In the spirit of good intentions, I'm starting my July reads post in the third week of the month, shortly after June went live. June and July have both been horrendously challenging months for me, and you can read about it here, here, here and here. You may have already caught up on that, so feel free to ignore those if you wish.
There hasn't been much reading in July and I've mostly focused on audiobooks, and yes, that's also considered reading. Let's hope that I'm a little more organized and this post will go live in a much more timely manner.
Here's what I read in the last month.
 Worth the Fight |
 |
 His One Exception (reread) |
 Wild Scottish Knight Dramatized Adaptation 🎧Graphic Audio Full Cast audiobook 📚Kindle eBook |
 Cold Snap 🎧Audible audiobook 📚Kindle eBook |
 |
 Cold Spite 🎧Audible audiobook 📚Kindle eBook |
 Witch King 🎧Audible audiobook 📚Kindle eBook |
At this point, three weeks into the month as I'm putting this together, as I mentioned before, there's been a lot of audiobooks.
At the three week mark...
I continued to binge Toni Anderson's Cold Justice: Most Wanted series, Cold Snap, Cold Fury, and Cold Spite. Cold Snap and Cold Fury were excellent. Cold Spite was held up by the fabulous ensemble cast of characters from the HRT Gold Team because the set up of the second chance romance was flimsy, and the hero and heroine got on my last nerve. Likely the weakest of all the Cold Justice books I've ever read and that's saying something. Onwards...
Anna Hackett released another book in her retired assassins series, Unsanctioned, and of course, it was wonderful. I haven't decided if there's one particular hero or book in the series so far that I love best, but Cole from Worth the Fight was definitely a delicious blend of protective, tough, and damaged. Worth the read.
I also reread His One Exception by Emma Hartlight and I had forgotten what a delightful little story that is. The first chapter of Gus going through resumes to hire a new receptionist for his company (that's how Juliette enters the picture) is one of the most fun first chapters I've read. It's one of those first chapters that hooked me right away and I still laugh when I think about it. Definitely a must-read rec from me, and she's just released a special edition illustrated paperback which is super cute.
At the moment, I'm also working on a new book by Martha Wells (of Murderbot Diaries fame) in audio. It's too early to tell and I'm not sure if I'll finish it before the month is out because it's hella long. We shall see...
On the actual book eyeball-reading front, I'm also (still) working on an early Catherine Coulter romantic suspense. It's slow going not because I'm not enjoying it, but because life has been lifing and my concentration is shot. Hence the skew towards audiobooks this month.
That's it for now until later in the month...
The rest of the month...
The only thing that happened for the rest of July was that I finished listening to Witch King by Martha Wells. It was phenomenal. I knew I was going to love it since I loved her writing in the Murderbot Diaries (I still have a bunch of audiobooks left to go, yay!), but this is fantasy and I wasn't sure how I'd fare with it. There are a few things you need to know (not spoilers) if you're going to listen to this in audiobook. I expect it will be easier if you were reading the book with your eyeballs either in print or ebook as that means you'll be able to flip back and forth to check things.
The audiobook starts with a list of who's who. In all honesty, while it's nice to have it there, I tend to skip those because it ruins the whole listening experience cos it's just a long boring list which means nothing until you get into the story. That said, it's useful to have because there are a lot of characters and the relationships are complex.
The story itself bounced between past and present consistently throughout, so you need to pay attention of what time frame you're listening to. And it gets confusing. I ended up doing a lot of mental gymnastics trying to figure out what was going on and who's who in the zoo. Remember the list of people at the beginning of the book? Grab a screenshot of that and save it on your phone. It will be helpful for reference. Trust me on this one.
Martha Wells also has a tendency to do very little upfront world building, so she dumps you right into the action and assumes you'll figure out the world as you go. That gets complicated when the story is laid out in such a way that it bounces between past and present and some characters overlap between those time frames. It took me a while to get my head around what was going on and I ended up googling a lot of non-spoilery information to help me along. I think this applies mostly for the audiobook since it's hard to rewind to listen again and you're swept up in the momentum of the narration.
Another thing to pay attention to is the relationship dynamics. Martha Wells's characters are all of diverse gender and relationship identities and she drops you into those as a given. Be prepared for the fact that all her characters are hetero and LGBTQIA+ with little to no explanation or set up. They just are. That's both good and complicated. Good because inclusive. Complicated because sometimes it makes it hard to track and figure out all the relationship dynamics between characters and again, lots of mental gymnastics for the listener. But I do love that she's so inclusive and you are just expected to accept things the way they are. No explanations also means no justifications, no awkwardness, and no apologies.
Finally, the star of the show. Or rather, the audiobook. The narrator Erik Mok. He is phenomenal in his portrayal of Kai, the hero of the book. Kai has been around a long time, and he's seen things. Also done a lot of things. And he carries a weariness towards the shenanigans of the mortal humans. But Kai is also smart, resourceful, competent, and most importantly understated in how powerful he is. Erik Mok manages to convey all of that in his voice acting. Kai's grief, his heart break, his weariness, his competence, and his impatience at the foolishness of mortals. All of that, and he just gets on with it. This book/audiobook is made all that much better with the emotional resonance and range of Erik Mok's talented voice acting. I'm taking a little break before diving into the next book since book three is not out yet and I don't know when it's planned for. But I can't wait. I thought I might enjoy this audiobook. I didn't expect to LOVE it, and love it, I did. SO SO MUCH.
That's all from me for July. I know I had a lot to say about Witch King, but there was a lot to it. If you do give it a go in audio, let me know what you think.
Here's to a wonderful August.
xoxo, D.
PS. Did you notice how early I got this one up? Go me!!
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