What I Read: May and June 2026

📖🌶️⭐️ The good, the bad, the boring, the super spicy, and some 5 star reads you need to RUN and read immediately!

Housekeeping Detail: Before we getting started talking about books, I want to remind you that today is the last day of the Amazon Prime Days Sale.

I just created a post with What I Put In My Cart and Bought, made a Reel, and last week I shared some of my Favorite Deals and Why I Recommend Them!

My Brutally Honest Book Reviews

I keep all of my books I’ve read on my Amazon Book Page! I wish I had time to update another platform like Goodreads but I don’t.

Here we go….

Whistler - 5/5 stars AMAZING LOVED IT! Along with Buckeye and Strangers, this is one of my very few 5 star reads of 2026.

Ann Patchett wrote it AND narrated Whistler so it was especially perfect. Reminds me of when Julia Whelan narrated her own, My Oxford Year, which is currently Free on Kindle Unlimited.

Whistler is a story of a chance encounter of a grown woman and her husband randomly encountering the woman’s stepfather who was only a part her life for a few years in her childhood. This is a story of family, of loss, of what could have been, yet to be reminded that what we do have is beautiful. I cried, I thought about my own family, choices, my mortality, my childhood, my adulthood, just such a wonderful book. I had a few 25k step walks listening to Ann Patchett because she is a master storyteller, a creator of characters so real you feel like you know them. I didn’t want this book to end. I laughed, I cried, I thought about my life, my choices, how one seemingly small choice can affect so many things, with ripple effects for decades.

One of my favorite lines of the book - and it was mentioned a few times and a few ways - was something to the effect of that you really have no idea what’s going on in someone’s relationship or behind closed doors. And isn’t that the truth. You will LOVE this book.

And if you haven’t read her Tom Lake, which is narrated by none other than Meryl Streep, run and download that too.

This Story May Save Your Life - 4/5 stars. A thriller with some romance aspects, it follows a couple of friends (a man and a woman) who are podcasters. And the woman’s husband disappears and turns up dead. It’s a whodunnnit type of thriller with some twists and turns that kept me guessing. Listening to it because of the podcast element to it is the way to go.

If you want more in this thriller + podcast plot, definitely check out Listen For the Lie (currently FREE on Kindle Unlimited) and None Of This Is True.

Yesteryear - 4/5 stars. Long review, lot to say! This is a really hard review to write because I am very conflicted about the book. To preface how eagerly anticipated this book has been, it was contracted to be made into a movie before the book even came out (4/7) starring Anne Hathaway. I think the movie could be good but rarely do I watch movies based on books because they don’t tend to live up to the book or things are drastically different, etc.

Back to the book, we follow an influencer who amasses a huge following on Instagram showcasing her life as a tradwife. Meaning, she is a good Christian woman, says yes to her husband, has a lot of kids, loves to make her own bread, you know the woman. But I actually kind of hated her. Not that she’s a tradwife, but that she seemed to really hate both her followers and her children. And I couldn’t really get past that. There were sections in the middle that were really hard to listen to for me because of the contempt she seemed to have for both. My finest days were the ones I spent parenting my now 19 year old when she was younger and so it made me kind of sad to hear her talk about her children and her followers too.

There’s also a past-present theme going on, and in the beginning of the book, I was really confused, I still kind of am. The one thing this book DOES do very well is talk about what modern feminism looks like, what does it mean to be a woman, a wife, a tradwife, a mother, there’s all of that. The narration was good, although I am not a fan of this narrator. She also narrated Heart The Lover (another book I didn’t really love too much despite the hype, thought it was boring and plain with some weird stuff mixed in) and this book also had weird stuff. I can see why the narrator narrated both if that makes any sense. This may be one of those books you just have to read to see for yourself and I can see people totally and completely loving this book - or not. It would make a great book club book and I read it for that reason (have not met yet to discuss).

The Measure - 3.5/5 stars. I had originally given this 4/5 stars but nearly 2 months later, it feels less memorable to me. The premise of the book is, if you knew how long your life would be, would you want to know? Would it change how you live the life you have? Would you do anything differently? My criticism with this book is that it felt very lengthy and points and I don't feel like it needed to be that long to get the point across. This is a great book club book! And I would definitely want to know, and all the details, surprise me? Nah, tell me.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lyon - Volume 1. FREE on Kindle Unlimited. 3/5 star range for me and I guess I don’t get the hype with this series. It's fine, but not that interesting, and felt very provincial and simply not too exciting. If I'm going to read historical fiction, I want to really dig into some historical fiction.

Perhaps the Emma journals get better? For me, one was enough. I’ve got a TBR a mile long and more books than time, so after one I am moving on. One good thing is that these books are very short so if you either want a short book OR you have a goal for the year of X number of books, and just need something to add so you can check it off, this will suffice.

Mafia Series: Book 1 Mafia Mistress and Book 2 Mafia Darling - Both FREE on Kindle Unlimited. If you read Book 1, you’re going to want to read Book 2. After that, you don’t have to keep going in the series, it ends at a point you can put them down.

These are extremely spicy books. 10000/10 level spice 🌶️. I almost hesitate to even share these! Some would call this smut but another influencer I follow calls these types of books BRADS (Beach Reads After Dark) and she mentioned this book so I gave it a whirl.

There's every crazy thing you can imagine in this book including kidnapping, the Italian mafia, murder, money laundering, drug running, a gay character, the leading man about 25 years older than the leading lady, and the spice factor is more than anything I’ve ever read. You may feel like you need to smoke a cigarette or a cold shower after some of it. You basically have to read the 2nd book after this one, but after that you're done. Books like this one are why Carly Fortune type of books (below) are forever ruined for me (snore-bore).

Our Perfect Storm 2.5 or 3/5 This may be an unpopular review but it was soooo predictable for me, very boring, with a couple common tropes including friends to lovers and forced proximity. We follow Frankie (a woman) who almost got married to a guy but he called off the wedding. And when her best friend, George, gets wind of it, they take a trip together - what should have been Frankie's honeymoon, but she went with George instead. You can see where this is going. If you're looking for a very mindless (and v predictable) beach or vacation read (or in my case, working on pull ups and lifting as heavy as I possibly can in the gym with a slightly wandering mind as I listened), this will be perfect for you. In total transparency, I'm not a big Carly Fortune fan. One Golden Summer was "fine" but Meet Me At The Lake, meh not for me. If you're a Carly fan, this is in her lane and wheelhouse and you know what you’re getting into.

Dolly All The Time - 5/5 stars! In contrast to the book above, this is a romance and while there’s predictability, it’s just a winner! I want to be Dolly in my next lifetime because there are some Cinderella story vibes and I’ve always wanted to be Cinderella! We watch how things unfold with Dolly and Stuart, who’s a super rich, good looking, businessman and their chance meeting and how things play out from there. The writing is great, it’s funny, there are points where I cried, I felt really attached to the characters and their lives. And it deals with characters in their 40s with real lives, kids, being a single parent, financial challenges, taking care of family and family struggles - all the things that made the book more relatable for me than some other more typical summer beach read type romances.

Watched: Heated Rivalry. I normally don’t watch much between my work computer screens, screentime with social media for both work and personal, I just don’t have enough hours in the day for more screentime. But I watched this on some long flights with a privacy screen on my phone (I had been warned)! It’s about hockey players, taboo relationships, and what happens behind closed doors off the ice. Only 6 one-hour episodes so it was enough for my flights there and back and glad I saw what all the hype was about. I give it a 5/5 stars because I was very entertained and always root for the relationship that makes someone happiest, whatever that looks like.

On my TBR and Pre-Order: Crash Into Me! Because The Idea of You was a 5 star read for me and it’s currently FREE on Kindle Unlimited.