July reads

Mini reviews of everything I read last month.

Without seeming to realise it, July was a fabulous reading month for me. I read six books (plus one DNF) and two of them were absolute stand-outs that I will be recommending to people until I’m blue in the face. Keep on reading for the reviews…

Current TBR list

In case you’re new around here, I’m trying to cut down my TBR list as I have soooo many books to read. This is how I hold myself accountable!

Physical: 32

Kindle: 17

ARCs: 0

Total: 49

This looks like I’ve made zero progress since June, but I had lots of lovely people gift me books in July and I nabbed one from my book club’s swap table, too!

Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston

Romance lover Eileen has never had her happy ever after, instead she finds it in the pages of her favourite series - Quixotic Falls. But, during a drizzly drive, Eileen ends up in a mysterious town, where the weather is the same every day and the residents seem a little *too* familiar…

DNF at 57% :(

I hate, hate, hate DNFing books and this was my second DNF in a row </3 but I just found it such a slog. I loved the idea - romance reader finds herself *in* the town her favourite series is based on - but the execution just fell flat for me.

For starters, I couldn’t get to grips with the writing style and I felt like the book needed a lot of editing. I even thought to myself at one point, “I think she’s trying to hit a word count.”

The plot’s pacing was so bizarre, with zero chemistry between the two lovers, and it hopped from slow to quick and back again.

I did like the cosy feel of the town itself and the characters within it, but the main character and her love interest didn’t have anything about them in my opinion. When I find myself umming and ahhing over and over about whether to give up on a book because I don’t care what happens, I know I need to DNF.

Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin

After a scandal in the early noughties regarding a local congressman and his female intern, Young Jane Young follows five women in the aftermath of the fallout.

After two DNFs on the bounce, Gabrielle Zevin saved me here 😭

My god, this was such a good and interesting read. I almost wish it was a book club one so I could discuss it with people! (If you’ve read it plsssss leave a comment!)

The book is in five parts, each written from a different woman’s perspective. The narrative style switches up which keeps things exciting and Zevin covers very important topics - feminism, power dynamics, womanhood, scandal fallouts - without the book ever feeling too heavy. At 295 pages, I read it in three days because I couldn’t put it down. Not only did I enjoy the plot and characters, but I was actually enjoying the writing styles too!

I laughed and I cried. A 10/10 story all-round that will almost certainly find its way into my favourites of 2025.

The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett

Out of prison after over a decade inside, Steven Smith begins his story by recounting how he thinks he got to where he is - picking up a book left on the bus while on his way to school. Technically his first theft of many, Steven takes the book to school with him and they read it in his remedial English class. Over four decades later, he revisits the book written by Edith Twyford and realises there’s more to it than what meets the eye. Could it be the key to his teacher’s disappearance in 1983?

When I picked up The Twyford Code and realised it was a series of voice recordings, used to piece together a missing person’s case, I was so excited.

Unfortunately, that was where the excitement ended.

The audio recordings were a clever idea, but didn’t work at all for me. The plot felt non-existent, characters weren’t developed (because they can’t be, given it’s just voice recordings) and it felt like the writing format was actually the only thing the author had to lean on.

I reckon I’m very much in the minority here - The Twyford Code was named Crime & Thriller Book of the Year in the British Book Awards 2023 and has pretty solid reviews on Goodreads. In a way, it feels like I read a completely different book.

In hindsight I wish I DNFed, but I just kept waiting for it to get better. I’ve read several thriller/crime novels where the final quarter has blown me away after feeling like a bit of a slog, so I was hoping for the same result this time around.

With all that said, it hasn’t put me off reading anything else by Janice Hallett. I’ve heard great stuff about her other books, like The Appeal. I think the audio transcript style was the major barrier to a potentially half-decent story, so I don’t think I’d completely write off her work.*

*Ironically, not long after writing this review the lovely, lovely Ella gifted me a copy of The Appeal. I can’t wait to read it!

Fifty-Fifty by Steve Cavanagh

Book five in Cavanagh’s Eddie Flynn series starts with two 911 calls within minutes of each other, from the same location; two sisters are calling, each accusing the other of attacking - and subsequently murdering - their father. But who’s really the killer?

I love Steve Cavanagh’s writing - it’s great, gritty mystery/thriller work that you can pretty solidly rely on. This is the third of his books I’ve read and I enjoyed it just as much as the other two. After a not-so great mystery novel in The Twyford Code, I knew I had to reach for this next to get my fix.

As is typical for Cavanagh’s writing, the story starts pretty slowly. The actual court case for the crime doesn’t kick in until about two-thirds in, but all the background work is done before then so by the time the trial’s playing out you’re glued to the pages.

Having two suspects accusing each other was such a unique idea, and I was constantly thinking of theories of who the actual killer was, or maybe that it was even both of them.

Is it the best book I’ve ever read? No. There was lots of repetition of words/characters in short succession (a pet hate of mine) and the writing is quite formulaic. However, sometimes that’s exactly what you need - I definitely did when I read this.

As I’ve written above, Fifty-Fifty is book five in the Eddie Flynn series but you really don’t need to read the other books. I read book four last year having not read any of the others and followed along perfectly fine - Cavanagh gives you enough background information on the main characters to follow along, and each book focuses on a single case anyway.

Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

Three months after her father’s passing, Amy is expected to move cross-country from California to Connecticut to her mother’s new home. With an old family acquaintance as her road trip buddy, the pair choose to take the long route.

This was published 15 years ago and is so 2010-coded. Teenage me would have adored this, and I read it just for her.

It’s a fluffy, relatively-immature YA romance/road trip novel where you could’ve guessed the plot from about page 10, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it. It was a lovely, lighthearted read and it was actually nice to escape to a place where I felt like a teenager again.

Also, bonus points for the scrapbook-style format dotted throughout the book. It was a great touch.

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

In the present day, we know Rowan is sitting in prison. She’s been charged with murder.

In the past, she moved to Scotland to join the Elincourt family as their live-in nanny. Caring for a group of sisters, each with their own challenges, she was the fifth person to fill the nanny role in a short space of time - thanks to her predecessors claiming the house is haunted.

She didn’t kill the child. Or so she claims.

The Turn of the Key is August’s book club read, and I have lots of thoughts!

Firstly, the ending was A1. I’m generally quite “meh” about how any books ends, because it’s the story before that’s so important, but this was SOOOOO good in my opinion! The final few pages had my jaw on the floor.

The book is written from Rowan’s point of view as a letter to a lawyer, who she hopes will believe her innocence after learning of her time with the Elincourts from start to finish. I found the first 100 or so pages quite slow, and again at about 75%, but other than that I was absolutely glued. Rowan was a great, unreliable narrator and I was genuinely guessing what happened until the very end.

I like a creepy book and this had hints of real spookiness. One evening, when I was reading before bed, I had to put it down because I was freaking myself out too much.

The Family Experiment by John Marrs

In a not-so distant future, AI and the Metaverse has taken over. In the Real World, very few can afford to have children, but there will soon be a service in the digital world to allow people the luxury of Metachildren.

To promote this new tech, eleven contestants have been selected for a TV show where they will raise a Metachild for nine months - until the product becomes available to the general public - with the winners having the choice of keeping their Metachild, or being funded to have a Real World child.

I’ve never read anything by John Marrs before this, but after finishing The Family Experiment I want to read every single thing he’s ever published.

The Family Experiment follows the contestants of the show through each Development Leap (month by month) and how they navigate being parents to Metachildren, plus their lives in the Real World, plus going from “nobodies” to being on the country’s biggest TV show.

This was dark and a little twisted, but with lots of glimpses into a very realistic potential future. I thought I’d guessed the big twist at the end (I loved it so much, I wouldn’t have cared if I had) but I didn’t, which made this even better.

If you want something a little dystopian but with an interesting exploration into how far we *could* go with AI and VR, I highly recommend picking this up.

What did you read in July?