five things Friday: July TBR

Lots of "better late than never" going on around here lately... took me a while to find the time to put this  together, but I wanted to share my July 2022 TBR, and especially a recap of my June one, since there's some good stuff here!

For July, I'm looking for some good beach reading - stuff with plot, or stuff that can be read in small increments (like a memoir in essays). Very excited about Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as Gabrielle Zevin is the author of one of my all-time favorite books (The Storied Life of AJ Fikry), so I picked it as my July BOTM selection. 

Then I've got a memoir, I'll Show Myself Out, from another author I've liked in the past, and I think this one will have funny and also thought-provoking things to say about motherhood; a rom-com with writer protagonists recommended by trusted source Annie of the From the Front Porch podcast, The Roughest Draft; a literary suspense, The Guide, by another author I've really liked in the past; and finally a novel, Joan Is Okay, that I got on a random kindle deal and looks to be an insightful and also funny portrait of modern life as an immigrant, medical professional, and as a 30-something. It has blurbs from Celeste Ng, Angie Kim, and Lily King, so that's definitely promising for me.

And here's a recap of my June reads:

• Seven Days in June: I love a romance with some depth (this looks at chronic illness, mental health, the foster system, and some issues of race, among other things), diversity, and a publishing-world connection. In this one, two authors meet again, years after their teenaged whirlwind romance imploded (mental health triggers here). Definitely not a rom-com, with some of the heavier issues it deals with, but there's still some great friend relationships and awkward situations that provide levity. You also get lots of publisher insider stuff, some steam, a dual-timeline, and also a parenting relationship that I liked seeing. Sometimes it's nice to get some slightly older characters in the romances, ya know? ★★★.5
• Nowhere Girl: I heard about this on Sarah's Bookshelves Live and was intrigued - while I don't read a ton of memoir, this had the sound of one of those stranger-than-fiction life stories. And indeed it did - Cheryl Diamond grew up in a family that was on the run, living with fake passports and always looking over their shoulders in case they needed to move on to the next place. It takes a while to figure out why this is, but that actually is an interesting narrative choice, because when she's talking about her younger years, she also doesn't know what the deal is. She just knows she loves her family and she needs to follow their "rules" to protect each other. There's some wild stuff in here that made me not be able to put it down, but also some trigger warnings for abuse (physical and sexual - a bit of icky stuff, but didn't make me feel too icky overall). The dynamics in her family with the father who has a domineering philosophy that's a bit outside of "normal" - along with the author's journey to realize that her family has some toxic traits and she needs to figure out how to get out of there - really reminded me of Educated, so I'd recommend this to anyone who rated that one highly. ★★★.5
• This Time Tomorrow: I love Emma Straub's work - often character-driven, but super readable and relatable with family dynamics that feel so real. This new book had more of the same, but with a time travel element thrown in... The main character starts out the book celebrating her 40th birthday while her dad is very sick in the hospital, but then she wakes up back in her childhood bed very confused, finally figuring out that she's somehow landed on her 16th birthday - and she gets to re-live having her dad young and healthy again. The book explores what it means to be an adult or to be "old" (some really spot-on observations I especially thought since I was actually reading the book on my 38th birthday and thinking some of the same things about how time is weird and it flies but that age is so relative - my parents were 38 when I was 18, and I have SUCH a different view of what these ages are now!); looks at where different choices might land us, as she goes back multiple times to that day trying to figure out how to "save" her dad in the present; and also shares a really lovely father-daughter relationship. I loved the parts the best when she was in her past self, with her current self's experience, and realizing a new perspective on her relationships, etc. as she spent the day with her dad and best friend. Plus they just had some delightful parent-teen banter. And the dad is a sci-fi writer, so there's some meta-stuff about writing time travel books too - fun. Not my favorite Emma Straub of all time, but an enjoyable one and one that would be great for discussion. ★★★★
• Portrait of a Thief: one of my favorite micro-genres is the art history mystery, so I was excited when I heard about this one. I'd call it a literary heist novel, in which 5 Chinese American college students are tasked with stealing from major world museums artefacts that were taken from an important but long-ago destroyed palace in China. The chapters vary among the 5 characters' perspectives, which takes a bit of settling into at first, but makes it interesting as you see how they figure out (partly by watching movies like Ocean's Eleven!) how to do their respective roles, as the hacker, the getaway driver, the art history expert, etc. It's not super fast paced, but any heist situation will keep a plot moving along - and also pace isn't entirely the point. There's a lot of exploration in it of self-identity (especially as children of immigrants, all of them trying to figure out who they are vs. their parents' expectations, and also what their next step should be after college), of a culture's dispora and what it's like to live as part of that, and then also lots on the philosophy of art history/museums, the colonization of art, and who should get to have/control artefacts. Some of the themes felt a bit repetitive or really overtly driven home at times (it is a debut novel, by a very young author, so maybe that showed a few times, though overall the writing was quite good I thought), but in general a really interesting read both in terms of plot and in terms of topics to discuss/consider. ★★★★
• Hollowpox: didn't get to read this 3rd book in the Nevermoor series yet because Peter and Hendrik are still finishing their read-aloud with our copy, but they're liking it!

These were all good, but I read some books in June that I loved even more - check out my best of 2022 (so far) post in case you missed that, and you can get all of my 2022 top picks in one place!