June 2026
Welcome to The Book List!
Summer is here!!!! Which means summer reading is here!!!!
(Or maybe summer doesn't change reading for you or you live somewhere without seasons. My apologies.)
After the most insane May of my entire life, I am so glad it is June. The stack of books I'm excited to read continues to grow (I ordered SIX new ones today like a crazy person), and I'm just so happy.
These are a few on my shelf currently (or on their way to my mailbox) that will fill my summer reading hours:
The Children by Melissa Albert
The Missed Connection by Tia Williams
Cherry Baby by Rainbow Rowell
The One Day You Were My Husband by Rosie Walsh
Seek the Traitor's Son by Veronica Roth
The Night We Met by Abby Jimenez
Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim
The Anniversary by Alex Finlay
The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden
Point B by Drew Magery
The Searcher by Tana French
So many of these are authors I already love, and I will blindly grab and be thrilled.
And if something isn't hitting right, I'll pop in a bookmark and try something else. I will not slog through anything this summer. That is my one commitment.
No slogs. Just fun.
I don't expect to get through all of these since I read a lot on Kindle and audiobook, too, but I can't remember a summer with a better stack awaiting me. I'm so pumped I can barely stand it.
This Month’s Books
Book Reviews
Last One Out by Jane Harper
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Content warnings: death of a child
Casting: Ro, the mom, is Rebecca Hall. Perfect. Griff, the dad, was Matt Damonesque. Really, everyone was fuzzy except Rebecca, and she was dynamite.
Book words: eerie, thoughtful, atmospheric, slow burn thriller, gritty, human
A Jane Harper novel is like pizza. Even a bad one is pretty good. And really there aren't any bad ones.
I've always said The Lost Man is the perfect novel, and I stand by it. Just outstanding. But this one got me all the way. I'm not sure yet, but it might be my favorite Harper novel.
Ro Crowley returns to Carralon Ridge, a town in New South Wales, to mark the presumed death of her son, Sam, who disappeared on his 21st birthday and was never found. She and her family always return to the scene of his disappearance to remember him. But this year is different. The town is a ghost town. A mine moved in and drove everyone out. The ones who are left have different reasons to stay, and in those desperate, sometimes secretive circumstances, more information about Sam's disappearance comes to light.
There are long stretches where nothing happens, but so much is happening: grief, worry, desperation to turn random facts into clues about Sam. And Jane captures the town like it's a character, her signature move.
It is truly excellent. I absolutely loved it. Jane Harper continues to do no wrong.
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Content warnings: language, wildly violent, all stylized like a video game
Casting: none
Book words: saturated, exciting, detailed, immersive, funny
Dungeon Crawler Carl is a sci-fi/fantasy novel, specifically a subgenre called LitRPG or "literary roll-playing game." I did not know this going in. I did not know there would be wildly specific descriptions of worlds, inventory, levels, bosses, and plenty of other video game language I don't know.
I expected a weird story about a guy who suddenly finds himself in a televised alien apocalypse, and I got it. But I also got all the video game stuff and didn't enjoy that as much. For some readers who love gaming and expected that from the book, it would enhance the story. For me, it took away from it.
The writing was great. The story is fun. But 30-40% of the writing is what my boys talk about when they're playing Zelda or Minecraft. I didn't get it then, and I don't get it now.
I won't continue with the series, but good luck to Carl.
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Content warnings: none
Casting: none
Book words: quiet, literary, fascinating, dystopian
This was a risky book for me. The premise sounds right up my alley: in an island community, objects regularly disappear from existence and eventually consciousness. Like, roses get "disappeared" by the government early in the book. The people see it happening, see the rose petals drifting away and all rose bushes dying, and then suddenly they don't remember what roses looked or smelled like. It's a fascinating premise.
The writing is literary and sparse, partially because it's translated from Japanese (not the most emotional language), but partly because that's what the setting feels like. It's almost like every word and every scene is hanging by a thread. It's genuinely so compelling.
The characters don't really have names, and the unnamed female narrator forgets things that disappear, but her mother did not. Her mother always remembered. That history gives her compassion for other "retainers" who remember, and this young woman has to choose between her own experiences of forgetting and the protection of those who remember.
It's genuinely so good.
Just Friends by Haley Pham
⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Content warnings: death of a family member
Casting: none
Book words: cute, predictable, a little saccharine (to me)
I don't think this is technically YA, but it read pretty young. I also didn't know it was written by the wife of a YouTuber my kids watch, so that was weird. But it's sweet enough.
Told in a series of flashbacks, two high school best friends fall in love towards the end of high school, but then something breaks them apart. We don't know what until later, but in the meantime, the two reconnect as adults in their seaside hometown. There's a dying aunt and an overworked mother and dreams of being a writer instead of a consultant. There's a dad with high expectations and friends who don't listen and grief that sneaks up.
Some of my son's friends read this and loved it, and that makes sense. I think the relational depth is akin to what you would have experienced as someone who's only been around a couple of decades. To me, it lacked depth and experience, but that's to be expected from a younger author.
It's pretty clean. I'd be fine with Annie reading it once she was in middle/high school.
This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Content warnings: none
Casting: A last-second move to make Helen Helen Mirren and Sylvia Meryl Streep should have been done from the beginning. Although they could switch places, and it would still be great. Those women can do anything.
Book words: modern family saga, told in character vignettes, poignant, funny
Frankly, this is not my type of book. Even the book words below are not close to mine. But something about the story - two sisters feuding over an apple cake - was too intriguing to pass up. I got it on Libby, so I figured if I didn't like it, it didn't cost me anything.
Well, it got me. Right away. It reads like a series of short stories, almost as if you were having coffee with someone who knew the person giving you an update on their life. Not much happens, but life does and it's quite lovely.
I think I stuck with it because the characters felt so real, the dialogue was funny, and I enjoyed reading about a modern Jewish family. It was genuinely so good. A great surprise.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling 🎧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Narrated by a full cast
The next three books are books 8-10 in the Inspector Gamache series, an audiobook I depend on even when it's not great. I feel like The Beautiful Mystery is where the series becomes something different. We've invested all this time in Gamache and Beauvoir, and this is the book where things start to crystalize. I don't want to say much about the plot because I think the series need to remain a series, but this is the one where they go to the monastery to investigate the murder of a monk.
The last scene had me on the floor.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 🎧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrated by a full cast
There's only one reason this wasn't five stars. I love this book, and in general, the audiobook experience was fantastic. But good gravy the voice actors for Harry and Hermione had one note the whole book. They were desperate and yelling always. Every line was shrilly delivered. It drove me bananas. I don't know why the director didn't direct them differently, or maybe that was the direction. But there was no nuance to their experience of searching for the Hallows. Hermione was always exasperated, and Harry was always angry and misunderstood. I even listened to certain lines imagining different deliveries - more thoughtful, pensive, even direct, and it would have been better. It would never and should never stop anyone from listening, but it changed the experience for me by a whole star. And since this last book is mostly Hermione and Harry (remember, even Ron leaves), it was hard to get away from.
That said, the full cast Harry Potter experience has ended for me, and it is genuinely such good listening. Great for families on a roadtrip if you have kids (or partners) less interested in single-narrator audiobooks.
The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny 🎧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrated by Robert Bathurst
Content warnings: These are murder mysteries, so there's always some element of violence. Substance abuse is also a common theme.
The next three books are 11-13 in the Inspector Gamache series, my comfort listen these days. I started last December and have steadily enjoyed a couple every month.
This is The One with the Supergun.
A young boy in the village of Three Pines, known for his imagination, is murdered, just hours after saying that he found a giant gun in the woods. No one believed him, of course. A classic boy who cried giant gun. But it turns out, there was a giant gun, and someone killed the boy to stop others from finding out.
A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny 🎧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Narrated by Robert Bathurst
Content warnings: Same same
The One with the Cadets.
Gamache is trying to weed out corruption in the Quebec police department and its training academy. When one of the bad guy professors is found dead, Gamache of course has to find out who killed him.
I loved this one because of the unique relationships among the cadets, the new setting (I love Three Pines, but it's fun to have other places), and THE ENDING. For those who have read it, when I found out why Gamache accepted Amelia's application, I cried so hard.
Glass Houses by Louise Penny 🎧
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrated by Robert Bathurst
Content warnings: Same same same
The One with the Caped Conscience and Drug Cartel.
This was solid. I especially liked the first half with the guy in the black cape terrorizing the village. That stuff was legit creepy, and I loved it. The drug cartel piece I liked less. I tend to not like crime stories centered on drug rings as much as other, you know, more normal reasons for murder (she says with a smirk).