June 2021: My Boyfriend Picks My TBR

Hi everyone,

It’s now a week into June, which means it is time to start talking about my June TBR! I’m a bit of a mood reader to be honest, so having a TBR is always a bit of a daunting task, so this month I decided to make a bit of a game of it, and made my boyfriend pick a bunch of books to add to my TBR. He’s not a YA reader, so he doesn’t really know much about the books on my shelves, and so he picked a lot of the books based purely off how they looked. I’m thinking this might be a good tactic because I have a tendency to buy books and then just stop wanting to read them a while later, and I just keep putting them off. So anyway, he selected most of this list for me, and I just included some additional books that he didn’t pick because they’re recent releases I wanted to get to this month, or because I have review copies that I’m expecting to get to this month 🙂

• Kingdom of Flesh and Fire by Jennifer L. Armentrout. Okay, technically I’ve actually just finished this book because it was the first book I picked up this month, but it was still part of my tbr. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about picking it up, since I found FBAA really problematic, but people kept telling me the relationship gets less toxic as the series goes on, so I wanted to try it.
• The Ones We’re Meant to Find by Joan He. There’s been a lot of hype around this book, so even though my boyfriend decided to keep it on the shelf, I went and added it to the TBR anyway.
• A Phoenix First Must Burn by Various Authors, and edited by Patrice Caldwell. This has been on my shelf for a little while now (sorry, Moon!) and I keep meaning to pick it up, but I’m weird about short story anthologies and usually need to be in a particular mood to read them. But this is one that Alex added to my TBR pile, so I’ll be trying to fit it in this month.
• Kingsbane by Claire Legrand. Again, this is a book that has been on my shelf for a while now (since BookCon 2019, yikes!) and I’ve been thinking about picking it up, but I also forgot a lot of the details of the previous book, and it’s pretty intimidating because it’s a chunky novel. Alex picked this one because he wanted to balance out the shorter books he suggested for this month.
• Fable by Adrienne Young. Another boyfriend pick! He thought the cover looked pretty, and I was secretly quite pleased it got added to the pile. The next book in the series has been making waves around the reviewing world recently, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
• Hold Back the Tide by Melinda Salisbury. There was apparently a choice between two relatively short novels about the sea (the other book was The Girl the Sea Gave Back by Adrienne Young) but HBtT eventually won the pick. A few of my friends who have read this book said they found it a bit strange, so I’m curious to see how this one goes.
• Skyhunter by Marie Lu. This is a recent purchase and if Alex hadn’t added it to the pile because it looks so pretty, I would’ve done it anyway, because I’ve been wanting to read it since Marie Lu announced the book!
• Vulture by Bex Hogan. I may have added this one to the list because I’m excited to read the end of the trilogy.

Not pictured but also on the list:

• In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland. While my Illumicrate edition of this book is gorgeous, I think I’ve decided to review it for my quarterly piece for the YASA (Young Adult Studies Association) since I like to write about very recent releases for them, but most of my recent releases are either second or third in a series, or they’re a book that I have on Netgalley, which I’ve agreed to review for this site 🙂
• The Crown of Gilded Bones by Jennifer L. Armentrout. Again, I want to try my best to read this trilogy, since it’s been so hyped and I want to find out what happens and why people love it so much.
• Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé. I am so SO excited for this book after hearing what it’s about, but annoyingly my copy is still in the post so I have to wait for it to arrive. It began shipping today, and is expected to arrive on Wednesday.
• Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim. I’ve got this book on Netgalley to review.
• Monstrous Design by Kat Dunn. Another Netgalley book to review, and my current read. I likely won’t get around to posting until after the book is published on Thursday, but I’m hoping to!

Haha, wow, I’ve just realised that this TBR is 13 books long, which is a bit longer than my typical TBR. I’ll probably not actually get around to all of these books, just because I have about 100 papers to mark this month, a journal article to edit, and a lesson plan/presentation to prepare, but I’ll definitely give it a good go!

What are some of your TBR books for this month, and which ones are you most looking forward to? Join in the discussion by leaving a comment in the section down below <3