My Bookish Month of May 2023

Hi and welcome to another monthly overview!

How is it June?! It seems like only yesterday it was March! May flew by just as fast as April did. The weather finally picked up a little and we had quite a few sunny days, perfect for gardening and reading outside. It’s been a year since I quit my former job and started my current one and honestly, I still can’t believe my luck. In that regard, May was definitely a month of thinking about what was and what is.

My bookish month was fantastic. My Kindle Unlimited trial subscription ran until mid-May and I tried to squeeze in as many books and short stories as I could. When I went to cancel my subscription, I was offered three more months at a reduced price and boy, was I tempted. However, I had been neglecting my own books horribly, so I decided to decline and try and tackle that backlog again. I enjoyed most of my reads, and thanks to the abovementioned gardening, I managed to listen to loads of audiobooks. My most anticipated read (Klune!) was just as fab as I’d hoped it would be and I found some new Gothic favourites.

Honourable mentions to One Brilliant Flame, Snakes, Murder under the Tuscan Sun, The Road Home, The Will and Yellowface, but these were my favourite reads of the month:

In figures May looks like this:

May
Novels: 5614 pages across 16 books and 7 short stories
Audiobooks: 78 hours across 9 books and 26 short stories

And here’s what I did in May and some of what I’ll be posting in June:

What I read:

Broadcast, Liam Brown
The Sleep Tight Motel, Lisa Unger
The Tangled Woods, Emily Raboteau
Oak Avenue, Brandi Reeds
The Cleaners, Ken Liu
Fyneshade, Kate Griffin
The Snowstorm, Triona Walsh
Dead Reckoning, Lea O’Harra
A Planned Occasion, Angie Kim
The Days Before Us, Sejal Badani
The Art of Deception, Louise Mangos
The Last Gifts of the Universe, Rory August
One, Eve Smith
Bear Witness, Mary Gaitskill
One Brilliant Flame, Joy Castro
The Doctor, Annie Payne
In the Lives of Puppets, T.J. Klune
The Aosawa Murders, Riku Onda
Our Hideous Progeny, C.E. McGill
Snakes: From Vipers to Boa Constrictors, Julianna Photopoulos (review to follow)
Sal de mis sueños, Fernando Trujillo Sanz
No Country for Girls, Emma Styles
Murder Under the Tuscan Sun, Rachel Rhys

What I listened to:

Above the Rain, Víctor del Árbol
The Remedy, Adam Haslett
The Prince and the Troll, Rainbow Rowell
This Telling, Cheryl Strayed
Pretty Evil, Zoe Rosi
Sweet Virginia, Caroline Kepnes
Hazel and Gray, Nic Stone
The Magician, Rebecca Serle
Graceful Burdens, Roxane Gay
The Princess Game, Soman Chainani
The Wickeds, Gayle Forman
Mother Country, Etaf Rum
The Contractors, Lisa Ko
Poppy’s Story, Kristina McMorris
Deluge, Charmaine Wilkerson
The Road Home, Kristin Harmel
Shine, Pamela! Shine!, Kate Atkinson
The Soulmate, Sally Hepworth
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Unknown Caller, Lisa Unger
These Cold Strangers, J.T. Ellison
Kill Night, Victor Methos
Trouble, Janelle Brown
Pigeon Tony’s Last Stand, Lisa Scottoline
Halfway to Free, Emma Donoghue
The Weddings, Alexander Chee
Can You Feel This?, Julie Orringer
Zenith Man, Jennifer Haigh
The Lion’s Den, Anthony Marra
Everything My Mother Taught Me, Alice Hoffman
The Foxglove King, Hannah F. Whitten
The Institution, Helen Fields
The River Wild, Denis O’Neill
The Will, Rebecca Reid
Yellowface, R.F. Kuang

What I read earlier but reviewed in May:

Strange Animals, Tom Jackson
Endangered Places, Claudia Martin
Africa, Anne-Marie Bissada
Perilous Times, Thomas D. Lee
The Fascination, Essie Fox
Don’t Look Back, Jo Spain
The Bone Shard War, Andrea Stewart
Windmill Hill, Lucy Atkins
The Medici Murders, David Hewson

I also had a look at my bookish quarter in pie charts and I shared an extract from Thirty Days of Darkness by Jenny Lund Madsen.

Let’s have a look at the books that landed on my lap in May:

Three gorgeous hardbacks:

A pre-order, two 99p deals and three 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