June Wrap Up

 Happy July! Holey moley, I can't believe it's already July.

Things have thankfully cooled down a little bit here in Northern Colorado, but it looks like we'll start heating up again. We've been getting a lot of storm warnings, but where I live we're too close to the foothills to really get lasting storms most of the time. We've been getting thunderstorms almost every afternoon this past week, but we just get the rumbles and little rain as it builds and heads east. But enough about the weather, let's get to books!

Even though my stats aren't quite as bad as I think, I do feel like June was a slower month. I did have a couple readathons, the Mafia Romance Readathon that was over the first weekend of June and right now we are in the midst of the next round of the Historical Romance Readathon. I was a little more spread out genre-wise and got to a lot more contemporaries than usual. I'm not usually drawn to contemporaries very often, but with the various summer reading challenges I've joined a lot of the prompts fit easier into contemporaries. As always, stats are listed in order read below!

June 2021

22 books read for 6,567 pages

💗 I averaged 0.64 days per book
💗 The average page count per book is 293.96
💗 The page ranges I read were 2 99 pages and less, 2 in the 100s, 4 in the 200s, 11 in the 300s and 3 in the 400s
💗 9 of the books I read were for clubs and/or readathons

💗 7 of my reads were diverse

💗 I read 11 new authors

💗 I owned 1 of the books in paperback, bought 2 in paperback right away and added 12 books to my wishlist

💗 I read 20 books in eBook, 1 book in paperback and 1 book in audio (my 1st ever complete audiobook)

💗 The decades I read in are 2 in the 1990s, 3 in the 2010s and 17 in the 2020s

💗 My average rating is 4.45
🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 12 books
🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 8 books
🍎🍎🍎 - 2 books

💗 6 books were contemporary, 9 were dark, 4 were historical, 1 was paranormal, 1 was sci-fi and 1 book was sports - all were romance

1. Mercenary Princess by Setta Jay 🍎🍎🍎🍎

2. A Bullet Between Us by K. Dosal 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

3. Ruthless Creatures by JT Geissinger 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

4. Brutal Prince by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎🍎

5. Stolen Heir by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

6. Aubin by Annabelle Rex 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

7. Indigo by Beverly Jenkins 🍎🍎🍎🍎

8. Savage Lover by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

9. Bloody Heart by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎

10. Broken Vow by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

11. Sheets and Giggles by Megan Wade 🍎🍎🍎🍎

12. Heavy Crown by Sophie Lark 🍎🍎🍎🍎

13. Off the Record by Chelle Sloan 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

14. Pizza My Heart by Frankie Love 🍎🍎🍎

15. The Professor Next Door by Jackie Lau 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

16. Teach Me by Olivia Dade 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

17. Zander's Firecracker by Ember Flint 🍎🍎🍎🍎

18. Untamed by Elizabeth Lowell 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

19. 40-Love by Olivia Dade 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

20. A Lady of Rooksgrave Manor by Kathryn Moon 🍎🍎🍎🍎

21. The Duke I Tempted by Scarlett Peckham 🍎🍎🍎🍎

22. The Wrong Marquess by Vivienne Lorret 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

💗 I was very excited to finally try Sophie Lark this month as well as find some new favorites. I also loved the next installment of Jackie Lau's Cider Bar Sisters. As far as favorites go, that's a little harder to choose. I really loved Savage Lover and Off the Record. They both really hit me at the right time. As far as my historical reads go, it has to be The Wrong Marquess. It was one of my most anticipated releases of the year and exceeded all of my expectations. So good! My most disappointing is definitely Bloody Heart. I had really been enjoying Sophie Lark and it just didn't hit my expectations and I wanted better for Dominic. I'm sure part of it was due to my love of the previous book Savage Vow, but I also had a lot of issues with the heroine which you'll see in my review. To only have one book out the six in the series not work for me is still pretty good.

How was your June reading? I'm excited to finish out the Historical Romance Readathon this weekend. Although I do wish it didn't end on the 4th of July. Not sure how much time I'm going to have to read that day and I'll definitely miss the live show. I also made good progress on my summer challenges and also have a surprise challenge that I'll wrap up this weekend that lasted throughout June. 

As for July plans, I'm excited to finish my reread of Lisa Kleypas's Ravenels and the new release. I also want to try to get to more Sophie Lark. I also have JT Geissinger's new book Carnal Urges, that came out yesterday, at the top of my list. Hopefully I'll feel like I'm getting more reading time this month but that could start to change. I usually start planning and thinking of Christmas present ideas in July. I hand-make everything, so I like to try to have everything solidified and planned out before September. Plus the Olympics start later this month. We'll see though!

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎