It’s hard to believe that August is done. When I lived somewhere with actual seasons, it truly did feel like the end of summer. However, now that I live in Houston where it is hot until…forever? I have to channel fall vibes despite the 90º heat.
Looking back, I had a slow start to the month with a few mediocre reads, but then I got to experience the ACOTAR series (*chef’s kiss*), and Lisa Jewell’s newest book. Overall, it was a fabulous month of reading. I read ten books in August (8 physical, 2 audio). I realized I struggle to really engage with new books via audio, so I started re-listening to books I’ve already read and really enjoyed that experience. It had been almost 2 years since I read The Love Hypothesis, and I wanted to remember why I love the book so much. It did not disappoint!
Here are all the books I read in August, their Goodreads synopses (except for ACOTAR books 2-5 because I want to avoid spoilers), and my ratings.
1. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert
Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with six directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamourous family’s mansion.
Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.
But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior…
Rating: ★ ★ ★
2. The Soulamte by Sally Hepworth
There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t.
When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral…Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?
And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate…lie? As the perfect facade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel.
Rating: ★ ★ ★
3. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
When nineteen-year-old huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying creature arrives to demand retribution. Dragged to a treacherous magical land she knows about only from legends, Feyre discovers that her captor is not truly a beast, but one of the lethal, immortal faeries who once ruled her world.
At least, he’s not a beast all the time.
As she adapts to her new home, her feelings for the faerie, Tamlin, transform from icy hostility into a fiery passion that burns through every lie she’s been told about the beautiful, dangerous world of the Fae. But something is not right in the faerie lands. An ancient, wicked shadow is growing, and Feyre must find a way to stop it, or doom Tamlin—and his world—forever.
Click here to read my post all about the ACOTAR series.
Rating: ★ ★ ★.5
4. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas
Feyre and the rest of the faerie world recover from their time Under the Mountain. Feyre must figure out how to cope with the trauma of the past year of her life. The bargain she made to survive comes knocking at her door.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
5. A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas
The faerie world must work together in order to defeat the outside force threatening the world as they know it.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
6. A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas
Feyre and friends prepare for the winter solstice and work to adjust to their new lives.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
7. A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas
Nesta’s family forces her to deal with her trauma. Cassian helps train her. Feyre and friends must find powerful, magical objects before they fall into the wrong hands.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
8. None of This is True by Lisa Jewell
Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.
A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.
Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.
But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
9. Pachinko by Min Jin Lee (audio)
In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant — and that her lover is married — she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son’s powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.
Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan’s finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee’s complex and passionate characters — strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis — survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★
10. The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood (audio reread)
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn’t believe in lasting romantic relationships–but her best friend does, and that’s what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So, like any self-respecting biologist, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees.
That man is none other than Adam Carlsen, a young hotshot professor–and well-known ass. Which is why Olive is positively floored when Stanford’s reigning lab tyrant agrees to keep her charade a secret and be her fake boyfriend. But when a big science conference goes haywire, putting Olive’s career on the Bunsen burner, Adam surprises her again with his unyielding support and even more unyielding… six-pack abs.
Suddenly their little experiment feels dangerously close to combustion. And Olive discovers that the only thing more complicated than a hypothesis on love is putting her own heart under the microscope.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
My favorite book was A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas. This book solidified the series for me as one that I will forever love. If you haven’t read ACOTAR yet, you can snag a copy of the first book here or at your local bookstore.
What was your favorite read of August?