Hi and welcome to another monthly overview!
The seventh month of the year already, it’s flying by so fast it’s positively terrifying! June was a great month, I started my new job and I’m enjoying it so much, I feel more appreciated and much less stressed out, I’m so happy that I took the leap. Thanks to everyone who wished me luck, I did reply but since WP hates me you probably didn’t get any notification.
The weather was lovely for most of the month, I’m getting a bit more exercise now I can ride my bike to work every day, and I’ve been enjoying my coffee and a book out on the patio in the mornings.
I had a close encounter with this cute little bug, I had no idea what it was but it reminded me of a hummingbird because of the speed at which it was batting its wings so I looked up hummingbird butterfly and it turned out to be a hummingbird hawk-moth. I took about a hundred photos just to have a few acceptable ones as it wouldn’t sit still for longer than half a second 😅
It was a rather calm month on the blog as I wanted to give myself time to adjust to my new work situation and to find a new routine. I have been reading more in the mornings but less in the evenings so my reading time has stayed more or less the same. June was a good bookish month, I read some fantastic books, but there were a few duds too.
Honourable mentions to Just Like Mother and Mr Jones but these were my favourite reads of the month:
In figures June looks like this:
June
Novels: 5983 pages across 18 books
Audiobooks: 59 hours across 7 audiobooks
And here’s what I did in June and some of what I’ll be posting in July:
What I read:
Hide, Kiersten White
What I Hid for You, Heleen Kist (review to follow)
A Sincere Warning About the Entity in Your Home, Jason Arnopp
Beasts of Prey, Ayana Gray
The Plant Rescuer, Sarah Gerrard-Jones
Just Like Mother, Anne Heltzel
Jade City, Fonda Lee
The Daves Next Door, Will Carver
Vine Street, Dominic Nolan
The Tiger Came to the Mountains, Silvia Moreno-Garcia
The Cockroach King, Andrew Cull
Mr Jones, Alex Woolf
Creeper, Stuart James
Jade War, Fonda Lee
No Secrets, David Jackson (review to follow)
The Book of Gothel by Mary McMyne
Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel, Drew Gummerson
What a Fish Knows, Jonathan Balcombe
What I listened to:
Tombland, C. J. Sansom
A Tidy Ending, Joanna Canon
Into the Dark, Fiona Cummins
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, Ashley Winstead
A Botanist’s Guide to Parties and Poisons, Kate Khavari
One of the Girls, Lucy Clarke
The Unexpected Guest, Agatha Christie
What I read earlier but reviewed in June:
The Box, Dan Malakin
Night Shadows, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir
The Dark, Sharon Bolton
Truly, Darkly, Deeply, Victoria Selman
Upgrade, Blake Crouch
Let’s have a look at the books that landed on my lap in June:
Two Orenda Books treasures: a gifted proof copy and a finished copy I treated myself to. And two fiction paperbacks and a non-fiction hardcover my book blogger friends made me buy.
A 99p Kindle deal that lured me into adding the sequels to my TBR as well, and two NetGalley eARCs:
I hope you had a good month and that you are safe and well! Thanks for joining me today and happy reading xxx
Two Netgalley ARCs. You are SO doing it wrong 🤦🏼♀️🤣.
The second one isn’t even due until December 😂
It sounds like a wonderful month. I’m so glad the new job is going so well and I love the idea of riding your bike to work, it sounds so peaceful and unhurried. Gorgeous photos! A hummingbird hawk moth sounds like such an interesting visitor. Have a wonderful July!
Thank you! The daily bike ride is lovely, I enjoy it so much. It’s a little over a mile and I take a slightly longer route back, so I do a total of about 2.5 miles each day four days a week, which is not much, but it beats being in the car for at least an hour a day four days a week 😄
Sounds like you had a great June! I’m glad the new job is going well and I love those photos of the butterfly hawk moth…I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before; we do get a lot of hummingbirds down here.