June 2023 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Welcome to the June 2023 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I've read and rank them from worst to best.
June was an interesting reading month for me. In keeping with the start of summer, I found myself drawn to more beach reads than usual, packing my month with lots of romances, mysteries, and thrillers. As is typical of these genres, some were great and some not so much, but I nearly always appreciated the fast pace and the summer feel. Whether you are hiding from the heat, the poor air quality, or taking a trip over the long Fourth of July weekend, I hope there is a book in here for you. Happy reading!
June 2023 Reading Statistics
Pulitzer Winners Read: 1
Number of Books Read: 16
Genre Breakdown: 94% fiction (15 books), 6% non-fiction (1 book)
Average Rating: 8/10
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16. The Writing Retreat - Julia Bartz
Fiction/Thriller/Horror, 309 pages
When Alex, a struggling horror writer, receives a last-minute invitation to an exclusive writing retreat hosted by an author that she idolizes, Roza Vallo, she doesn’t hesitate to drop everything to attend. While the rules are strict - each of the five participants must write at least 3,000 words a day in order to complete a full novel by the end of the month or be expelled - Alex sees this as a chance to break her writers block and come up with a product worthy of being acquired by Roza’s publisher. Everything is not as it seems, however, which becomes abundantly clear after one of the writers disappears during a snowstorm and no one in charge seems particularly concerned. It’s probably not a major spoiler to say that Roza does not have good intentions, and what results is a violent break down of order as everyone fights to survive.
Thrillers aren’t my typical genre, but I keep coming back because when they’re done well, they can be really entertaining reads. As a general rule, I enjoy the exposition and world building elements of a thriller more than action or violence, because of the psychological bent. I hoped that I’d get some variation of this in The Writing Retreat, but unfortunately, I was mistaken. The exposition that did exist was boring and underwhelming and once the horror element kicked in, so much insanity started happening that it was hard to keep track of what was going on. Halfway through I was ready for the book to end.
Rating: 6/10
15. The One - Julia Argy
Fiction/Romance, 304 pages
When Emily is plucked off the street and casted as a contestant on The One, a reality dating show equivalent to The Bachelor, she agrees with little hesitation. At 22 years old, she has just been fired from her job and doesn’t have a plan for what comes next. Early into the filming it becomes clear that Emily, with her naivety and apparent wholesomeness, is an early favorite to be the show’s winner. But Emily isn’t sure what she wants, and has to figure out if the path of least resistance - going along with her producer’s directions, living at the beck and call of the show’s star - is the best choice for her. The writing of this book is imbibed with guilelessness, which I think Argy was trying to use to develop Emily’s character, but instead came off as childish. The best parts of the book were the descriptions of the show’s production because I always like seeing behind the curtain, but the characters, writing, and story were nothing special.
Rating: 6/10
14. Once More With Feeling - Elissa Sussman
Fiction/Romance, 416 pages
From the author of Funny You Should Ask, one of my favorite romance novels, comes Once More With Feeling, the story of a former celebrity pop-star who agrees to appear in a new Broadway musical directed by an old fling. Kathleen Rosenberg met Cal Kirby when they were teenagers at a prestigious musical theater summer camp, reuniting a few years later after Kathleen transforms into Katee Rose and Cal joins a boy band led by Kathleen’s fame-hungry boyfriend. A one night stand between Kathleen and Cal destroys the career of Katee Rose, and she goes into a self-enforced exile until her best friend presents her with the opportunity to play her dream role in a Broadway debut nearly a decade later. Kathleen’s dream was always to be on Broadway, but first she has to resolve the conflict between Cal and herself before she can fully commit to the show and her reputational redemption. Although this was an easy and quick read, I found the storyline and central conflict to be unnecessarily convoluted, which distracted Sussman from developing her characters and sustaining a believable plot. I don’t necessarily feel like I wasted my time by reading this book, but there are definitely better romances available, starting with Sussman’s debut.
Rating: 6.5/10
13. Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun - Elle Cosimano
Fiction/Mystery, 297 pages (3rd in series)
Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun is the third book in the Finlay Donovan series, and hopefully, the last. I loved the first book in the series, Finlay Donovan is Killing It, about a mom who accidentally gets hired as a contract killer. The book was smart, witty and the embodiment of the perfect beach read. I read the second book, Finlay Donovan Knocks ‘Em Dead, before it came out, and while I thought the first book was better, I still enjoyed it for what it was. This third installment was a bit of a letdown, not because the quality of the characters deteriorated, but because it felt like Cosimano was recycling the same ideas that created the foundations for her previous two books. I won’t go into too much plot detail because it will ruin the mystery from the first book, but I will say that this one is more of a locked-door mystery at a police academy’s training campus involving a mobster and a dirty cop. I will leave you with my review for Finlay Donovan is Killing It from April 2021, and recommend that you read that book and that book only.
Finlay Donovan is Killing It is a propulsive, smart, and fast-paced read. Finlay is a financially struggling, recently divorced mother of two young kids. She is also a mystery writer. While at lunch with her editor pitching an idea for a new murder mystery that she was supposed to start months ago, Finlay gets slipped a note by the woman sitting next to them offering her $50,000 to kill her husband. While insistent that she does not want to get involved, Finlay can not keep her curiosity at bay and decides to inconspicuously meet the man she has been hired to kill. Once there, a series of mishaps create a snowball of events that plunge Finlay headfirst into the coverup of a murder at the same time that she is trying to solve it. Along the way, Finlay gets wrapped up in a police investigation and a run-in with the D.C. branch of the Russian mafia. While some elements of the mystery can sometimes feel a little convenient, overall the book is creative and crisp. Cosimano adeptly pulls in little details that would normally be ignored by the reader to tie the mystery together and has created funny and charming characters that make this book hard to put down. 8.5/10
Rating: 7/10
12. Winterland - Rae Meadows
Historical Fiction, 276 pages
At the age of eight, Anya is selected to participate in the Soviet Union’s renowned and grueling gymnastics training program. Located in Siberia, this training center is one of many across the U.S.S.R, and the girls that train there - aged eight through the rare and elderly 20 year old - know that they must be exceptional to be noticed. Anya’s mother was a former ballerina at the Bolshoi but disappeared when Anya was five, leaving her committed to gymnastics as a distraction from her grief. Her father, a former amateur gymnast himself, encourages Anya, while their elderly neighbor, a former prisoner in the gulag, is skeptical of the control and devotion required by the state. The training is grueling and dehumanizing. The girls are seen as objects to be exploited by their country, forced to train through injuries, and taken from their families. Despite all of this, Anya excels, receiving the chance to represent the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. As Anya becomes a teenager, her body, which has been artificially blocked from developing, begins to deteriorate, and she starts to question what all of her hard work was really for.
Winterland is clearly a plot-driven book and heavy with dialogue, which is a perfectly fine narrative choice, but not always my favorite. I liked the story of the neighbor, who serves as a contrast between the new Soviet Union and the Stalin era, but sometimes felt like her sections were haphazardly inserted. Overall, I’m glad I read the book, mostly because of the interesting premise and the behind-the-scenes look at the intensity of the Soviet training apparatus.
Rating: 7.5/10
11. Bunny - Mona Awad
Fiction, 305 pages
This book is so utterly indescribable that it is difficult to write a cogent review. The publisher’s description states that this is the story of Samantha, a down and out outsider in her elite MFA program. She spends her first year on her own, unable and unwilling to socialize with the four other women in her cohort, all rich, all of whom move in a pack, and all of whom call each other “Bunny.” At the start of her second year, however, Samantha is given an invitation by the group to attend their “Smut Salon,” where the women use avant-garde methods to improve their writing process. This description - understandable, rooted in reality – probably describes the first fifty pages of the story. However, once Samantha attends her first Smut Salon meeting, she gets pulled head-first into the group and its cult-like antics. Soon, Samantha has turned her back on her one friend and has entered a rabbit-hole of chaos, creation, and imagination. Readers, including me, are left wondering what is truly going on, what is real, and what is constructed. I found this book to be a wild ride. I’m not sure I understood more than 50% of what happened, but I do know that Awad might be a hidden genius (Margaret Atwood agrees) and is on the frontlines of excellence in experimental fiction.
Rating: 8/10
10. My Nemesis - Charmaine Craig
Fiction, 208 pages
Tessa, the narrator of My Nemesis, would like readers to believe that she and Wah couldn’t be more different as women. As the book opens, Tessa tells her undisclosed audience that the last time she saw Wah, she called her a disgrace to womankind. Tessa is a white memoirist who focuses on feminism and the role of an empowered woman in her writing. Wah, also a best-selling author, is known for a memoir she wrote about her adoption of a girl from Kuala Lumpur who had been the victim of child trafficking. Tessa and Wah meet after Wah’s husband, Charlie, reaches out to Tessa to discuss her writing, which forges an immediate closeness between the two, and an immediate iciness between the women. Tessa is not a likable narrator. She is judgmental and seems to lack empathy and understanding for others. She is self-obsessed with reflection and introspection and deems anyone who is not to be beneath her. Over the course of a year, the two couples – Charlie and Wah as well as Tessa and her husband Milton – meet and discuss the musings of social stratification, relationships, and life, until Tessa gravely insults Wah and all of their lives take an unexpected turn. I thought that My Nemesis was well-written but not particularly compelling. I don’t need characters to be likable – sometimes the most interesting protagonists are the ones that are not – but Tessa’s unlikable qualities came at the expense of creating other, well-developed people. My Nemesis falls into the category of books that I appreciated while I was reading but perhaps not one that I will remember.
Rating: 8/10
9. Wandering Souls - Cecile Pin
Historical Fiction, 223 pages
In 1978, three years after the fall of Saigon, sixteen-year-old Anh and her two younger brothers get on a boat in Vietnam bound for a refugee camp in Hong Kong. The rest of their immediate family, including their parents and four younger siblings, will take the next boat and meet them there, and then they will all travel to New Haven, Connecticut to be reunited with the father’s brother. When the rest of the family’s bodies wash ashore, Anh is suddenly elevated to the role of family matriarch, tasked with caring for her brothers at the expense of her own ambitions, all the while mourning the loss of their loved ones and homeland. Angry at her uncle for convincing her father that leaving Vietnam would be a good idea, Anh tells the UN refugee official that she has no family in the United States, so the trio is instead placed in council housing in London. From there, the three siblings attempt to build a life for themselves, with Anh working in a factory while her brothers go to school, all the while reckoning with choices taken and abandoned and the consequences on their trajectory.
Wandering Souls is told primarily from Anh’s perspective, although every few chapters the ghost of Duc, one of Anh’s deceased younger brothers, narrates what he sees from above. Vietnamese superstition dictates that people who die away from home will be ghosts restlessly wandering the earth for the rest of time and this understanding haunts Anh for the majority of her life. I enjoyed this book but found that when I read the physical book the writing became more elementary than when it was narrated in audio format. I was drawn to the interspersed perspectives but wish that there had been more development of Anh as a person. Instead, Anh can sometimes take on a two dimensional quality of hard worker and family provider going through the motions of survival, without ever pausing to consider who else she might be.
Rating: 8.5/10
8. The Chinese Groove - Kathryn Ma
Fiction, 293 pages
When Zheng Xue Li, known as Shelley in English, arrives in San Francisco from China, he is full of optimism and hope. Buoyed by the tales told to him by his father and aunties, Shelley expects to be greeted at the airport by a rich uncle who will fund his classes at the local community college while giving him a prestigious position at the family department store. When Shelley lands, however, he is greeted by his cousin Ted, an unemployed journalist, and his librarian wife Aviva. The store, which was a corner grocery, has been closed for years following a violent robbery that left Ted’s young son and his mother killed. Shelley is allowed to stay on their couch for two weeks, but after that, he’s on his own. Shelley is surprised but undaunted. Driven by the notion of the “Chinese groove,” a type of “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” mentality, he hops from one situation to the other, bringing people into his orbit who are willing to help despite (or maybe because of) his naiveté and unblinding trust. I could have done without some of the extraneous side characters that fill Ted and Aviva’s orbit, but I understand that they were there to contrast with Shelley’s idealism as second generation Americans. Ultimately, this is a story of one man trying to achieve his version of the American dream filled with striving, hope, and humor.
Rating: 8.5/10
7. The Family Game - Catherine Steadman
Fiction/Thriller/Mystery, 319 pages
Harriet Reed is an up and coming British mystery novelist who is newly engaged to Edward Holbeck, the oldest son of an extremely rich family that I likened to the Roys of Succession. However, her introduction to the family is marred after the father gives Harriet a tape to listen to containing a dark secret about a series of murders that he claims to have committed. Unsure if this is a riddle - the family is notorious for their tradition of oddly immersive games - Harriet starts to dig into what has been revealed to her, only to discover that she might be next. Catherine Steadman is a talented thriller and mystery author also known to me for her role as an actress on Downton Abbey. Her stories are gripping, fast-paced, and well-written, and nothing about this book felt contrived or unnecessarily gruesome. I was captivated by the plot and the characters in The Family Game from start to end, and immediately requested other books written by her as soon as I was finished. I was slightly put off by the ending, but the riveting qualities of the rest of the book more than made up for it.
Rating: 8.5/10
6. Concerning My Daughter - Kim Hye-jin
Fiction/Literature in Translation (South Korea), 176 pages
Concerning My Daughter, translated from its original Korean, is the story of a contentious mother-daughter relationship set within changing cultural times. The mother, widowed and approaching her seventies, works as a caregiver at a state-funded nursing home caring for a woman who chose career over family, leaving her with no one to look after her in her old age. The work is grueling and the mother would have preferred to retire years ago, but her only child, a thirty-something daughter named Green, has no stable work or traditional marriage prospects. Attempting to alleviate Green’s financial burdens, the mother invites her to move in, not expecting that Green would also invite her long-term girlfriend to come as well. The mother can not accept her daughter’s definition of family, growing increasingly concerned that she will end up alone and childless. This book is a fascinating exploration of family dynamics and their compatibility with traditional cultural values. The mother’s concern over her daughter is not necessarily rooted in pure bigotry, but rather a fear of the unknown that exists beyond the bounds of her understanding of society. I thought that Kim Hye-jin handled these fraught issues with depth and nuance. My biggest complaint was that the book wasn’t longer, which would have given a chance for the conflict to be resolved over the span of a few more pages.
Rating: 8.5/10
5. I Have Some Questions for You - Rebecca Makkai
Fiction/Mystery, 435 pages
When Bodie Kane was a senior at her New Hampshire boarding school in the 1990s, her former roommate, Thalia, was murdered and left for dead in the campus pool. The school’s athletic trainer, a Black man named Omar, was arrested, charged, and convicted of the crime despite an absence of conclusive evidence. Over 20 years later, Bodie, a successful podcast host and film buff, returns to the school to teach an inter-session two-week class on podcast production, encouraging her students to select projects about something related to the school. After one of the students decides to reinvestigate the circumstances surrounding the murder, Bodie finds herself sucked back into her life as a high school student, questioning her understanding of the crime, and rediscovering her relationships with those around her. At the same time, she must grapple with student-teacher power dynamics, unequal aspects of the criminal justice system, and a burgeoning awakening coming from the emergence of the MeToo movement.
I definitely enjoyed this book, particularly while listening to it on audio, but I think that Makkai tried to dive in to a few too many hot-button cultural issues, making the narrative sometimes feel preachy. The book was long, with the back quarter winding on for the sake of the dramatic conclusion that was a smidge underwhelming. Despite these critiques, I am still glad that I read the book. It was propulsive and attention-grabbing, with an interesting plot and well-written characters.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. American Caliph - Shahan Mufti
Non-Fiction/History, 317 pages
When Americans think of high-profile hostage-takings in the 1970s, they probably think of the Munich Olympics in 1972 and the Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979. Very little is discussed about a massive hostage operation that took place between March 9 and March 11, 1977 in Washington, D.C. by the Hanafis, a heavily armed Muslim group. Over the course of one morning, the group, led by the charismatic and disillusioned Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, took over the B’nai B’rith headquarters (over 100 people), the Islamic Center of Washington (around 20 people), and the District Building, the seat of D.C. government (around 20 people). Only one person was killed on the spot, but a few died later from injuries sustained during the attack, many were wounded, and the rest deeply traumatized.
Khaalis, born a Seventh Day Adventist as Ernest McGhee, converted to Islam after joining the Nation of Islam, rising high in the ranks before becoming disillusioned with leadership. A series of public disputes between him and the Nation’s leader sparked resentment between the two, eventually leading to the violent massacre of seven of Khaalis’ family members by the Fruit of Islam, a violent offshoot of the Nation. The wheels of the justice system moved slowly, so, determined to get retribution and have his status as the American caliph confirmed, Khaalis opted for a high profile show of his anger. His demands varied from delivering leaders of the Nation, including Muhammad Ali, to the B’nai B’rith headquarters, as well as stopping the premier of a movie about the prophet Muhammed that he deemed blasphemous.
Mufti spends around the first 150 pages of the book laying the groundwork for the hostage taking, explaining the development of Khaalis’ views against the backdrop of the various political and religious movements vying for influence and control over America’s Muslim population from the 1950s through the 1970s. While I was initially impatient to get to the action, I later appreciated that Mufti spent the time to explain the background because it made Khaalis and the Hanafi’s actions more nuanced and complex. This is a fascinating work of historical non-fiction about a massive event situated within a larger domestic and international political consciousness.
Rating: 9/10
3. The Mutual Friend - Carter Bays
Fiction, 463 pages
The Mutual Friend is the literary embodiment of someone’s Facebook page, and I mean this in the best possible way. Following a large cast of characters over the course of the summer of 2015 in New York City, this book jumps from person to person, thought to thought, seamlessly weaving online activity into a larger narrative. Alice Quick, one of the story’s main protagonists, has been aimless since her mother’s death, finding sudden motivation in studying for and taking the MCAT. However, her new roommate, Roxy, a press assistant for the controversial mayor, operates with a chaotic energy that frequently interferes with Alice’s studying plans. On their first night as roommates she asks Alice to go on a date for her because she is in the ER after breaking her nose (she was looking at her phone and walked headfirst into a pole). The man on the date, as well as all of the other people in their lives, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, are developed characters. Part of the enjoyment of the story is attempting to figure out how each person fits in with the next, and then watching as they evolve, in good and bad ways, over the course of the book. I thought Bays’ storytelling was unique and refreshing. I loved the dialogue and thought that even though it was long, the plot was well-paced and sustained throughout. My only caution is that although the performance in audio format is excellent, it might be best to start in print because of the amount of people to keep track of.
Rating: 9/10
2. Paul - Daisy Lafarge
Fiction, 292 pages
When 21-year-old Frances is picked up at a McDonalds parking lot in the French Pyrenees, she expects to be driven to an organic farm where she will work for a week in exchange for room and board. The excursion has been recommended to her as a type of restorative therapy, which Frances, an English graduate student, needs after being broken up with by her boss and dismissed from her role as a research assistant in Paris. The first farm she visits is less of a farm and more of a large home with a garden, run by 44-year-old Paul, an enigmatic yet washed-up anthropologist who named his home after his time in Tahiti. Although Frances is originally disappointed that she is the only guest, she is quickly enveloped in the farm’s surrounding community and the charisma of Paul. It becomes clear early on that Paul is interested in Frances, calling her his “goddess,” and Frances, unsure of her sense of self, is drawn deeper into his orbit. Daisy Lafarge’s pacing is immaculate, moving in lockstep with the development of Frances’ understanding of the true nature of Paul and his manipulative tendencies. The book is a master-study in power dynamics and unbalanced relationships, which was beautifully reflected in the experience of Frances.
Rating: 9/10
1. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
Fiction, 240 pages
The Hours is the story of one day in the lives of three distinct women who are all connected by Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. The first woman is Virginia Woolf herself, who is starting her work on the novel in a London suburb in 1923 as she grapples with debilitating headaches and a crisis of existence. The second woman is Laura Brown, a housewife in 1949 Los Angeles who is dragged down by the domestic tasks of watching her son while preparing for her husband’s small birthday party, all the while wishing that she could find some time to read Mrs. Dalloway without being disturbed. The final woman is Clarissa Vaughan, nicknamed Clarissa Dalloway by her acclaimed poet friend Richard, who is dying of AIDS. Clarissa exists in the present-day of when the novel was written, the 1990s, and is preparing to throw a party for Richard to celebrate his winning a prestigious literary prize. While each of the three women have important tasks to complete, they are each imbued with a generalized sense of melancholy despite momentary feelings of joy. The three stories alternate throughout the book until the very end, when they each come together in a surprising and poignant manner.
The Hours won the Pulitzer Prize in 1999 and has since been made into a movie staring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore, which I haven’t seen. I stopped short of giving this book a perfect 10/10 not because it wasn’t phenomenal, but because I think I missed a critical element having not read Mrs. Dalloway. You can clearly enjoy Cunningham’s craft without prior Mrs. Dalloway knowledge, but I think it’s clear that the foundations of The Hours rests on its connections to Virginia Woolf and her work, which I wasn’t able to fully appreciate. The fact that I loved this book as much as I did even while missing that fundamental piece is a testament to its stand-alone strength and its ability to rest on the exceptional merits of beautiful, well-crafted writing.
Rating: 9.5/10
All of books written about above are available on my June 2023 Reading Round-Up Bookshop page, or you can click on the title of the book itself to be routed to the shop. All of the books I’ve ever recommended, sorted by post, are also available on the general shop page.
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Want to see last month’s round up? You can find that here.
I had The Chinese Groove & Wandering Souls on my to-read list (I write a newsletter that recommends works by creators from across the Asian diaspora!), but I hadn't heard of Concerning My Daughter -- adding that one now! & Excited to receive future newsletters! :)