Hi friends!
I hope everyone has been having a great summer. This month has been especially great because we spent twelve days in Colorado, hiking and enjoying Denver and the surrounding areas. It was a much-needed getaway from normal life. We also made the trip to my hometown in East Texas for a couple of days to show our kids the places where we met and fell in love. 🙂 I also decided to take a break from social media for the month with my friend, Kacy, The Fettered Matriarch. I have a job that requires social media, so with the exception of completing the tasks I need to do for that job and posting a few vacation pictures, I’ve been social media-free for 30 days. It has been exceptional and freeing in a way I did not expect. I have been seriously contemplating deleting my bookstagram since I’ve been away and think it may come to that in the near future. The amount of time I’ve been able to reclaim and the lack of stress and overwhelm I’ve felt has made all the difference in my overall happiness this month. I can’t say enough good things about stepping away.
I haven’t had a lot of time for my Beat the Backlist Challenge in the past couple of months and August isn’t looking much better. I hoped to make some serious progress on Netgalley to get back to my challenge, but I’m still not where I want to be (100%). My percentage is back up to 90, but I still have 10 books to finish, half of those publishing in August. Send help.
Without further ado, here are my July reads/reviews and August TBR.
July Reads & Reviews:
- Lock Every Door – Riley Sager⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Wild Boy – Paolo Cognetti⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Something in the Water – Catherine Steadman⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Printed Letter Bookshop – Katherine Raey⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Chain – Adrian McKinty⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Wives – Tarryn Fisher⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Seamless: Understanding the Bible as One Complete Story – Angie Smith⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Introverted Mom: Your Guide to More Calm, Less Guilt, and Quiet Joy – Jamie C. Martin ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Rumor – Elin Hilderbrand⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Things You Save in a Fire – Review⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- A Stranger on the Beach – Review⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Lilies on Main – Review⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- The Life We Bury – Allen Eskins (review to come)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
- Say You Still Love Me – K.A. Tucker (review to come)⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Backlist Books Completed This Month: 4
July Blog Posts:
August TBR:
- Dottir – Katrin Davidsdottir
- The First Girl Child – Amy Harmon
- Keeping Lucy – T. Greenwood
- The Last Post – Renee Carlino
- More than We Can Tell – Brigid Kemmerer
Social Media:
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram| BlogLovin’|Goodreads
Ashes Books & Bobs 
Glad you had such a great month, with a couple of great books, too! Thanks for going on this journey with me. It’s been enlightening!
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Thank you! I couldn’t believe I only had two 5-stars but I really enjoyed reading this month, regardless of ratings.
It has been incredibly enlightening. Thank you so much for asking me to do it. It was the best impulse decision I’ve made in a long time.
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I read three of the books on your list. Loved Lock Every Door but was disappointed in The Chain. Glad you had a great reading month!
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Oh, nice! I love finding books we have in common. I’m glad you enjoyed Lock Every Door too. I can see how The Chain would be disappointing. It did kind of fizzle out a bit in the second half.
I hope you have a great August!
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Your vacation and time with family sounds lovely! 😍
Although I have the photography skills, I found that setting up pictures for bookstagram was too time consuming for me (plus I read digitally and the glare always bugged me)…….so I switched to using a book cover with a cute background in the PhotoGrid app. It takes a minute to create an image. I know I’m not one of the cool bookstagrammers but it really works for me! I applaud you for stepping away when you need to! 🙌 I enjoyed Things You Save in a Fire too! 👍😍
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Thank you so much, Carol. Since I hopped back on Instagram, I’ve been so much better at managing my time on there. I think I may keep it because I’ve made some really great friends and I am able to help certain authors I really care about. I just needed the break to readjust my priorities. 😊
I think we all just have to find the things that work for us in this crazy social media world.
I’m about to go pick up How to Walk Away from the library. I’m so excited to read it.
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Sounds like a great month all around! Hope you have an equally great August 🙂
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Thank you! I hope August is great for you too!
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