June 2026 Book Reviews!
- Christine
- 2 minutes ago
- 16 min read
I hope everyone's summer is going well so far! June started out pretty stressful for me. Work was busy. My cell phone decided to die mid-text and it took way too many hours (and days) to get a new one. We also had a short getaway to Jacksonville, where we saw Chris Stapleton, caught a Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimps baseball game, and got some beach time in!
Even though it was a busy month, I managed to get some good reading in. And, I'm looking forward to a slower July and August, where I can spend more evenings with a book!
I hope you enjoy reading this month's book reviews! Remember that if you want to read my book reviews as I publish them, follow me on Goodreads or The Story Graph.
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Journal Of The Plague Years: End Notes by John Rember
The author, John Rember, is just getting ready to go out on a book tour for the book he had written when the world shuts down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. So, instead of spending the next year traveling the world and appearing at book signings, Rember and his wife find themselves quarantining at home in Idaho. Rember begins keeping a journal of his day to day life - observing not only things happening related to the pandemic, but other things in the world including the state of U.S. politics, tourism and the climate.
Reading this in 2026 when we are now several years removed from the pandemic is quite interesting. As someone who had several close relatives and friends that died during 2020/2021 due to Covid-19, it definitely brings back a time filled with sadness, grief and uncertainty. I clearly remember how scary it was to even do something as simple as go to the grocery store, and the author captured those sorts of feelings very well.
At the end of the day, this is a journal and it contains this author's feelings, beliefs and opinions. Not everyone will agree with his positions, and he's quite outspoken about them. So, if you were on the side of not believing, thinking it was a hoax, etc., this book is not for you. However, for those of us that lived through the pandemic with a similar set of fear and anxiety, you will definitely relate to this book and find it to be very interesting to reflect back on that time.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential To American Democracy by Atima Omara
The author, Atima Omara, has been involved in politics her whole career, whether as a political strategist, writer, speaker, advocate or candidate. As such, that gives her a unique perspective into the political process. The focus of this book is the role Black women have played in politics over the years, and the impact they can have in electing candidates. Often ignored, Black women over the years have had significant impacts in electing local, state and national candidates. As a member of the Democratic Party, part of the author's purpose in writing this book is to bring light to the mistakes the Democratic Party has made in ignoring this segment of people that are so important to their success.
If you know anything about the author or just read the summary of the book, you know which way her politics lie. And while I'd like to say it would be eye opening and extremely informative for members of the Republican Party and conservatives to read this book, it's clearly not intended for that audience. However, I would also say that this book will likely be extremely eye opening even for progressives and members of the Democratic Party. I often think that Democrats have not been willing enough to look at their own flaws and are clearly not as strategic as their Republican counterparts.
This is an excellent read for anyone interested in politics and especially for anyone interested in thoughts and strategies around how the Democratic Party can move forward in a positive direction.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
To purchase this book on Amazon, click here: hardcover.
When Angel's Cry (Jake Travis Book 12) by Robert Lane
Archie Williams and his young girlfriend and love of his life, Lisa, find themselves pregnant as teenagers. Lisa goes to a clinic to give birth to their baby, but upon waking up, she's told by the doctor that the baby was stillborn. A few months later, Lisa tragically dies in a hit and run accident. Archie moves on with his life, but never forgets his first love and his stillborn baby daughter.
Flash forward several decades and Archie has received a letter from an anonymous sender saying that his daughter was not, in fact, stillborn and is likely still alive today. Archie proceeds to hire Jake Travis to try and track his daughter down. As Jake investigates what might have happened to Lisa and Archie's daughter, he uncovers some horrifying things, including the fact that Lisa's death may not have been an accident.
I really enjoyed this book. While sometimes the writing style threw me for a loop, I found the characters to all be enjoyable and the story to move at a good pace. And just when you thought you figured everything out, there were some huge plot twists at the end.
This is the first Jake Travis book I've read in the series, so I did feel a couple of times that I was missing some background on his character that might have been helpful. But this can easily be read as a stand alone book and still enjoyed.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson
While this is considered a memoir, it's written in a very different way from a "typical" memoir. It's written more as short excerpts and moments of the author's life, rather than a chronological story about her life.
The book explores gender, sexuality, motherhood, relationships and much more. I found the writing style a bit hard to get into at first, but as the book went along, I enjoyed it quite a bit.
This book shows that love, relationships and family can't be defined in one way.
This book is number 45 on the New York Times list of "The Best 100 Books of the 21st Century". Four out of five stars!
Terminal Lucidity by Auburn C. Piper
Danny Johnson is a beloved high school teacher and football coach. His wife, Grace, has recently retired from teaching as well, and they both have plans to travel more and enjoy retirement in a few years when Danny retires from coaching. Unfortunately before that happens, Danny is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's, which is progressing quickly.
In the middle of the night one night, Danny wakes up and realizes the fog that's been surrounding him due to the Alzheimer's has lifted. He's in a state which is known as "terminal lucidity" - when an Alzheimer's or dementia patient has a short time of thinking and remembering clearly shortly before the end of their life. Danny knows this period of clarity is short and he knows there is something he needs to do before the fog comes back. So, he enlists the help of a former student, Tasha, and sets off on one last adventure.
This book is so touching. I fell in love with all of the characters. The author did a fantastic job writing from the perspective of Danny as he fought through trying to remember and pushing off the inevitability of his memory loss returning. This one will definitely pull at your heartstrings.
There was just a couple of times where I think some character names got a little mixed up that could have been corrected with more careful editing, but overall this is a great book!
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
Married To The Mafia by Lucy Smoke
Daisy is trying to make it in NYC working for a book publisher. She picks up a shift from her best friend to work as a waitress at a wedding, when she finds herself in a predicament. Daisy walks into a room to find the bride has been murdered. It turns out, the wedding is for the son of the head of one of the local mafias - Giulio. As Giulio has been ordered by his father to get married, he decides the best solution is to proceed with the wedding and make Daisy his bride instead. Daisy suddenly finds herself married into a mafia family and her whole life changed.
While I don't think this is the most inventive or unique story line out there, if you are looking for a dark rom-com, this will work. I don't think the relationship with Daisy and Giulio got developed enough. There was definitely a build up of sexual tension, but not the romance I was hoping for. And while I first liked Daisy a lot because she had a bit of a bad-ass attitude and stood up to Giulio (which was part of her charm), her personality ended up taking a weird twist at the end that just seemed unnecessary.
I've been reading a lot of heavier books lately, so this was a nice change for a quick beach read. But it has some definite flaws.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Three out of five stars.
Lightning by Michael Ray Ewing
Adam Barnett sets out early one morning to ride on a bike trail in the Arizona desert. The next thing he knows, he wakes up to find out he's been struck by lightning and is somewhere far away from where he should be. A dog he calls Mop has found him and he and Mop find themselves being chased by something that doesn't seem completely human.
In the meantime, Jacobsen is on a mission to go into a lab just outside of Scottsdale and try and recover certain "assets" from the lab. When he and the team arrive, they discover a grisly scene with dozens of people having been killed by something that also doesn't seem completely human. As the story progresses, what Adam and Jacobsen have experienced converge as they discover that things are happening at the lab that the government doesn't want anyone to know about.
I thought this one started out really strong. Lots of action and mystery. At about halfway through, however, it started getting a little muddled for me. Too many characters. Too many different things happening. Too much going between multiple POVs. The book also ends with a lot of questions unresolved, so I'm assuming the author is intending this to be a series of some sort, although it isn't packaged that way. Decent thriller, but a bit hard to follow at times.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Three out of five stars.
The Silent Element: On The Intelligence Of Water by Evgeny Basov
Everyone knows that staying properly hydrated is important for a number of reasons. And for many years, there have been some guidelines out there about how much water you should drink every day. Whether it's eight glasses per day or an amount based on a percentage of your bodyweight, you can easily find out what the volume of water is that you should consume based on the guidelines.
The premise of this book, however, is that it's not as much about the volume of water you drink, but about what type of water you drink and whether it's helping you meet certain mineral intakes. The author not only states that this can vary depending on your intake of certain minerals through your diet or supplements, but it can vary based on different times of the day and what your body needs at those particular times.
While I'm not sure that after reading this book I would take the actions the author suggests to better understand what your water contains and what your body needs and align them, I do feel like it was good and enlightening information. And for people that are very into their dietary intake, water does seem to be something that people just take for granted and don't think about optimizing.
The book was very short and concise, written in a way anyone could understand, and quite interesting for someone who is a bit of a science nerd and interested in health and well being.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
Stealth Camping With Hundreds Of My Closest Friends by Zinnia Abbott
The author, Zinnia Abbott, has just retired from being a psychiatric nurse. Her last partner has recently left her and her children are grown and moved out. Abbott decides to buy a used mini-van and travel to each of the 48 continental states stealth camping in her van, which basically means she looks for a free spot to park each night. She's also a recovering alcoholic, so while on the trip she also attends an AA meeting in each of the states.
This book is basically Abbott's journal from the trip. I found the whole idea of the trip very intriguing, but it didn't translate to be quite as interesting or exciting in the book. I thought there would be more in the book about the various people she met along the way - their stories, how they ended up in recovery, etc. However, the book was mostly Abbott's own introspections and realizing how lonely she really was in life.
Interesting concept, but the end product didn't end up as intriguing as I hoped it would be.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Three out of five stars.
Spies, Lies & Alibis by Natalie Walters
Cybil is working as an assistant for a real estate mogul who has some shady business going on. To make more money to help pay off her debts, she agrees to spy on him to try to gain information for a woman named Athena. It's not clear who Athena works for at the beginning of the book. Ben is an FBI agent working undercover pretending to be a financial advisor so that he can find evidence to convict crime boss Lorenzo Ramirez.
Cybil and Ben haven't seen each other in years - since they were young and each, unknowingly, had a crush on the other. When their undercover work unexpectedly brings them together, sparks fly. But neither of them can tell the other what they are really doing, and both are unsure if the other has changed for the worse since the last time they saw each other.
I really enjoyed this book. While it has an element of romance, I would consider this book more plot driven with the romance playing underneath, which I personally like. I found both Cybil and Ben to be lovable characters and it was easy to cheer for them both. The writing is excellent. Super witty and the characters and story are developed well. I read this in one night because I couldn't put it down. Great beach read for this summer!
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
Finding God In Vegas: A Gen X Spiritual Awakening by Donald Harold Young
In this memoir, the author takes us through his life beginning from when he was a child through his current adulthood in his 50s. He was adopted at birth and realized he was gay as a preteen. As his original career path was to be a youth minister, he realized that as a gay man, that was going to be a difficult career to pursue. Instead, he ended up working in the pharmaceutical field as an executive.
Throughout his life as he struggled with his sexuality, indulgence in every aspect of his life, and desire to constantly want to attain more, he realized that he wasn't truly happy. Even after finding the love of his life, his life was missing something. Eventually he loses his job and he and his partner move to Las Vegas, where he realizes that what has been missing in his life is his relationship with God.
This book just didn't resonate with me personally, but I can see where it would resonate with a lot of people finding themselves in similar situations to the author. It's well written, although I felt like it went on a few tangents regarding politics and theories about Covid-19 that I personally felt uncomfortable with. This would be a great book for a lot of people, but just not really for me.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Three out of five stars.
Mulberry Seeds: A Novella: Stories Of Youth And Innocence by Lisa-Behrens Smith
Jolene and Corrine are two sisters growing up in the mid 1960s in Texas. Their father has had a hard time finding work, so the sisters face growing up in poverty and moving often. This novella is really a collection of short stories - told from the perspectives of each girl - about different things that happen during 1968 as they are growing up.
The book is very short, which means you don't get much time to learn about the characters. It also really doesn't allow for any sort of plot development. These really are just short vignettes that the girls share about things that kids in that time period typically faced.
I do think the author did a great job in a very few amount of pages developing the characters through their dialogue. And the girls are very relatable. Would have liked the book to be a bit longer, but enjoyed it.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Three out of five stars.
The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, Book 1) by N.K. Jemisin
The opening line of this book is "Let's start with the end of the world, why don't we?" Essun is living in a place called Tirimo. She comes home to find that her husband has killed her son and disappeared with her daughter. As the story goes on, we find out that the reason her husband killed her son is that he discovers his son is an "orogene", which in this world is a type of person that has special powers that make them different than others and outcasts. After grieving for several days, Essun decides to set out and follow her husband and try to find her daughter. As Essun travels throughout the land, she comes across people that bring together her story and the story of the end of the world.
I'll say that I'm not normally a huge fantasy fan. I struggled to get into a long of the "big" fantasy series books like "Game of Thrones" or "The Lord of the Rings". To me, this feels like fantasy, but with a touch of "The Hunger Games" (which I loved). Powerful female characters and a strong story line with emotion to it.
What I will say about this book is that it takes some patience and commitment. I was very confused for the first half of the book. I was ready to give this a three star rating and just strictly for the fact that it was very well written. By midway, I started to figure things out and got more into the story. I don't want to give anything away, but it finally all came together about 75% of the way in and I had changed my rating to four stars. In addition, I'm pretty tempted to go out and read the other two books in the series now to find out how things end up.
Brilliantly written. Creative with great characters. Metaphorical in so many ways if you want to let your mind go down that path. A definite commitment, but if you are a fantasy fan, this is worth checking out. This book is number 44 on the New York Times list of "The Best 100 Books of the 21st Century". Four out of five stars!
Kingdom Of Devils: A Tale Of Murder In The Shadow Of The American Revolution by Katherine Grandjean
Wiley and Micajah Harper are brothers living in Kentucky at the end of the 1700s, just a few years after the Revolutionary War. While it's unclear from the history the exact details that happened, it seems that the brothers ran into some financial trouble and ended up going on a killing spree throughout Kentucky and Tennessee with their wives and small children. This book attempts to tell the story of the brothers, who are a long forgotten part of early American history.
What I liked about this book was that it was a combination of a true crime story and a history of the time in the "west" during the infancy of the country. I'm not normally that into history from that time period, but I found this book to be done in a way that made it very interesting. The author had to really piece things together to be able to tell as much of the story of the Harp brothers as she could, so there are definitely more questions than answers. But all in all, it's a compelling story and a good way to learn more about that time in history.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Four out of five stars!
Driven To Die by Nerissa Murray
Dean Mann owns a successful auto dealership. But when he ends up dead, suspicions begin to arise as well as fraud related to the dealership. His current wife and stepdaughter are acting strangely, and when the detectives realize the wife's first husband died under suspicious circumstances, all things point to her being involved in Dean's death.
The actual story behind this and the plot twists are actually quite good. But the book needs some major editing. I'm not sure how else to describe it other than to say it was muddled. There was too much going on. It was almost like the author was trying too hard to lead the reader astray so we couldn't figure things out. In fact, even after finishing it I'm not sure I'm completely clear on anything. The POVs went back and forth mid-chapter which was confusing. The characters were not likeable and hard to figure out. I think this author has a lot of potential and can come up with creative stories, but needs some work structuring her books.
I received an advance review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily. Two out of five stars.
To purchase this book on Amazon, click here: Kindle.
That's it for June. July is already starting out as a hot one. Hope y'all can stay cool with some good books!
What books do you recommend I read next? Let me know! Did you check out any of these books? I'd love to hear what you think! Comment below or e-mail me at tips2livebywriter@gmail.com.
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