June 2021 Wrap Up Pt. 2

Holy moly it's July 1st! We are really for real in this summer thing. Gross! Well, best get through it. Here's what I read in the second half of June.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune - This was a lot of fun. Linus Baker is a government drudge. He is perfectly fine with visiting various orphanages to make sure they are being managed appropriately. He's never moved up because he care more about the children than power. This makes him the perfect social worker to go visit the super-secret orphanage on an island. These orphans are magical, yes, but they are the most dangerous ones. There is a werewolf, and a gnome, and a forest sprite, and also the actual son of Satan. The story is very cute and the kids are basically just kids, with extra added powers. It was super fun.

Lending a Paw by Laurie Cass - This was the cozy book club's June read. I completely forgot to attend the meeting. Oops. It's okay. I only thought the book was okay. The cat helped solve the murders, but his human was annoying. She's a big pushover who works too much. She's a librarian, which I can get behind, but she needs to set some boundaries. It's not the best cat solving a mystery I've ever read.

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical by Helena Kelly - I really enjoyed this one. Kelly went through each of Austen's published works and pointed out what Austen's readers would have picked up from her hints and certain words she used in the books. Each book has a theme that is very big and important. Much bigger than what we think of these books now. Emma is about enclosure - the thing that was happening all over the country at that time where landowners were cutting off public land from use by the commoners. They were doing it to protect the land from overuse, but it was causing a lot of hardship for the locals. Mansfield Park is really about slavery. All of these things were new to me, but confirmed a feeling I'd long had that Austen was saying more than just "let's get everyone married."

A Map to the Sun by Sloane Leong - I grabbed this graphic novel because someone raved about it on BookTube. I didn't think it was fantastic, but it was a good story. Two girls meet one summer and become good friends. Then one of them moves away without a word. 2 years later, she's back and wants to pick up, but the one who stayed feels abandoned. She has abandonment issues because of her mother, already. It's about them working their way back to being friends again. I had trouble with the art style. The pages were all kind of washed in the same color and I couldn't always tell which character was who. I had to narrow it down by hairstyle and that didn't always make a big enough difference for me to be able to differentiate between them.

That makes 10 books I read in June! Thats pretty good, I think. I almost finished 2 more which I should get tied up in the next couple of days. That will add to my July numbers. Woot! I'm hoping to catch up soon.