A Literary Princess

Somehow, June felt overly long, and like it blew right on by. Celebrated my mom's birthday, made some art in sticker form for her, went to the zoo, sculpted a bird out of glass, took up latte art. And how could I forget, the suncatcher I made for the yarn shop. I guess it was pretty busy! I know I said I was going to take this month easy on the reading front, but I feel like I still managed to read a fair amount. A good chunk of novellas (I love you, Murderbot), but still!

Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – A lot of fun! Hurt my feelings a little bit! Non consenual body mods is my favorite genre. I kept thinking [REDACTED] was going to betray them, and was pleasantly surprised to find out they didn't.

All Systems Red by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – rereading all of Murderbot to refresh for the new installment! Still love it. Love how quickly Bot goes from "I hate humans" to "no one touches my humans". Love how much Gurathin is like bot. Love how bot hates him for it. This is the first time reading since the show came out, and I still don't like Skarsgard for it.

How To Hold Someone In Your Heart by Mizuki Tsujimura ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Back on my Tsujimura bullshit! Didn't enjoy it as much as the first one in some way. I think it's the lack of Newness. But still full of Feelings. Grief again. Loved ones are gone from the world, but not our hearts. Ouchie. Would be hurt again.

Artificial Condition by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Continuing my Murderbot reread. No new Thoughts, except maybe I think this is my favorite because of the Bot ART interactions. A Private Channel With My Friend. Keep The Communication Device In Case We're In Range Again Someday. ART playing Santuary Moon episodes and OST to calm Bot. Chewing the plaster about this. I love them your honor.

The Blighted Stars by Megan E O'Keefe ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – This one is hard for me to rate because there are a lot of things that hit My Buttons. Feelings about AI spaceships, mind controlling fungus, tiny robot companions, there's a lot here that I really did enjoy. And yet. It's not even that the romance was bad, but every time they ogled at each other I was left thinking can we move on? Y'all are running for your lives, this is not the time. I'd like to read it with my own eyes and see if the narrator had anything to do with it, because this is not adding up.

Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – For some reason the ending didn't change this time? [REDACTED] still crushed to death? Has anyone else experienced this? I'm also fascinated with when Bot calls itself SecUnit vs when it calls itself Murderbot. It does so twice in this entire novella. Once when its cover is blown and everyone's pointing guns at it, and again when [REDACTED] dies and it fails to save it. I'm sure this means nothing.

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon ⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Book of the month! This was cute and silly and fun and needed to be longer. More fleshed out. Love that the message seems to be It's Never Too Late. Would have loved to have taken a bit longer to get there. It was Almost Gay, but again. No time to discover that. Even the Big Fight seemed too short. The illustrations were lovely and added a lot, and the translation didn't feel stiff or choppy.

Wolfworm by T Kingfisher ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – Okay this one Got Me. It wasn't the body horror, it wasn't the locked underground, it wasn't the animals acting weird. It was The Bugs. Not the least bit helped by the fact somehow every time I read this, some sort of bug was crawling on or around me. Enjoyable, and the ending was cute, which is rare for a horror novel, would be scared again.

Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang ⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Read because tumblr told me to! What tumblr did not tell me that it was a Tragedy on par with Gideon the Ninth and The Once and Future Witches. Thanks, tumblr! In all seriousness this was a great book with great and terrible characters, and the only thing keeping it from being a full five stars is there was a lot of textbook-y info dumps right at the beginning. They were relevant (they were so, so relevant), but it's hard to get through. I figured out the magic system before the characters, and let me tell you! It still punched!

I don't think I can pinpoint a Favorite of the month. I want to say Wolfworm, but I think that's just recency bias. I have fond thoughts about Bluebird, and Blood Over Bright Haven was wonderfully done. I will endorse any of those in a heartbeat.

Books of 2026: June Wrap-Up.

'Twas the month of homes and hearts and murder islands, apparently?? Happy Pride?!?

I did try to read exclusively queer authors (plus Poetry Quest material), and I was successful on that front! I'm also still chugging along on my revision project (and feeling the deadline squeeze)(we won't talk about that)(much).

Reviews linked!:

BEING ARO ★★★ Enjoyed some of these a lot! Unimpressed with some, too, though. BEING ACE is the stronger collection, but I'm glad they both exist!

COME HOME TO MY HEART ★★★★★ This fucked me up so bad I had to set it down for a week. Achingly and heartbreakingly well done

MODEL HOME ★★★★ I will follow Rivers Solomon anywhere, up to and including a horrible HOA in Dallas suburbs. More literary bent than haunted house, still extraordinarily well done.

THE ODYSSEY ★★★★ Phenomenal and fascinating translation, hugely approachable and thoroughly modernized language (with good pedagogical reasons for why!), I will be checking out Wilson's ILIAD also because of this.

MAKE ME BETTER ★★★ I will also follow Gailey anywhere, up to and including coral cult island :)

SEASONS OF GLASS AND IRON ★★★★ Amal El-Mohtar once again knocking it out of the park!! Loved this prickly collection.

THE ENDING WRITES ITSELF ★★★½ Indulgent fun! Check it out if you're a writer and want someone coming for your jugular, maybe skip it if you're a mystery/thriller aficionado.

ANNA AKHMATOVA - 169/942 pages read. Made it through "Rosary"! I'm still scribbling a LOT of fragments in my notebook, I dig her stuff a lot, I think.

Next month, I will be swinging back around to read more Driscoll-adjacent fiction (writing project reasons). I've got seven (7) scenes I'm trying to finalize by the end of July to stay on my Oft-Revised Target--I need to have this manuscript wrapped up by early September, so we're approaching the Final Sprint. Send more caffeine, I'm gonna need it!!

Under the Cut: How I Conceptualize ~*★Stars★*~

Didn't read a ton of books this month, but luckily most were superlative-worthy (I swear the cover of Unicorn Hunters gets prettier the longer I look at it.) Also I feel that Jeff Vandermeer and I exist on a sort of astral plane together where we just go back and forth about Fucked Up Bears like the brains in that double galaxy brain meme

June 2026 reads

[loved liked ok nope dnf bookclub*]

The Count of Monte Cristo* • Summers at Castle Auburn • The Unicorn Hunters • The Tainted Cup • A Psalm for the Wild-Built • Cinder House • Samantha: the Next Chapter (first 6 chapter sneak preview) • Borne

June was an incredibly busy month in which I did a frankly insane amount of traveling, with the result that I managed to be in both Paris and Chicago for two separate heat waves (and not to be patriotic, but. That American air conditioning, man. Fuck the Star-Spangled Banner, that's what our national anthem should be about.) So I didn't get to a tonnn of reading but what I did read was mostly pretty interesting. I also managed to read 3 books off the Bella's Book Club summer reading list, so we'll call it a win.

The Count of Monte Cristo, vols 1-2* ★★★★☆ - So glad BBC picked one of my faves to read in June! I slightly prefer the second half of the book (which we'll read in September) but had a blast rereading this first chunk. Franz is such a hilarious POV character.

Summers at Castle Auburn ★★★★☆ - Did not expect this book to stick with me the way it did! I like that the fantasy elements are almost incidental to the coming-of-agey-ness of it all. Where of course the two most important lessons are 1) men ain't shit and 2) get radicalized by witnessing the injustices around you, idiot

The Unicorn Hunters [GR review]★★★1/2☆ - Hmm. I think if I wasn't such a fan of Anne of Brittany/Breton stuff in general I would have found this just okay, but I happen to be both of those things and also in my Unicorn Era. The day after I finished this book, I went to see the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries at the Musée de Cluny and it was awe-inspiring. ily medieval and early modern fiber arts <33

The Tainted Cup ★★★1/2☆ - Glad I finally got around to this one! The mystery was well-crafted and the fantasy world building very cool. Also enjoyed this particular take on the Holmes/Watson dynamic between an autistic GILF and her faithful Jared, 19. Will definitely read the next two in the series.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built ★★★☆☆ - Becky Chambers books are usually either profoundly beautiful to me or leave me out in the cold. This one was more like... lukewarm. The character arcs and dynamic weren't quite interesting enough to drive a story with so little conflict, imo.

Cinder House [GR review]★★★1/2☆ - Very cool take on Cinderella! Marske's writing as she described this amalgam of person + house was fascinatingly original. We really thought outside the bibbidi bobbidi bun here

Samantha: the Next Chapter ★★★☆☆ - Don't freak out, I didn't read the whole book, just a sneak peek consisting of the first six chapters (the whole book does not exist in ARC form yet.) They seem solid, with Samantha getting a good grade in Suffragette while the conflict begins to appear in the form of her grandmother getting dementia. The vibe feels a little juvenile (I'm assuming the AG brand defenders instructed the author not to have Samantha do shots and hook up with strangers at a speakeasy or anything) but it's possible that's due to the short chapter format that mirrors the original kids' books. The accompanying American Girl retrospective panel I attended was incredibly fun! I had no idea Valerie Tripp was such an engaging speaker.

I'm not even like, THAT much of an American Girl fan, I just find the idea of adult books featuring grown-up versions of the characters cool. But Samantha schmamantha, gimme some Josefina ones!

Borne [GR review]★★★★☆ - Can't believe it took me this long to get around to Borne when Jeff Vandermeer is one of my favorite authors and bears are some of my favorite animals. I appreciated what an intimate, character-forward story this was despite its buckwild post-apocalyptic setting. And those plot twists got me good!

DNFs: None.

June superlatives: here!

Next up:

July is once again gonna be Try To Finish All These ARCs Month. I'm currently reading Immortal Game and would love to get around to Taipei Story, The Felicity Complex, and maybe Dreamland. There's something so urgent and motivating about physical ARCs!

previous months:

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December Just One Word Book Photo Challenge

March Just One Word Book Photo Challenge

March Just One Word Book Photo Challenge

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March Just One Word Book Photo Challenge