July 2025 Wrap Up

So it looks like I didn't post a mid-month wrap up in July, so you get to read about the whole month in one go. Maybe get a snack and settle in. Here we go!

The Regional Office is Under Attack! by Manuel Gonzales - This book has been sitting on my shelf for 9 years. This is an Advanced Reader Copy, which means I got it before the book actually came out. It is billed as a hilarious send-up of office culture. Um. No. At first, I could see how it could be hilarious. The voices of the women telling the story were kind of snarky and fun. Then shit got real and people started blowing up and it wasn't in a fun way.

The Regional Office is under attack by former employees who have problems with the things they have learned about how the organization is maintained. With good reason. The purpose of the organization is to train and utilize assassins to take out bad guys. How do they decide who gets merc'd? Three women in an indoor pool who tell them the future. If they don't like the future, they proceed to off people so the future changes. This is weird, right? So the former employees have trained more people to help them attack the Regional Office.

It's weird and gory and not as funny as I expected. Meh.

Such Charming Liars by Karen M. McManus - This one is not my favorite of her books, but it is still a solid YA thriller. Literally every adult in this book is a con artist. Like, for a living. The story is told by Kat, a 17-year-old girl who was raised by a mom who worked for a con ring. They had to move every so often when it got too hot. Currently, they make fake replicas of famous pieces of jewelry. Their fakes are so good, they had to start putting a mark on the clasp to tell which is which. But Kat's mom once out. To be allowed to leave, she has to pull this one last job. It's at a country estate of a billionaire. It's his birthday party, and mom (Jamie) is posing as wait staff to get onto the property and then steal a necklace from the youngest daughter of said billionaire.

Liam is a 17-year-old boy who suddenly finds himself living with his con-man father after the tragic death of his mother. His father is now dating the youngest daughter of the billionaire and is invited to the birthday weekend. Liam goes along.

12 years before, Kat's mom and Liam's dad were married for 48 hours in Las Vegas. Mom went out for awhile and left the kids in Dad's care. He decided he had stuff to do and left, telling Liam, "Take care of your sister." The little children left the hotel room and wandered around Las Vegas for 4 hours before they were reunited with their parents. That was the last time they saw each other.

Now every body is at the billionaire's weekend party and everything is tense. Then One of the billionaire's sons is murdered and it goes out of control.

Now I know what you're thinking. Kat and Liam get together in the end. That would be gross. They are step-siblings. Now you say, "You mean 'were' step-siblings, right?" No. The parents never divorced. Also, Liam is gay and therefore falls for the billionaire's grandson who gets involved in helping Kat and Liam survive the situation their parents have thrown them in.

It's unbelievable, silly, goofy fun. I had a great time.

Open and Shut by David Rosenfelt - There is a hecking dog on the cover. There are 30 books in the series. They all have dogs on the cover. I was thinking the dog played some sort of significant role in the solving of the mystery, like the cat does in The Cat Who... stories, or like Chet does in the Chet and Bernie series. No. Tara, the golden retriever, is a minor character who serves only as a comfort to the main character when his wife is mad at him, or someone else has threatened him. She has no personality, which honestly is a disservice to Golden Retrievers everywhere. They are typically all personality. The mystery was ok. Not genius. The dog would have made all the difference.

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller - I love Levenseller's writing. All her female characters are badass in one way or another. This one is Alosa, who has been sent to find a map fragment that she believes is on a certain ship. She gets herself captured by the pirates and begins to comb the ship looking for the map. She is of course locked in the bridge, but she lets herself out every night to hunt for it. The problem is that the first mate, Riden (also brother of the pirate captain of the ship) is much smarter than his brother and catches her several times. Luckily, he is young and handsome and witty.

She does find the map, but when they go to the place she has told them is her father's secret hideout, they are ambushed by more pirates. There is a harrowing situation with an outdoor cage and some very bad men beating Riden, but they come out the other side.

It was a fun time.

Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch by Rivka Galchen - This is another book that was touted as hilarious and a riot. Maybe I just don't have the right sense of humor for hilarious books, because I did not even snort one time. The mother in question is that of Johannes Kepler. She lives in a small town and doesn't go in for a lot of gossip and keeps to herself mostly. The baker's wife decides she has beef with her and starts a rumor that she's a witch. Suddenly, everyone around town can think of some thing they saw or heard that supports that accusation. She eventually gets hauled off to prison while they await trial. She's eventually cleared and goes off to live with her daughter in another town. It's not fun. The gossipy characters are ridiculous, but they are never punished or apologize or change. I was mostly just mad through the entire thing.

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, Vol. 1 by singNsong - This is a Korean graphic novel. The main character has spent the last 10 years reading the 3,000+ chapters of a fan fiction online novel. He has been the only reader for many, many years. As the last chapter comes out, he gets a message that it's going live at 7:00 pm and here is something that might help. No idea what that something is, but while he is on the subway, a demon attacks and he realized he knows what's happening and what to do because it is directly from the book.

It's weird. It's bloody. Bad things happen to good people. But I kinda liked it. I'll read the second one and see where it goes.

And that is all the books I read in July. It was the month of the Contemporary shelf, but I didn't finish a single one of those. Open and Shut was Contemporary, but it was on my mysteries shelf.

August is another shot at it. Although it's the 5th and I've finished nothing. Sigh.