July 2020 Wrap Up | The month I traveled through books!

It’s 1st of August and I’m supposed to be writing my July Wrap Up (this post), instead, all I care about is how beautiful my TBR stack for August looks! I even started reading two of the books from my TBR, just to see whether they will be a quick read or not. At least, that’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past hour or so. 

Don’t you find it difficult sometimes to prioritize blogging over reading, when all you want to do is start a new book? I’m sure it can’t be just a me thing. 😀 

Every single month I tell myself that I can’t leave wrap ups for the end of the month. That I need to start the post as soon as the month starts and keep updating it throughout. Just like I did in June! But we all know that more often than not it doesn’t happen. What does happen often enough is me sitting at my laptop at the end of each month, trying to remember what I did, loved and hated in the last 4 weeks. *facepalm*

THINGS THAT MADE ME HAPPY IN JULY

1 – New Little Mix single – «Holiday»! 

I am OBSESSED! Not just over their music or the new song (which is so fun and sexy!) but mostly over their personalities and friendship. If there was a way of tracking how much time I spent on YouTube last month watching videos about Little MIx… I think I’d be scared to discover that I spent all of my free time doing that. 

2 – The beach! 

As someone who literally lives 15 mins away from the ocean, I barely ever go to the beach. I finally made an effort last week to not worry about stuff that won’t get done and just go to the beach, enjoy the sun, swim in the ocean (water has been surprisingly warm!), and relax. The best way to do that is to head to the beach right after work. It’s been so relaxing! 

3 – I had my 2nd best reading month of the year!

Reading stats will be below, but I’m going to tell you right now that in July I managed to read yet another 18 books! Which is completely insane! It’s the same number of books I read in April. Some of them were shorter, of course, but I’m so happy with the number of books I read so far this year. My initial goal was 50, but I bumped it to 100 in June, and now I’m already at 83 out of 100!

MONTHLY READING STATS Total Books: 16 read, 2 DNFs Total Pages: 5647 ARCs: 7

In July I set two reading challenges for myself:

1. to travel through books by reading 4 books set in different parts of the world; and
2. to participate in the Reading Rush. 

I did both, which I’m very happy about. I also read some ARCs and some other books from my TBR. Overall, July was a very good reading month. However, out of 18 books, I only loved 2 or 3, the rest was just “okay”. And none of the books I read made it to my “favorites” shelf.

5 ★

The only book I gave 5 stars to in July was «The Kite Runner» by Khaled Hosseini. Based on how heavy the story was, it was impossible to give it any other rating. Will I be reading more books by Khaled Hosseini? Yes. But! after this one, I’m scared of the impact his other books might have on me.

4 ★

There were quite a lot of 4-star books in July. The majority of my readings, as you can see, were good but not quite there to get to that 5-star ratings. And honestly, I’m a bit disappointed. So many of these books have been on my TBR for a very long time – «The Song of Achilles» and Elizabeth Acevedo books. Some of these were my most anticipated books of this year – the new Sara Pennypacker book (author of «Pax»). I was hoping to find so many new favorites, and while I enjoyed all of these, none of them had that “wow” factor I was looking for.

During the Reading Rush, on a complete whim, I decided to pick up the 3rd books in the Wayward Children series (which I said I wasn’t going to continue with), and surprise surprise! «Beneath the Sugar Sky» is my favorite so far! The books in this series are just so short, it’s very difficult to resist them…

3 ★

Sadly, not all the Reading Rush books were excellent. Most of them got a 3-star rating, which isn’t bad of course, but I was definitely looking for more from these particular books.

«Wilder Girls» by Rory Power was probably the book I was the most excited about from my Reading Rush TBR. It started on a great note, but it lacked atmosphere, in my opinion. This was supposed to be a horror story, and it didn’t read like horror at all. And then the ending and the reveal of how it all happened were very underwhelming and not surprising in any way.

Books I didn’t like & DNFs

«A Song Below Water» was the biggest disappointment of this year. I love the cover art and I was determined to love this book as well. But oh my… it was a STRUGGLE to read even the first 10-15%. It wasn’t capturing my attention, I didn’t care about anything that was happening and it took me 3 days just to read the first 50 pages. Maybe during any other week, I would have given it a little bit more time, but this happened to be one of my RR books, so I had to put it down and read something else instead.

And finally, «The Once and Future Witches» by Alix E. Harrow… I know how much everyone loves her books, so I wanted to give her another chance, I wanted to really dedicate my time to it, read it as slowly as necessary, absorb the story and the characters. And I did that. I finished the whole book, but it was a huge struggle… There were many elements I loved – the characters, the battle for women’s rights, how dark at times the story got, how diverse the cast of characters was, etc. However, the pacing was all over the place and that’s why it was so difficult for me to stay in the story, to not get distracted.

JULY TOP POSTS

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JUNE BOOK REVIEWS

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2020 MONTHLY WRAP UPs:
January 2020 Wrap Up | The month I learned how to stay on top of things!
February 2020 Wrap Up | The month I was too busy to learn anything new!
March 2020 Wrap Up | The month I fought my way out of a reading slump!
April 2020 Wrap Up | The month I read too many books!
May 2020 Wrap Up | The month I didn’t read all the books on my TBR!
June 2020 Wrap Up | The month I learned how to enjoy little things!
July 2020 Wrap Up | The month I traveled through books!

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I hope July was a good month for you! Did you find any new favorite books? Let me know in the comments below!

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