Another month joining up with our hosts Steph and Jana for SUYB!

Looking back at June, I actually did a LOT of reading – it just didn’t really feel like it because a few of my reads just felt “meh”. I apologize in advance for my dour reception of several of these undoubtedly fine works.

Without further ado:

The Splendor Before the Dark (Nero, #2) was not as good as the first one in Margaret George’s Nero pair, “Confessions of Young Nero”. I love Margaret George and have her books about Cleopatra, Henry VIII, and Elizabeth I on my shelf and bought this one in hardcover. I’m happy to own it but I was disappointed that even the burning of Rome seemed a little dull. It’s also tough to get my head around a sympathetic portrayal of Nero, although that didn’t bother me in the first novel, so who knows.

A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life from the Roving Gourmand is the rare book about food and wine that did not make me hungry. Jim Harrison is a Michigan writer who we ultimately had to share with Montana by way of Hollywood (“Legends of the Fall”) and he’s apparently quite the libertine when it comes to food and wine. There is a LOT of drinking in this book of essays and the fact that it’s expensive French wine didn’t ease my feeling that I was getting a hangover by osmosis, absorbed through my fingertips through the pages. Also a lot of big eating of very heavy meats (lotta pig here, folks) and game and several Mario Batali name-drops. He’s such an amazing, lyrical writer that I’ll just forgive him this one.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier – I loved “Rebecca” but this one was not what I expected. Although it is set in Cornwall and it was kind of exciting to see some of the town names that I’ve heard mentioned watching “Poldark”. Kind of a gloomy gothic number and while the heroine has her fair share of pluck, I honestly didn’t much care about anyone else.

(Wow – I’m already coming across as quite the disgruntled reader this month, aren’t I? Buckle up, the worst is yet to come.)

A Hundred Summers by Beatriz Williams was a Kindle Unlimited recommendation and I feel like it perfectly fit in with two other Kindle recs that are upcoming in that they were stridently mediocre. This one was perhaps the least palatable of the three, telling the story of a strange 1930’s love triangle between New York socialites that comes to a heady climax during a seaside summer in a posh oceanfront enclave. There is flippancy, red lipstick, cigarettes and martinis, unrequited love, anti-Semitism, someone named “Budgie” and misunderstandings rife throughout. Just when you can’t take any more of this, a hurricane sweeps through like a wonderful deus ex machina to wipe the slate clean and resolve all angst. Sigh. I guess if you like beach reads plus light historical romance this would be a good pick.

A Steep Price, by Robert Dugoni (Tracy Crosswhite #6) – thank God for Robert Dugoni and Tracy who saved my June reading from the crapper. This one wasn’t my favorite in the series but it’s still a solid page turner that features a bit more from Tracy’s colleagues and supporting players in the police department as she navigates the early stages of her pregnancy and investigates the intersection between a missing persons case and the body of a young Indian woman found in a well.

This Won’t End Well – Camille Pagan’s writing belongs, I’ll say right off the bat, to a genre that I’m not super into. Historical fiction and mysteries, psychological and supernatural thrillers and some YA & literary fiction are solidly in my wheelhouse but lighthearted chick lit with witty romance and navel gazing thrown in are not my cups of tea. That said, I blew through this in a couple of days and can’t say anything really bad about it except that it’s just not a genre that I enjoy much. But it is light, funny, and easy to like with a suitably cute and neurotic heroine in a bit of a life tailspin thanks to a recent firing, a case of sexual harassment in the workplace, a mysterious new neighbor, and her fiance’s completely unexpected and unexplained departure for Paris. You’ll probably like it better than I did but don’t blame me if you don’t.

The Price of Paradise by Susana Lopez Rubio was my final June Kindle rec and the one I enjoyed the most. Set in Cuba in the 1940’s, the main character is a young immigrant from Spain seeking his fortune in Havana. He works his way up at an exclusive department store and runs afoul of the local gangster when he falls in love with his wife. Again, not my favorite genre but this was better than the Pagan or the hurricane book.

I also did a lot of running during the month of June and most of my time on my feet was spent listening to Stephen King’s latest book of novellas, If It Bleeds, which I got on Audible. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and when he’s good, he’s brilliant (The Stand, The Shining) and when he’s not so good he’s still better than most anything else out there. I enjoyed this listen more on the strength of King’s masterful ability to unwind a story with patience, to put you into the skin of the character, and invest you in something that seems so outlandish. The titular novella was my favorite, due mostly to Holly Gibney – she is a great female detective character (I will always picture her as portrayed by Cynthia Erivo in the wonderful HBO miniseries featuring her, “The Outsider”). All the narrators are wonderful but particularly Will Patton, who narrates many of King’s works (as well as James Lee Burke, another favorite writer).