The Books I Read in June 2026
Happy July, my loves!
June was another mixed bag of reading for me. I either read brilliant books or terrible ones, and it felt like I was picking up books with no rhyme or reason in more ways than one. Standouts included Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake and Kitten by Stacey Yu, lowlights were pretty much everything else I picked up. But, we remain hopeful that good books are on the horizon! I think my reading taste has changed a lot in recent months, and some of the books I’d either bought or had won on NetGalley simply don’t resonate anymore. Another good reason to keep my physical TBR stack nice and streamlined! I half didn’t want to compile a July hopefuls list, lest I curse myself with more bad reads, but I know you all love to see what’s on my mind! Let’s get into my June books then.
Let’s be bookish friends! Find me on Goodreads, The StoryGraph or Pagebound to see what I’m reading and reviewing in real-time.
June reads
- Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (started in March)
- Shorelines by Ruth Ennis (ARC)
- Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi (ARC, DNF)
- Speak Still: Articulating the Silence of Bilingualism by Wing Lam Tong
- Kitten by Stacey Yu (ARC)
- He Who Ate the Wild by G.J. Terral (ARC)
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
July hopefuls
- Lonely Mouth by Jacqueline Maley (ARC)
- Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
- The Mirror & the Light by Hilary Mantel
- Persuasion by Jane Austen
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
In review
Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake (started in March)
Rating: 5 stars
What. A. Book!
I read Titus Groan as part of The Unseen Review’s slow reads course, and am completely captivated by Peake’s Gormenghast world. Set in the atmospheric, vast and crumbling castle of Gormenghast, in this Gothic masterpiece, we meet quite the eclectic cast of characters: there’s Lord Sepulchrave, the seventy-sixth Earl of Groan, his wife Countess Gertrude, their daughter Fuchsia, and their newborn Titus, the titular character and heir to Gormenghast. Then, we have the Earl’s twin sisters. And, Mr Flay, Sepulchre’s servant, Steerpike, an ambitious kitchen boy, Swelter, the head of the kitchen. Both staff and family are entrenched in centuries of ritual tied to the castle, yet Titus’ birth here sparks a series of changes that upheave everybody’s lives.
While not described as a fantasy novel, there are shades and shadows that are reminiscent of many great fantasy stories, andPeake brings Gormenghast and its inhabitants to life in such a masterful way that it’s hard to believe none of it is real. You are taken right to the dark, crumbling castle and its stone-cold walls. Each character is deeply different and comes to life with incredibly uncanny descriptions and dialogue. If, like me, you enjoy slow, meandering stories realised through equally slow, lyrical, purposeful prose, then this is definitely for you. (I’d give this six stars if I could!)
Shorelines by Ruth Ennis (ARC)
Rating: 3.5 stars
This YA novel-in-verse reimagines The Little Mermaid: Muireann is a proud mermaid who flees her climate-ravaged home in the ocean in search of hope on land. After all, she has just saved a handsome human man from the seas. In her home ocean, food is scarce, her twin sister has been killed in a mass-fishing net, and her parents are lost in grief. Surely, this human man will reciprocate the favour.
I can’t quite work out how I feel about this. Shorelines is unlike anything I’ve read before: the verse format was a brilliant way of telling Muireann’s thoughts. I really appreciated Ennis’ work in talking about bodily autonomy, body image and misogyny. Although uncomfortable to read at times, I felt it was a powerful way of expressing her opinions to the target audience. I also really enjoyed much of the poetry, particularly that to do with nature. However, I do wish there was a little more musicality, considering the teenage/children audience in mind. Finally, I wanted just a touch more focus on the environmental issues that propelled this book forwards in its opening.
Pool House by Mary H.K. Choi (ARC, DNF)
Thanks Orion Books and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy!
DNF @ 9%
Unfortunately I didn’t get along with Pool House at all! I loved her YA novels, but I just found myself disinterested in this novel.
Speak Still by Wing Lam Tong
Rating: 3 stars
I found this book in Housmanns in London a few weeks ago, and thought it sounded fascinating: a non-fiction by a Hong Kong native about the silences in bilingualism? Sign me up! And it was indeed a fascinating read. Here, Tong writes about her life moving from Hong Kong to London, the political chaos in Hong Kong, and ultimately the chasms of living between language. Cantonese is a language notoriously difficult to learn, and I have always been curious to read more about how other Cantonese and English speakers navigate the two polar-opposite languages. I felt this book provided a great balance of personality and fact, whilst remaining comforting, human and interesting.
(I’m also particularly interested in reading more from the 404 Ink publishing imprint!)
Kitten by Stacey Yu
Thanks Random House and NetGalley for my advanced reader copy!
Rating: 3.75 stars
Kitten is a compulsive coming-of-age mirror that tackles mother-daughter relationships, post-graduate life, and the fear of being seen and known. Fresh out of college, Katie feels both young and grown. She’s desperate to show her mother and roommate that she’s a capable adult now, yet equally all too willing to let her older, wealthier boyfriend James make her decisions for her. Throw in the fact that she’s on rocky terms with aforementioned mother and roommate, and Katie is simply desperate. That is until she meets Silver, James’ childhood cat, and Katie feels a sudden, giddy sense of connection with her. Cats don’t mind that Katie can’t find a job and doesn’t speak to her mother and is painfully awkward in social settings. Silver, in particular, is beloved no matter her sometimes cute, other times gross, animalistic behaviours. And, soon, they become inseperable.
I really enjoyed Kitten and found it to be a total page-turner. Our protagonist Katie is unlikeable but relatable, and she’s a real mirror for the unlikeable qualities we find in ourselves. This definitely helps it to veer towards the weird girl fiction genre, which I’m apparently loving lately! The mirror between Katie and Silver is especially sweet, and it really works, too. At times, I struggled with Katie’s interiority, but it fuses perfectly when Silver is introduced. A fun debut and I can’t wait to read more of Stacey’s work!
He Who Ate the Wild by G.J. Terral
Thanks NetGalley for my advanced reader copy!
Rating: 2.75 stars
I really wanted to love this Japanese-inspired fantasy, but it fell short for me. A love letter to Princess Mononoke, this fantasy novel was more than just an homage, it felt like a retelling of Mononoke with a lifting of Demon Slayer’s plot. Terral’s writing style is fairly specific, it languishes in overwrought, sometimes stuffily poetic prose, and it also feels heavily like how Japanese fiction is translated into English, if that makes sense. For me, this felt strange from a non-POC writer.
Ku is our solitary narrator and protagonist, and I sadly found myself bored of his interiority, despair, and the constant repetition of his family loss arc. Every sentence and phrase is over-described to the point that it felt strange – sometimes a sentence can just be simple, you know? And the plot meandered a lot. It felt as though we luxuriated in some random spots of the story until a little descriptive hook took us onwards to endless new demons. There’s certainly more style than substance here.
Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
Rating: 2 stars
Yesteryear is the book on everybody’s lips at the moment. Burke’s debut, it is a touted a thrilling and gripping page-turner about Natalie, a seemingly perfect tradwife influencer who, one day, wakes up and finds herself in a strange altered reality. Life as a real tradwife. I was incredibly curious about this one before Róisín reviewed it and made me realise I was probably going to hate it. So, what made me read it? In short, my colleagues. The temptation got to me, okay?! Plus, one of them literally handed me her copy and insisted.
Reader, I hated this book.
From its unlikeable main character (and I can usually get onboard with unlikeable characters! They add a point of difference!) to the awkward narrative style, this was not a book that I enjoyed. It’s probably worth me adding that I went in to this book knowing that, yet I was still surprised at how bad I thought this book was. The author really holds your hand throughout this story, telling you every moment in a first-person narrative. Natalie is an awful main character whose thought pattern hardly varies. Then, we have the time-skip business. It’s divided into parts (Present, Past), yet we bounce between timelines in the Past anyway. So, that’s pointless. I really disliked how often we bounced back and forth between timelines, and how it made zero sense for Maeve to be how she was in the book. The pace was also off: nothing impactful happens until well over the halfway mark, where most readers would’ve already stopped reading. I, the masochist, wanted to see it through to understand(?) the hype and to discuss the book with my colleagues. Like Moog said, this is not how stories are told! It’s clunky, the influencer cliches are tired, there was something brewing about the patriarchy that didn’t go anywhere fast, and I hated Natalie so. much.
The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
Rating: 4 stars
This essay by Le Guin examines the vehicle that is a novel, as well our general societal understanding of narrative and plot. As a writer and book lover, I loved it. Le Guin challenges the standard ‘beginning, middle, and end’ of a novel and points out that non-linear stories also exist. In fact, they exist like a carrier bag or sack, full of many small moments that make meaningful sense altogether. Short but sweet, and a great example of why I love Le Guin’s fictional works.
