My favorite book of the month was How Long ’til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin! For my original post, check it out here.
Best Book of June
The Obelisk Gate
Date Read: June 30
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
The second book of the Broken Earth trilogy is just as well-written as the first. The Season grows darker as it settles, and as people begin to realize that they might be in for a longer, more dangerous Season than they are truly prepared for.
The way of the world isn’t the strong devouring the weak, but the weak deceiving and poisoning and whispering in the ears of the strong until they become weak, too.
– The Obelisk Gate
The Fifth Season
Date Read: June 29
Author: N.K. Jemisin
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 5/5
In the land of the Stillness, the earth is trying to kill everyone on it. Every few hundred years a Season arrives, a natural disaster of such huge proportions that humans must fight to survive. When a Season arrives again, the people of the Stillness find themselves once more on the brink of disaster. The Broken Earth trilogy is one of my favorite series, and it is just as well-written and fun to read the second time through.
This is what you must remember: the ending of one story is just the beginning of another.
– The Fifth Season
How Long ’til Black Future Month?
Date Read: June 27
Author: NK Jemisin
Genre: Fantasy and Science Fiction
Rating: 5/5
A collection of short stories by NK Jemisin, each story well-crafted and attention-grabbing from the first sentence. Every story is unique, and each leaves you hungry for more from the world it is set in.
This is the paradox of tolerance, the treason of free speech: we hesitate to admit that some people are just fucking evil and need to be stopped.
– How Long ’til Black Future Month?
Babel-17
Date Read: June 27
Author: Samuel R. Delany
Genre: Science Fiction
Rating: 4/5
Linguist Rydra Wong is determined to solve the mysteries of Babel-17, an unknown language detected on the radio waves right before spaceships are attacked or sabotaged. The difference between success and failure could determine the outcome of an intergalactic war.
When you learn another tongue, you learn the way another people see the world, the universe.
– Babel-17
Burned
Date Read: June 16
Author: Edward Humes
Genre: Nonfiction
Rating: 4/5
A great read for anyone interested in the forensic work that happens following a fire, and the complications involved in determining whether a fire was arson or accidental.
The Dry
Date Read: June 15
Author: Jane Harper
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 4/5
Aaron Falk returns to his hometown when his best friend from childhood, Luke, dies, along with his wife and son. Falk never intended on returning, but Luke’s father sends him a note before the funeral that leaves him no other choice.
Death rarely changes how we feel about someone. Heightens it, more often than not.
– The Dry
The Witch Elm
Date Read: 14
Author: Tana French
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 5/5
Rather than focusing on the detectives, in The Witch Elm the novel is written and the mystery is presented from the perspective of one of the suspects involved. I always love an unreliable narrator, and this is perhaps one of the best novels with an unreliable narrator that I’ve read yet.
“The thing is, I suppose,” he said, “that one gets into the habit of being oneself. It takes some great upheaval to crack that shell and force us to discover what else might be underneath.”
– The Witch Elm
The Trespasser
Date Read: June 13
Author: Tana French
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 5/5
What starts as an open-and-shut case quickly becomes complicated: who killed Aislinn? Was it her overly-attached new boyfriend, or the mysterious other man her best friend will only hint at?
You can knock down a genuine belief, if you load up with enough facts that contradict it; but a belief that’s built on nothing but who the person wants to be, nothing can crumble that.
– The Trespasser
The Secret Place
Date Read: June 12
Author: Tana French
Genre: Mystery
Rating: 5/5
The Secret Place takes place in a private Catholic girls’ school where Frank Mackey’s daughter, Holly, is a student. When she shows up with a clue to a murder that happened the year before, it kicks off a full day in which the mystery is explored. Unlike previous French novels, the entire investigation fits into a single day in which there are too many turns to count.
When you stop being a kid, you lose your once chance at that too-tender-to-touch gold, that breathtaken everything and forever. Once you start growing up and getting sense, the outside world turns real, and your own private world is never everything again.
– The Secret Place
Zoey's Year in Books 2020 