A few weeks ago, I was listening to a podcast. The hosts were returning from a three-week break, and they were talking about what they had done on their holiday. One of the hosts reported back that she’d read something like 12 books while she was away.
My first thought? That is my kind of vacation.
In August, I went on seven-day holiday to West Cornwall and brought three books and my iPad loaded up with plenty of books on my Kindle app along with me. I managed to read two books—both print if you’re curious—and I started a third.
I managed to come back from holiday feeling refreshed and excited about the rest of my reading month. Here’s what I managed to finish in August!
I’d seen this book talked about online quite a bit at the beginning of this year, but due to a staggered UK release date I only just managed to get my hands on it this summer. It is a historical novel based on the real story of a 16th-century Frenchwoman who is effectively swindled out of her fortune and then taken to present-day Canada only to be marooned on an uninhabited island along with her lover and her maid. It was interesting reading a book set in a time and place that I rarely explore.
The Rules of Fortune by Danielle Prescod
Continuing my 2025 theme of books about complicated families and inheritances, this novel follows the story of a self-made Black American billionaire who dies just before his blow-out birthday party. (This happens in the opening pages, so it’s not a spoiler.) The novel then proceeds to weave between his origin story beginning with his childhood and the story of him, his wife, and his two children in the months running up to the birthday party. Based on the way this book was described, I thought that it would be more of a traditional thriller. Instead, I found a fascinating look at how race, wealth, and selective personal storytelling can combine to create myths both inside a family and in the public eye.
The Man of Property (The Forsyte Chronicles #1) by John Galsworthy
My family was talking about the Forstye Saga around the dinner table the other day, so I thought I’d pick it up and give it a go. It turns out I must have had that same thought back in high school because I found a Knott’s Berry Farm school ticket from the early 2000s marking the early pages. (If you were a student in Southern California during that time, you know how great a day that was.)
I am torn about this novel. On one hand, it is a really interesting look at a large family of upper middle class people living in London, almost like a snapshot of a way of life. However, the Forsytes as a whole are petty, jealous, and snobbish, each in their own unique ways. I absolutely can read and get on well with novels about fairly despicable people, but I found myself struggling to invest in any of the characters. I’m 50/50 about whether I’ll press on and finish the saga.
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier
Now for the holiday reading. My husband picked up this copy of My Cousin Rachel for me this summer knowing that I was eying his edition of Rebecca, a book that I love. I found in My Cousin Rachel another of du Maurier’s excellent, Gothic tinged novels filled with creeping suspicion and doubt. In this 19th century-set novel, Phillip is heir to his cousin Ambrose, who travels to Italy every year for his health, leaving Phillip in charge of his Cornish estate. When Ambrose unexpectedly marries a woman named Rachel and then dies while abroad, Phillip is devastated—and only more so when strange letters begin to arrive at the estate, implicating Rachel. However, when the widowed Rachel shows up in Cornwall, Phillip begins to find himself falling under her spell.
If The Man of Property is a snapshot of a specific time, so too is The Feast. Set at a Cornish house-turned-hotel in 1947, the war is still fresh in everyone’s memory, rationing is still on, and class if even more calcified than it is now. The book starts with a priest who is struggling to write the funeral sermon for seven people who were killed when the cliff above the hotel gave way and buried them. The narrative then jumps back a week to introduce each of these characters (based on the seven deadly sins) and the rest of the residents and staff at the down-at-heel hotel. What follows can at times be moving, acidly funny, or something in between. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Dungeon Crawler Carl #1) by Matt Dinniman
And now for something completely different. I enjoy listening to audiobooks, but I sometimes struggle when it comes to consistency as I also listen to a lot of podcasts. Recently, I’ve been looking for a new audiobook to test the theory that perhaps I just wasn’t choosing ones that were engaging enough to hold my attention. When my brother-in-law recommended this fantasy novel specifically for its audiobook, I thought I’d give it a go.
The premise of this book is essentially that after aliens destroy most of Earth, the only people who survived are forced into an intergalactic televised gameshow that involves staying alive in an 18-level deep dungeon. There is Carl, an ex-Coast Guard who ran out into the night wearing only boxers, a leather jacket, and a pair of Crocs and is therefore transported into the game thus attired, and Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s pampered show cat who is the entire reason that he’s in this mess. (Oh, and Princess Donut ends up with the ability to speak, which is a glorious thing.) To say that Dungeon Crawler Carl is not my usual type of read would be an understatement, but I had a fantastic time listening to it and am now on the second audiobook.
This Is a Love Story by Jessica Soffer
It is rare that I cry while reading. In fact, I think I can count on one hand the number of times it has happened. I absolutely cried while reading This is a Love Story, a moving book that is framed as a husband and wife remembering their time together as the wife is dying of cancer Their son’s story and his mother’s postnatal depression also becomes a strong secondary thread, but it is Central Park that steals the book for me. Jessica Soffer treats the park like a character, zooming out to tell the many love stories that have begun and ended there. The book, ultimately, read to me like a love letter to New York and made me miss the city very much.
What have you read and loved recently? Leave me a comment to let me know!
You’re going to love High Season. I had a chance to interview the author too.
I loved "The Glassmaker" by Tracy Chevalier. It is lyrical and elegant. An ode to the world of watery enchantment that is Venice and Murano, whose stories are inextricably bound.