Books Read in June 2017

• How Hard Can Love Be? (The Spinster Club #2) by Holly Bourne — YA contemporary. I really loved the first in the series, Am I Normal Yet?, and have been wanting to read the other books for ages. How Hard Can Love Be? follows Amber as she heads to the US for the summer to reunite with her estranged alcoholic mother, making friends and falling for someone along the way. I liked it a lot; the romance gave me a Stephanie Perkins vibe and I liked that it side-stepped some cliches.

• The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop, illustrated by Ashley King — MG fiction. I picked this up because I’d heard cute things about it, and also because the girl on the cover looks very like my bookshop-working sister. A warm-hearted, funny tale about a girl whose adopted family win a famous bookshop in a competition that seems too good to be true. I loved the illustrations too, so much so that I commissioned Ashley King to produce an original drawing for my partner’s first Father’s Day. (See below… I highly recommend Ashley’s talents if you need a special gift for someone.)

• The Hypnotist by Laurence Anholt — YA historical / magical realism. Set in 1960s America, The Hypnotist follows black teen Pip as he’s sent to live and work on a farm that has connections with the KKK. Though The Hypnotist doesn’t make light of Pip’s situation by any means, it wasn’t as hard-hitting as I anticipated, and some things resolved a little too conveniently. But it still made me think, especially after reading the author’s notes at the end.

• Armageddon Outta Here (Skulduggery Pleasant #8.5) by Derek Landy — YA fantasy. The Skulduggery book I didn’t know I was missing until I spotted it in a charity shop and literally snapped it up! I’d seen it on Goodreads, but thought it was a single short story, not an actual proper volume of stories. I enjoyed some more than others, but especially ‘Get Behind Me, Bubba Moon’, which gave me the creeps.

• Resurrection (Skulduggery Pleasant #10) by Derek Landy — YA fantasy. I’ve raved about Derek Landy a lot in the last couple of years, so the news that the ‘completed’ Skulduggery series would be continuing made me incredibly happy. Resurrection picks up some years after the end of book 9, bringing familiar faces, new characters and heaps of new plot threads. I loved it, and can’t wait to learn more about book 11.

What did you read in June?

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