July Reading Challenge Update: A Journey of Words Explored and Milestones Reached
Welcome, avid readers and literary adventurers, to the exhilarating update on my July reading challenge! As the summer sun continues to blaze overhead here in Devon, I have embarked on a daring quest to conquer my bookish goals and expand the boundaries of my reading prowess. The month of July has proven to be a tapestry of captivating tales and literary triumphs, pushing me to embrace different genres, discover new authors, and lose myself in the enchanting realms of imagination. Join me as I dive into the pages that have fuelled my literary passion, celebrate the milestones achieved, and share the delightful surprises that have unfolded along my reading journey. Grab your favourite bookmark and get ready to immerse yourself in the thrilling update of my July reading challenge!
Let me know if you have set yourself a reading challenge and how you are getting on. Or whether you are challenging yourself to just read something different from your usual choice.
I would love to hear from you about anything bookish.
Love Alis x
Family drama
Title: We need to talk About Kevin
Author: Lionel Shriver
Genre: Thriller, Psychological, Mystery
Publisher: Serpents Tail Date Published: 2010
About Book: Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of a boy named Kevin who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who had tried to befriend him. Now, two years after her son's horrific rampage, Eva comes to terms with her role as Kevin's mother in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband Franklyn about their son's upbringing. Fearing that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about motherhood. How much is her fault? In Lionel Shriver's hands this sensational, chilling and memorable story of a woman who raised a monster becomes a metaphor for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose.
A book about a pandemic
Title: End of October
Author: Lawrence Wright
Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Adventure
Publisher: Black Swan Date Published: 2020
About Book: At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with a mysterious fever. When Dr Henry Parsons - microbiologist and epidemiologist - travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe. As international tensions rise and governments enforce unprecedented measures, Henry finds himself in a race against time to track the source and find a cure - before it's too late
A book by a bestselling author in 2022
Title: It Ends With Us
Author: Colleen Hoover
Genre: Romance
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Date Published:2016
About Book: Lily hasn’t always had it easy, but that’s never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She’s come a long way from the small town where she grew up—she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. And when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily’s life seems too good to be true. Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He’s also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily. And the way he looks in scrubs certainly doesn’t hurt. Lily can’t get him out of her head. But Ryle’s complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his “no dating” rule, she can’t help but wonder what made him that way in the first place. As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan—her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
A book recommended by a family member
Title: Kinship of Secrets
Author: Eugenia Kim
Genre: Historical Family
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Date Published: 2019
About Book: In 1948 Najin and Calvin Cho, with their young daughter Miran, travel from South Korea to the United States in search of new opportunities. Wary of the challenges ahead, Najin and Calvin make the difficult decision to leave their other daughter, Inja, behind with their extended family; soon, they hope, they will return to her. But then war breaks out in Korea, and there is no end in sight to the separation. Miran grows up in prosperous American suburbia, under the shadow of the daughter left behind, as Inja grapples in her war-torn land with ties to a family she doesn't remember. Najin and Calvin desperately seek a reunion with Inja, but are the bonds of love strong enough to reconnect their family over distance, time and war? And as deep family secrets are revealed, will everything they long for be upended? Told through the alternating perspectives of the distanced sisters, and inspired by a true story, The Kinship of Secrets explores the cruelty of war, the power of hope, and what it means to be a sister.
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