June 2025: Reviewed

The Winter/Summer Solstice has come and gone: 2025 is officially halfway through. I hope you are having a good year, and doing your best to stay safe and sane.

I read eleven books this month, ranging from grim fantasy to historical romance, true crime to tuberculosis. I’m just going to talk about books this month because no other media has really stood out to me, but hopefully I will have some good recs for July!

The Devils - Joe Abercrombie

I spent 25 minutes on Saturday talking to a friend about how much I love Joe Abercrombie. The man is brilliant. The Devils is his latest novel, the first in an entirely new world from either his Half a King Vikings or the First Law universe. It’s a not-Europe, where a rather cowardly monk is tasked with escorting the lost heir to Troy across a war-torn and deadly continent. Happily for us, if not for him, he is accompanied by a gang of the most dangerous outcasts (the titular devils), all sworn to keep the princess safe. I absolutely DEVOURED this book, it’s a little more light-hearted and humorous than the First Law books but just as grimy and blood-soaked. Every character is perfectly drawn, and I was rooting for all of them along their journey. My absolute favourite was the vampire (tell me more about the trees in blossom Count!) and the brilliantly horrifying werewolf, Vigga. I can’t tell if I want to go and write fanfic about the Vigga-Wolf fighting the Bloody Nine or a crack-ship romance, but either way what a delight! I cannot wait for the next instalment.

Everything is Tuberculosis - John Green

I read this as an audiobook whilst completing 100 culvert inspections and it was the perfect listen to keep me engaged as I drove from one stop to the next. John Green narrates his obsession with tuberculosis, or consumption, framing it through the experience of a young patient in Sierra Leone, Henry. There are offshoots to discus the history of disease, the search for a cure, and the socioeconomic factors that have withheld that cure from millions of sufferers worldwide.  I love a microhistory, a really detailed look at history through one narrow topic, and this was a great one. Green is an excellent narrator as well as writer and his reading brought the stories and stats to life. I have dipped into his fiction here and there but I think this non-fiction book shows the best of his writing.

The Blue Castle - LM Montgomery

A chance recommendation on bluesky led me to downloading a free ebook copy of The Blue Castle, one of LM Montgomery’s lesser known books. Reader, I loved it. Valancy is an unmarried old maid of 28, living a miserable life in turn of the century Canada. With no prospects or skills, she is trapped with her terrible family, as they constantly needle at and criticise her. Early in the book she is diagnosed with a heart condition and given a year to live. No longer concerned with a lonely and impoverished old age Valancy decides to live the next year exactly as she wants. I adored Valancy, and cheered her on throughout this short book, which was just absolute comfort reading at it’s finest. I will be adding this to my small shelf of “slump-breaker” books, as well as the prestigious “romance books I actually liked” list! Given that this book is available as a free pdf I advise everyone to download and read it immediately.

Stone Yard Devotional - Charlotte Wood

Moving on to a book that I liked but didn’t love; Stone Yard Devotional follows a nameless woman as she moves to a remote convent in rural NSW and reckons with the regrets of her childhood whilst battling a mouse-plague. I enjoyed the Australian setting, and the description of the wild empty landscape, and the convent seemed enticingly peaceful enough that I understood why the narrator moved there. Looking back on it I think I enjoyed the experience of reading the whole book but once I was finished it didn’t really stay with me, it felt very ephemeral. I did like it more than the previous Wood book I read, The Natural Way of Things, and I was well convinced that a mouse-plague would indeed be a terrible thing to live through.

Jade City - Fonda Lee

Very occasionally I come across a book which I genuinely like with the glaring flaw that it is an astonishingly close match to another piece of fiction. It’s absolutely not plagiarism, but it’s not an adaption either and when I notice the plot is the same it can really colour the reading experience for me. The only example I had previously come across is Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire, which is just The Da Vinci code in a vampire costume. Jade City is just The Godfather but with martial arts. Is it a well-realised book with an interesting magic system? Yes. Is it the Corleones in Hong Kong? Also a bit, yes. I’m not going to the mattresses on this one.

The Rule of St Benedict - Benedict of Nursia

A research read – I don’t feel that any modern review would really be effective here, but it’s not a bad set of rules to choose to run your life by, especially by medieval standards.

Daddy Long Legs - Jean Webster

Inspired by The Blue Castle I decided to duck back into more early 20th century romance by revisiting this childhood favourite. Jerusha “Judy” Abbott is aging out of her orphanage when a mysterious donor offers to sponsor her college education, with the condition that she write letters to him about her progress. The text is a series of chatty, funny letters as Judy makes her way through college. It’s a romance, with a relatively predictable twist but you do absolutely understand why anyone reading the letters would fall for Judy, she’s a wonderful narrator. A quick and easy read.

Dear Enemy - Jean Webster

I followed up with the sequel to Daddy Long Legs, Dear Enemy. This follows Judy’s college roommate Sally, as she takes over Judy’s old orphanage and tries to bring it up to standard. I really liked Sally’s progress through the book as she falls for the children, and takes on the mantle of mother to 107 orphans. I didn’t really buy the romance, and would have preferred Sally to remain single and there was also quite a lot of weird period eugenics in the book. This has not aged well! If you can ignore that then it’s a fun read.

How to Survive Camping - Bonnie Quinn

Fighting neck and neck for my favourite book of the month with The Devils is this fantastic campground gothic debut by Bonnie Quinn. My agent asked me to read with the possibility of blurbing the arc copy and I flew through the entire thing in one sitting.  I totally fell for Kate, the morally grey campground manager badass and the many creepy residents she is trying to keep in line. I was equally delighted and horrified at multiple moments throughout the book. My official blurb is “A deliciously creepy campfire story with a wickedly funny sting in the tail” Preorder this now!

I Like to Watch - Emily Nussbaum

A collection of essays from Emily Nussbaum, a tv critic. Some good, some bad. I didn’t notice much difference in enjoyment between reviews of tv series I had series and those I hadn’t. It did make me think that I really should get around to watching the Sopranos. Everyone seems to love that show.

Story of a Murder - Hallie Rubenhold

The author of The Five, a revisionist history of the victims of Jack the Ripper, turns her pen to the 1910 murder of Mrs Belle Crippen by her husband Dr Crippen and his attempted escape across the Atlantic. I thoroughly enjoyed this detailed and empathetic review of the case. Belle comes across as vibrant and loving and full of enthusiasm for life. I loved how her friends fought for justice in the aftermath of her disappearance, their fierce determination and love beyond death was a tribute to female friendship. I also found the exploits of the Captain of the ship on which the murderers escaped from very amusing, he was clearly having an absolute whale of the time playing detective. As for Crippen and his accomplice Ethel Le Neve, villains to the bone and at least one of them came to an appropriately untimely end.

Personal Update

I have had such a personally wonderful year that I almost feel guilty about it. I have in the back of my mind a novel by Jo Walton called My Real Children. In that, a woman lives two split lives, one where she is personally fulfilled and happy but the world is falling apart, and one where justice and equality develop but she is miserable and faces constant difficulty. When I think about this book and how happy I am and how terrible the news is, sometimes I wonder if it would help if I were unhappy. If it would, could I make that choice?

I was reading the news yesterday, on the last night of June 2025, and I couldn’t frame the sense of dread and helplessness I felt. I remembered a line from The Lord of the Rings, both the books and the films. Theoden is at the siege of Helm’s Deep, near to the fall of the Hornberg. Exhausted and defeated he asks, “What can men do against such reckless hate?”  Aragorn responds to him, “Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them.” All over again I fall in love with reading, and with fantasy.

What can I do when the world is dark? I can fight back. My weapons may be my wallet, donating to good causes, and my voice, raising up those who are downtrodden, rather than Anduril, Flame of the West, but I want to try anyway. If you are feeling the same dread, then I encourage you to fight in any way you can. Ride out with me and meet them.