1. “Romance Roundup: June 2023” by Kristina Wright. “It’s SUMMER! Okay, so I have a job and don’t get summers off, but I still look forward to the warmer months like I did when I was a kid. Everything is just…easier, you know? No lunches to pack, no homework to check, less stress about bedtimes and schedules (and clean laundry, if I’m being honest). It’s also a time when I give myself permission to slack off — a little — and spend the occasional afternoon reading. As I sort through a year’s worth of school projects, well-used supplies, and other detritus at the bottom of my kids’ backpacks, I’ll be looking forward to taking a break and tackling my TBR pile. Until next month, here are the books that are easing me into the halcyon days of June.”


2. Lawrence De Maria’s review of Beware the Woman: A Novel by Megan Abbott (G.P. Putnam’s Sons). “For my money, everything evolves too slowly, and the ending, while shocking, seems implausible. That’s not to say Abbott is a bad writer. Her descriptions are wonderful. Every time someone got bitten by a mosquito (why are these people always eating outside?), I felt like scratching. Various procedures and dead things are rendered quite colorfully, to say the least. And Jacy and Jed frequently — and vigorously — hop in the sack (or onto the counter), although given Jacy’s delicate condition, much of the sex happens in flashbacks.”


3. Michael Causey’s review of Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You: A Memoir by Lucinda Williams (Crown). “The difference between good art and great art is bravery. Superior craftsmanship soars only so high. Art infused with a transparent honesty about its creator and their surrounding world becomes transcendent and illuminating as we experience something genuinely new and thought-provoking. As a singer-songwriter, Lucinda Williams has been a brave artist for decades. Her voice aches with the pain and exquisite beauty of her lyrics. Her new memoir, Don’t Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You, is equal to her best songs; in its often-searing pages, she provides context and backstories to some of her finest work.”


4. Olesya Salnikova Gilmore’s review of American Ending: A Novel by Mary Kay Zuravleff (Blair). “Mary Kay Zuravleff’s American Ending follows Yelena Federoff, the first American-born child of Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents in a small Appalachian Pennsylvania town with a mine and a sizable immigrant population to work it. It’s a coming-of-age story about a young girl who starts off, in 1908, looking for her ending — rather than her beginning — in a nation harsh to immigrants and to Russians. Though it takes time to become immersed in Yelena’s world, the novel is a detailed, achingly realistic look at one family’s struggles within a largely unheard-of community.”


5. Kitty Kelley’s review of Taking Things Hard: The Trials of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Robert R. Garnett (LSU Press). “How interesting it might’ve been for an accomplished scholar such as Garnett to have examined Graham and her ascent in the world in comparison to that of Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Both working-class characters of questionable backgrounds and no education came to represent the American Dream. An analysis of such by an English professor could’ve added insight and scholarship to the corpus of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Alas, a missed opportunity. Chances are, the bitch goddess will not be spraying splendor on Garnett’s treatise, but the professor can take comfort in the legion of Fitzgerald aficionados who will find some nuggets within Taking Things Hard to be worthy of gold.”

Subscribe to our newsletter here, and follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest! Advertise with us here.