Despite a fire assignment that took up exactly half of my July, I did find quite a bit of time to get a good amount of summer reading in.
I did deactivate both my Facebook and Instagram accounts for most of the month, which probably helped quite a bit.
This month’s reads included a few popcorn thrillers, a true crime book written by a Flagstaff author, a contemporary fiction novel, a historical fiction piece and a travel memoir.
(As a reminder: I always track my reading on Goodreads.)
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Pure Land: A True Story of Three Lives, Three Cultures and the Search for Heaven on Earth by Annette McGivney
Recommend
This was my book club’s pick for July. While it focuses mainly on the brutal 2006 murder of Tomomi Hanamure, who was slaughtered while hiking to Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, “Pure Land” also touches on McGivney’s family history as well as that of Hanamure’s murderer, Randy Wescogame. The first two thirds of this book were exceptional. McGivney, in true journalistic fashion, was thorough with her interviews of everyone she could track down who played a role in both Hanamure and Wescogame’s lives. She did an exquisite job detailing Hanamure’s travels and expounding on her journal entries and presented thorough research into the history of the Havasupai people. However, the last third of the book was a bit of a struggle for me since it got way too clinical in its detailing of child abuse and post-traumatic stress disorder, and I think it took a bit away from the central story of the book.
It’s Only the Himalayas and Other Tales of Miscalculation from an Overconfident Backpacker by Sue Bedford
Don’t recommend
This travel memoir started off strong on a safari through Africa followed by a trekking trip in Nepal, but the second half of it devolved into messy journal entries about sex, drinking and some pretty heavy drug use. Bedford seems to be a great writer! I loved her stunning descriptions of the Philippines’ archipelago and the Buddhist temples of Cambodia, and I could relate a lot to her struggles meditating at an Indian ashram. However — while I typically do love a good travel memoir filled with debauchery — I wish the second half of this book found better balance between stories about vodka buckets, hungover vomiting and threesomes, and stories about literally anything else.
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
Recommend
“In Five Years” is centered around Dannie, a recently-engaged Type-A Manhattan lawyer, who wakes up five years into the future to find herself in a new apartment with a new man. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t want to give away the spoilers, but this book was drastically different than what I thought it would be. I didn’t love any of the main characters at first but Dannie and her best friend Bella both grew on me a bit. People seem to either love or hate this book, and while I didn’t absolutely love it (and I really disliked the ending) I’m still going to recommend it because the writing and pacing are both good, and you might love it even if I didn’t.
Never Lie by Freida McFadden
Don’t recommend
This was a typical popcorn thriller centered around two people snowed in at a middle-of-nowhere cabin that belongs to a missing woman. I definitely didn’t see the ending coming, but also because the ending made zero sense. The red herrings were so easy to spot that they weren’t believable at all, and the twist at the end didn’t line up with the character narration, which is my biggest pet peeve with thrillers. The two narrators had very different backgrounds but the overly simplistic writing conveyed them both in the same tone, and I found all the characters to be annoying.
What Lies in the Woods by Kate Alice Marshall
Recommend
I’m not sure if I actually recommend this psychological thriller, or if the bar was just set so low by “Never Lie” that I find myself recommending this because it was significantly better than “Never Lie.” “What Lies in the Woods” tells the story of Naomi, who was brutally stabbed 17 times as a child in the forest near her house. When her convicted attacker dies in prison 20 years later, Naomi — along with her two childhood friends Cass and Liv — find themselves revisiting the day of the attack and realizing the case isn’t as closed as they once believed. I didn’t see any of the twists coming and none of them seemed too far-fetched. This is probably one of the better thrillers I’ve read lately.
Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson
Recommend
This historical fiction novel is roughly based on the life of Mary Lumpkin, the slave mistress of Robert Lumpkin, who owned Richmond’s infamous “Devil’s Half Acre” slave jail. This book was hard to read. It went into great detail regarding the torture, rape and abuse of slaves held in the Confederate States, but I think it should be a necessary read for myriad reasons. Johnson is a powerful writer and I know this book will sit with me for a while.
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