Hello, Book Nerds! Welcome back to Reading Has Ruined My Life or welcome if you are new. As always, my name is Hannah and I am your captain on this journey into my bookcases.
Happy Pride to all my LGBTQIA+ readers. I hope you are still having a safe and wonderful Pride Month. As a reminder to all, RHRML is a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community. You are welcome and respected here. You are safe here.
Today, I am back at ya once again with a listicle. I’m loving my listicles right now, sue me. As it’s Pride Month I am once again bringing you five reads to enjoy this June. Now let’s get to the books!
5. I want to start out this list with a middle grade novel because I think this one is just so cute. Please give a warm round of applause to In the Role of Brie Hutchens by Nicole Melleby. The main character is a dramatic theatre kid with average grades and is currently attending a Catholic middle school. The hook is the main character’s mother walks in on her looking at "scandalous" images of her favorite actress. Not wanting to open up about her sexuality, Brie lies to her mom’s face and claims she’s received the honor of crowing the school’s statue of Mary at the biggest event of the year. This distracts her mom, but now Brie has to actually receive that honor and she needs the help of the smartest girl in school. But it gets worse! She develops a crush on the girl! A friend of mine told me about this read and they said, and I quote, it is “gay panic at Catholic school while sucker punching you in the gut with emotion and also there’s some comedy of errors.” I’m just going to leave that here.
4. Next up is A Beautiful Crime by Christopher Bollen. We all know the couple who con together stay together, and that’s what Nick and Clay do. They’re gonna scam a billionaire into buying a bunch of fake antiques so they can sail off into the sunset together. Things aren’t that easy though as greed begins to take over both Nick and Clay. I hope you enjoy this gay crime story.
3. Want another gay crime story? Good, cause I got another one for you. Meet The Verifiers by Jane Pek. Claudia Lin is expected to be the perfect Chinese-American daughter. Get good grades so you can get a good job, marry a nice Chinese boy, have kids, and repeat the cycle. Except Claudia majored in English, is a lesbian, and has a job that’s anything but conventional. Yeah Claudia’s job is to investigate dating site matches of the wealthy to make sure those potential dates are who they say they are. Honestly, it’s her dream job. Then a client disappears and is found dead a few days later. The cops say suicide, Claudia disagrees. Part murder mystery, part family drama this book has it all.
2. What do I love? Gothic Horror! So please welcome to the stage She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran! Gothic haunted house set in Vietnam, ghost bride, atmospheric horror, family drama, nasty bugs that make my skin crawl; sign me up. I’m not going to tell you much else about this one, I’ll just let the vibes do the talking.
1. Finally, at number one, we have A Darker Mischief by Derek Milman. Dark academia, secret societies, class divides, and sacrifice can all be found in A Darker Mischief. This novel follows Cal who is awarded a scholarship to an elite boarding school by the name of Essex. Here he’s ridiculed for basically everything before he learns of a secret society that will make him Essex royalty. Cal manages to take part in the society’s rush process and finds himself falling for his unlikely ally Luke Kim. Before he can do anything about his crush, he first has to survive the increasingly dangerous initiation rituals. I don’t know about you but I’m sold.
Thus endeth our list! Thank you very much for joining me today. I hope you all had a good time and found a new read. With that, I must bid you all adieu. I shall return next week with a new review on the season 3 finale of Bridgerton. If you can’t wait that long you can always check out my podcast. You can listen to Nothing to See Hear on Spotify and YouTube. Enjoy me telling you a spooky story or you can listen to me and my co-hosts talk Scooby-Doo, Disney, and a lot of other things. I promise you’ll like it.
Until next time, stay safe, wash your hands, and read some good books for me.
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