What I read in August 2025

A quick review of each of the books I read this month

Hi! I’m back! These last few months have completely kicked my butt, but I’m glad to be back here and sharing with you, connecting with you, and what better place to start than with what I read last month? August reading felt like a mixed bag, much like the last several months have felt. I’ve yet to find a book that I’m wildly obsessed with and all I can do is think back to 2023 when I had one of the best reading years in recent memory. Why can’t they all be like that?! But, anyway…

Let’s get into the books I read and loved this month:

The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb | ★★★★★
An emotional gut punch of a novel, we’re following Corby as he’s struggling with losing his job, becoming a stay at home parent, and a growing addiction. When a massive tragedy befalls the family, Corby is sentenced to prison where he struggles to adjust to his new life. I had heard Wally Lamb books were sad but was not expecting the tragedy at the beginning of this story. There isn’t a ton of upswing inside so if that’s something you need, I’d steer clear. But this felt like a character study of one man’s life who was always striving to be better, and the many, many missteps along the way. This is one that will stick with me for sure. If you’re a sensitive reader, I encourage you to look up trigger warnings before reading.

Heart the Lover by Lily King | ★★★★½ (out Sep 30, 2025)
After meeting Sam and Yash her senior year of college, our narrator finds herself in a love triangle, but choices have to be made. Ones that will affect their lives forever. And now, decades later, she finds herself back in the past, reckoning with all that was left unsaid.

Lily King is an auto-buy author for me and I’ve been digging through her backlist so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this book, especially after seeing all the rave reviews. I’ll admit, I had a hard time with the first part of this novel. There was so much talk about classic writers and poets and writing that I found myself fairly bored. But I knew I had to keep pushing through and the rest of the book was more than worth the weight.

So much here felt like an emotional gut punch, and I loved seeing how the decisions of their earlier selves affected them later in life. The last parts of the book were at once sad and beautiful and I found myself tearing up in the best ways. Lily King has done it again.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides | ★★★★
This is my version of reading a classic. In a quiet suburb of Detroit, the five Lisbon sisters commit suicide one after another over the course of a year. Their story is told by the boys in the town who quietly observed them, and at times were able to peek into their lives. I’m glad I finally read this one and I liked a lot about it - including the interesting POV. Though I do wonder if the POV had been from someone else - the last of the sisters to die, or perhaps a parent - if I would’ve liked it more. Much of the story felt slow moving and I was often taken out of the emotion of the story when we learned about the lives of side characters that didn’t seem to matter in the grand scheme of things. I’ve surprisingly never watched the movie, but reading this did make me want to get into it and see how the two differ.

Mendell Station by J.B. Hwang | ★★★★
In this slim novel, Miriam’s best friend has just died which starts her on a path of questioning her faith, and changing her life. She decides to become a mail carrier to see if it’ll help her to silence the grief she can’t seem to overcome. This is such a simple book on grief after loss and trying to find yourself, and put back together the pieces again. As the book starts in January 2020, you also see the pandemic creep up and what that meant for those who were essential workers. But mostly, this is about friendship, and the people who have changed our lives in multiple ways. While it might be a bit too slow for some, I loved listening to this one.

You, With a View by Jessica Joyce | ★★★★
After the loss of her beloved grandmother, Noelle finds mysterious photos of her Gram and a man named Paul - decidedly NOT her grandfather. She tracks down the mystery man who turns out to be none other than the grandfather of her high school nemesis, Theo. When Noelle learns Paul and her Gram were engaged to be married and didn’t get to go on their roadtrip honeymoon, she decides to recreate it - with Paul and Theo in tow. Though the romance angle of this book was a typical rom com, but what took it up a notch was the relationship with Paul between both main characters, and the photography aspect. As a photographer myself, I loved seeing Noelle find her footing with that again, and the ways Theo encouraged her. I won’t remember much about this book, but those few things will stick out when I think of this book.

A quick list of the rest of the books I read in the month:

• Totally and Completely Fine by Elissa Sussman | ★★★½
  Widowed single mother meets famous actor and they hit it off immediately. But I didn’t feel any chemistry between the two, there was no build up of a relationship, it was just lust shifted into something else.

• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico | ★★★
  A commentary on what we see on social media vs real life, this translated novel mostly felt boring and at times as if maybe I wasn’t smart enough for it.

• Euphoria by Lily King | ★★★½
  Having a hard time rating this one - there were parts I loved, parts that I had a hard time understanding, and parts that I was bored by. But safe to say a historical fiction about a love triangle between anthropologists while in tribal lands was something I haven’t read before.

• It’s Different This Time by Joss Richard | ★★★½
  There was so much to enjoy about this second chance romance - two people coming back together, a beautiful brownstone in NYC, and the ways in which they’re both fulfilling their dreams. For a debut, I liked it well enough to keep an eye out for what she does next.

• Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes | ★★★½
  Two people, with plenty of baggage, find their way to one another. It was good but mostly forgettable.

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