July Wrap-Up + August Reading Month (2019)

Hello, lovely readers! I hope you’re having a great weekend! July was a pretty hard month for me. I was struggling to get out of my hiatus mode and go back to my old schedule. The end of the month was less than ideal and everything that happened nearly broke me. But let’s not dwell on the negatives and move on to better news. I had my best reading month of 2019 in July and I’m looking forward to getting back to my blogging groove in August. So let’s jump into the wrap-up post, shall we?

I read a total of 8 books this month, which is a new record for me this year! I started with Jade City by Fonda Lee on audiobook but had to put it aside during the Indian Lit Readathon, which was a massive success this year as well. I finished 2 books for it and got the bingo – The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Time Crawlers by Varun Sayal. Both turned out to be 4 star reads for me. I picked up Jade City again after that weekend and followed it up with Jade War immediately. These two books blew my mind away. I had heard heaps of praise for this series and Fonda’s other books as well but this series quickly clawed its way into my all-time favourites list even though it’s still incomplete and I had an amazing time reading it.

I took a break from intense fantasy and finished My Fate According to the Butterfly by Gail D. Villanueva next. It was such a hard-hitting yet hopeful book offering commentary on the drug war in the Philippines and an eye-opener for me. My 5-star streak continued with The Heart Forger and The Shadowglass by Rin Chupeco. I had planned to binge read the series and had finished The Bone Witch in June but had to break it up because of my blog tour commitments. The last book was a re-read in anticipation of the sequel – A Spark of White Fire by Sangu Mandanna – and I rated it 5 stars this time around as well.

• I reached 1000+ followers on the blog in the middle of the month and I couldn’t be more thankful to each and every one for supporting and reading my blog! I will be celebrating this huge milestone with all of you very soon.
• I’m also thankful to all my patient followers on Instagram who have stayed with me through 2 months of hiatus. I’m still at the border of 550+ but I’m very glad the number didn’t reduce despite my absence.
• I succesfully took part in 3 blog tours in July – Spin the Dawn by Elizabeth Lim, My Fate According to the Butterfly by Gail D. Villanueva and Jade War by Fonda Lee. Huge thanks to Shealea @ Shut Up, Shealea (who runs Caffeine Book Tours), Cara @ Little Miss Bookworm and Kate @ Your Tita Kate for including me and being such wonderful hosts!

• Dany @ Ambivert Words shares her secrets to getting 97k+ montly views on Pinterest and you can really learn a thing or two from her helpful guide
• Shri @ Sun and Chai discussed how siblings relationships are portrayed in fiction and the sad lack of good representation in her thoughtful and eloquent post
• Krisha @ Bookathon has a superb spoiler-free review up for Jade War and also a fun quiz to know which Green Bone you are most like
• Sahi @ My World of Books, the resident Mahabharata expert in the reading community, recommends the best retellings inspired by the theme of Indian Lit Readathon
• Charvi @ Not Just Fiction celebrated her 100th post with a number of cool bookish lists (spoiler alert: I’m in one of them)

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• The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai (August 6th: US release) – enemies to lovers in a corporate, modern love story
• The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee (August 13th: US release) – a historical fiction about a pseudonymous newspaper columnist in Atlanta that discusses race and gender
• The Revolution of Birdie Randolph by Brandy Colbert (August 20th: US release) – a coming of age about forbidden love, family expectations and secrets
• Color Me In by Natasha Diaz (August 20th: US release) – a powerful story about a biracial teen struggling to be true to both her identities, coming to terms with her privilege as a white passing girl and falling in love
• Song of the Abyss by Makiia Lucier (August 27th: US release) – the second book in the Tower of Winds series, a diverse fantasy about water magic and a girl trying to prove herself in a partiarchal society

I’m doing the NEWTs readathon this month and need to complete 7 books in order to graduate as an Astronomer, my chosen career from OWLs. I tried to include as many diverse books and review copies as I could into my TBR and this is what it looks like –

1. Your Heart is the Sea by Nikita Gill (A in Arithmancy)
2. Beneath the Citadel by Destiny Soria (E in Arithmancy)
3. Outrun the Wind by Elizabeth Tammi (O in Arithmancy)
4. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (A in Astronomy)
5. The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala (E in Astronomy)
6. A House of Rage and Sorrow by Sangu Mandanna (O in Astronomy)
7. The Gilded King by Josie Jaffrey (A in History of Magic)

It’s a bit of a stretch since the books are quite lengthy but I hope that with a combination of audiobooks and Kindle copies, I can get it done. There are a ton of other readathons going on too, but I wanted to limit myself and focus on reading all the books on my TBR this month.

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How was the month of July for you? I hope it was kinder on you than it was on me. What are your plans for August? Did you celebrate any milestones in July? Let’s discuss and spread the joy in the comments section below.

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