Hello Readers! Typically, June is my month with the most ARCs (advanced readers copies), but this year it was May and July. And August coming in third. Which means most of my books this month are ARCs, but I’ve decided to participate in Trope-ical Readathon with the hopes it will push me to read beyond my ARCs. I’ve filled my Readathon TBR with my must-read ARCs, as well as books from my #20BooksOfSummer and Popsugar challenges. The months I’ve read the most books are months I’ve participated in Readathons, so I’m hopeful it will work again this time. 😉

This TBR will only include those must-read ARCs and two books I would for sure like to read from my other challenges. Then I’ll just mood-read off my Readathon TBR.

✷✷I’m currently hosting a US GIVEAWAY for my ARC copy of The Witchery by S. Isabelle!✷✷

Let’s see what I have planned for August!

Bend Toward the Sun by Jen Devon

My current read and I am loving it so far!

Synopsis:

Jen Devon’s Bend Toward the Sun is a gorgeous, emotional love story about taking unexpected paths, accepting loss, and finding strength in the transformative power of love.

Rowan McKinnon believes love isn’t real. With a botany PhD, two best friends who embrace her social quirkiness, and some occasional no-strings sex, she thinks she has everything she needs. But she hides deep wounds from the past—from an emotionally negligent mother, and a fiancé who treated her like a pawn in a game. The only love she’s ever known came from her grandmother Edie, who taught her to care for all things that grow.

After a chance encounter at a future winery, Rowan takes on the restoration of the property’s abandoned vineyard, immersing herself in nurturing the grapes back to their former glory—and trying not to think about Harrison Brady.

An obstetrician profoundly struggling after losing a patient, Harry Brady no longer believes he is capable of keeping people safe. Reeling from the loss and his crumbled romantic relationship, Harry leaves Los Angeles to emotionally recover at his parents’ new vineyard in Pennsylvania. He’ll work to get the place ready to open, and try to pick up the pieces of his heart.

As soon as he meets Rowan, sunlight begins to crack through the darkness smothering Harry’s soul. He’s compelled to explore the undeniable pull between them. After spending a lifetime protecting herself from feeling anything, for anyone, Rowan tries to keep things casual.

But even she can’t ignore their explosive connection.

A powerful, emotional novel about the ways love can change your life, Bend Toward the Sun is an unforgettable romance and a feast for the senses and the soul. 

Goodreads
Expected publication August 9, 2022

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Stay Awake by Megan Goldin

This will be my third book by Goldin, and I can always count on a satisfying thriller when I pick up one of her books. I’m pretty excited about this one that sounds very different.

Synopsis:

Liv Reese wakes up in the back of a taxi with no idea where she is or how she got there. When she’s dropped off at the door of her brownstone, a stranger answers―a stranger who now lives in her apartment and forces her out in the cold. She reaches for her phone to call for help, only to discover it’s missing, and in its place is a bloodstained knife. That’s when she sees that her hands are covered in black pen, scribbled messages like graffiti on her skin: STAY AWAKE.

Two years ago, Liv was living with her best friend, dating a new man, and thriving as a successful writer for a trendy magazine. Now, she’s lost and disoriented in a New York City that looks nothing like what she remembers. Catching a glimpse of the local news, she’s horrified to see reports of a crime scene where the victim’s blood has been used to scrawl a message across a window, the same message that’s inked on her hands. What did she do last night? And why does she remember nothing from the past two years? Liv finds herself on the run for a crime she doesn’t remember committing as she tries to piece together the fragments of her life. But there’s someone who does know exactly what she did, and they’ll do anything to make her forget―permanently.

In the vein of SJ Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep and Christopher Nolan’s cult classic Memento, Megan Goldin’s Stay Awake is an electrifying novel that plays with memory and murder.

Goodreads
Expected August 9, 2022

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Luck & Last Resorts by Sarah Grunder Ruiz

I fell hard and fast for this cover! I haven’t read Ruiz’ previous book that has some overlapping characters, but it’s been on my TBR since it came out. I didn’t accept this invitation at first because I was worried I might feel like I was missing something having not read Love, Lists, and Fancy Ships, but after seeing several reviewers say it’s not necessary, I decided to pick it up!

Synopsis:

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove and “writer of astonishing depth” (The Washington Times) comes a poignant comedy about a crime that never took place, a would-be bank robber who disappears into thin air, and eight extremely anxious strangers who find they have more in common than they ever imagined.

Viewing an apartment normally doesn’t turn into a life-or-death situation, but this particular open house becomes just that when a failed bank robber bursts in and takes everyone in the apartment hostage. As the pressure mounts, the eight strangers begin slowly opening up to one another and reveal long-hidden truths.

First is Zara, a wealthy bank director who has been too busy to care about anyone else until tragedy changed her life. Now, she’s obsessed with visiting open houses to see how ordinary people live—and, perhaps, to set an old wrong to right. Then there’s Roger and Anna-Lena, an Ikea-addicted retired couple who are on a never-ending hunt for fixer-uppers to hide the fact that they don’t know how to fix their own failing marriage. Julia and Ro are a young lesbian couple and soon-to-be parents who are nervous about their chances for a successful life together since they can’t agree on anything. And there’s Estelle, an eighty-year-old woman who has lived long enough to be unimpressed by a masked bank robber waving a gun in her face. And despite the story she tells them all, Estelle hasn’t really come to the apartment to view it for her daughter, and her husband really isn’t outside parking the car.

As police surround the premises and television channels broadcast the hostage situation live, the tension mounts and even deeper secrets are slowly revealed. Before long, the robber must decide which is the more terrifying prospect: going out to face the police, or staying in the apartment with this group of impossible people.

Rich with Fredrik Backman’s “pitch-perfect dialogue and an unparalleled understanding of human nature” (Shelf Awareness), Anxious People’s whimsical plot serves up unforgettable insights into the human condition and a gentle reminder to be compassionate to all the anxious people we encounter every day.

Goodreads
Expected on August 9, 2022

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With Love From Wish & Co. by Minnie Drake

This will be my second book by Drake. I read her previous novel, The Lost Love Song, and really enjoyed it, so I was happy to be invited to read this one, as well.

Synopsis:

A heartwarming novel about what we are prepared to give–and give up–in the name of love, from the author of Star-Crossedand The Lost Love Song. 

Two boxes, both alike in size and shape . . .

Marnie Fairchild is the brains and talent behind Wish & Co., a boutique store that offers a bespoke gift-buying service to wealthy clients with complicated lives. Brian Charlesworth is Marnie’s most prized customer, and today she’s wrapping the perfect anniversary gift for his wife, Suzanne . . . and a birthday present for his mistress, Leona. What could possibly go wrong?

For years, Marnie’s had her heart set on moving Wish & Co. to the historic shopfront once owned by her grandfather. When the chance to bid for the property unexpectedly arises, Marnie–distracted–makes an uncharacteristic mistake. Soon Brian is in a fight to rescue his marriage, and Marnie is scrabbling to keep her dreams alive. With the situation so complicated, the last thing Marnie needs is to fall for Brian and Suzanne’s gorgeous son, Luke. In the end, will it be her head or her heart that wins out? 

Goodreads
Expected August 16, 2022

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Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid

I enjoyed Malibu Rising last year where Carrie Soto made a brief appearance, so I’m excited to pick this one up and get more of her story.

Synopsis:

In this powerful novel about the cost of greatness, a legendary athlete attempts a comeback when the world considers her past her prime—from the New York Times bestselling author of Malibu Rising.

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two.

But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.

At thirty-seven years old, Carrie makes the monumental decision to come out of retirement and be coached by her father for one last year in an attempt to reclaim her record. Even if the sports media says that they never liked “the Battle-Axe” anyway. Even if her body doesn’t move as fast as it did. And even if it means swallowing her pride to train with a man she once almost opened her heart to: Bowe Huntley. Like her, he has something to prove before he gives up the game forever.

In spite of it all, Carrie Soto is back, for one epic final season. In this riveting and unforgettable novel, Taylor Jenkins Reid tells her most vulnerable, emotional story yet.

Goodreads
Expected August 30, 2022

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Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesymn Ward

I’ve had this book waiting on my shelf for almost two years, and it fulfills my ‘Read An Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner’ prompt on my Popsugar Reading Challenge. I also just read a short story by Ward that made me even more excited to pick this one up!

Synopsis:

In Jesmyn Ward’s first novel since her National Book Award–winning Salvage the Bones, this singular American writer brings the archetypal road novel into rural twenty-first-century America. Drawing on Morrison and Faulkner, The Odyssey and the Old Testament, Ward gives us an epochal story, a journey through Mississippi’s past and present that is both an intimate portrait of a family and an epic tale of hope and struggle. Ward is a major American writer, multiply awarded and universally lauded, and in Sing, Unburied, Sing she is at the height of her powers.

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

Sing, Unburied, Sing grapples with the ugly truths at the heart of the American story and the power, and limitations, of the bonds of family. Rich with Ward’s distinctive, musical language, Sing, Unburied, Sing is a majestic new work and an essential contribution to American literature.

Goodreads

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Tigers, Not Daughters by Samantha Mabry

Another book that will fulfill a very specific prompt on my reading challenge: A book with a tiger on the cover or “tiger” in the title. I’ve read two other books by Mabry, a local Texan author, and her writing is always lyrical. This one is a dark retelling of Little Women, which is so very intriguing.

Synopsis:

The Torres sisters dream of escape. Escape from their needy and despotic widowed father, and from their San Antonio neighborhood, full of old San Antonio families and all the traditions and expectations that go along with them. In the summer after her senior year of high school, Ana, the oldest sister, falls to her death from her bedroom window. A year later, her three younger sisters, Jessica, Iridian, and Rosa, are still consumed by grief and haunted by their sister’s memory. Their dream of leaving Southtown now seems out of reach. But then strange things start happening around the house: mysterious laughter, mysterious shadows, mysterious writing on the walls. The sisters begin to wonder if Ana really is haunting them, trying to send them a message—and what exactly she’s trying to say.

In a stunning follow-up to her National Book Award–longlisted novel All the Wind in the World, Samantha Mabry weaves an aching, magical novel that is one part family drama, one part ghost story, and one part love story.

Goodreads

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What are you most excited to read this month? Have you read any of these books yet? Let me know in the comments!

Happy Wandering!