anything I liked about it either—I feel just very ambivalent about it. But it’s another Shakespeare I can mark off the list.
And that’s it for today. Have you read any of these? What are you reading right now?
Earl Grey Books 