July Favorites, Reading Rush Wrap Up, + My August TBR!

I think I finally did it. I think I beat my reading slump.

It only took me… five months. But I did it!!!

July was a surprisingly good month for me. At this point, I had given up all hope and thought that I would never regain the motivation to read like I had, but then came The Reading Rush.

Readathons scare me. A lot. So I had never done one before. I never liked the idea of pushing myself to read as much as possible, because I thought it would inevitably cause me to burn myself out.

Looks like I was wrong.

Read more to see how I did in The Reading Rush, plus a list of my favorite July reads, and my August TBR!

Reading Rush Wrap Up

I joined The Reading Rush very last second. The day it began. I quickly picked out a TBR and started reading. I managed to read two books in that first day (an ARC of The Library of Lost Things by Laura Taylor Namey, and an ARC of Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren).

On day 2, I started Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston, the sequel to Heart of Iron and one of my most anticipated releases of the year. I finished that on day 3. On a roll, I picked up Wicked Fox by Kat Cho on day 4, and finished it in one day. On day 5, I moved on to We Hunt the Flame by Hafsah Faizal. I technically started We Hunt the Flame back in May, but life got in the way and I never got past 170 pages. For The Reading Rush, I did a quick reread of those 170 pages and managed to finish the rest of the book in one day!

Then the weekend hit, and with it went all of my hopes of actually reading all 7 books. I meant to read Romanov by Nadine Brandes and Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson, but I just couldn’t get to it.

That said, 5/7 isn’t bad! It’s more than I would have read otherwise, and I got to some books I didn’t think I would get to for awhile.

But the biggest benefit of this was that it reminded me how much fun reading can be, and how satisfying it is to read books in one day. It’s been awhile since I was able to just run through books, and it was really nice to do that again.

[ Related: Top 8 August 2019 Releases ]

July Favorites

In July, I read 7 other books in addition to the 5 books I read for The Reading Rush. For the first time, I actually had a hard time picking out which books of the 12 that I wanted to highlight.

Okay, it wasn’t too hard. Here are my favorites:

The Burning Shadow (Origin #2) by Jennifer L. Armentrout (ARC)

Rating: 4 Stars

I love Jennifer L. Armentrout’s books so much. They’re just so fun and easy to jump into and adore. Obviously, this one was no exception.

Well Met by Jen DeLuca (ARC)

Rating: 5 Stars

This one took me by surprise. I knew I’d like it, but I never expected to love it as much as I did. It was so fun, adorable, and just great. And now I really, really want to go to a Ren Faire.

Soul of Stars (Heart of Iron #2) by Ashley Poston

Rating: 4.5 Stars

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this book for a decade even though it’s only been a year and a half. In all serious, this book was great. I was so happy to be back in this world and see these characters again.

We Hunt the Flame (Sands of Arawiya #1) by Hafsah Faizal

Rating: 5 Stars
(Note: this link will take you to my Currently Reading + Predictions post, my review will be posted this Saturday!)

Finally!! I’ve finished this book! It’s taken me a while to read this one, but boy was it worth it. This is definitely one of my favorite reads of the year. The writing, the world, the characters. It was all so perfect. Also, my predictions were right.

August TBR

I’m really hoping to keep my reading streak going in August. Since The Reading Rush seemed to help a lot, I decided to to The Disney-A-Thon!! How could I not do a Disney-themed reading challenge???

Since the Disney-A-Thon has some specific prompts, so I made a full post discussing my TBR for this challenge. That said, I still wanted to talk about the books I really want to make sure I read this month. Even if I fail at the Disney-A-Thon, I want these books read: