#20BooksofSummer2025 – June Recap & Questionnaire

Emma and I hope you had a great month of summer reading. The July post with the linky for your July reviews will be here tomorrow. I’ve had a good start to my 20 books, reading 8 and reviewing 6 – I hope July will be equally productive, although I have managed to sign myself up for 5 blog tours!

Meanwhile over on Emma’s blog, you can join in with the End of the Month Questionnaire – Emma has compiled some fun questions to apply to your reading. Here are my answers.

1. If your #20BooksofSummer25 TBR were a beach, what’s the most surprising thing you’ve unearthed so far – a hidden gem, a total shipwreck, or something unexpectedly delightful?
   One of my reads actually featured a beach – and a body was found. This was The Wild Swimmers by William Shaw. I find the way he brings the Kent coast around Dungeness to life as another character in his crime series set there brilliant. It surprises me every time I read one of them.
2. Imagine your reading progress as a summer road trip. Which book has been the scenic route, which has been the highway, and is there a rest stop book you’re looking forward to?
   The book I’ve just started is going to be a scenic route one, but more on that next month! The rest stop one was Invisible Kitties – an impressionistic Chinese book told in vignettes about living with a cat – in unexpected ways and ways that chimed – a refreshing change from the rest.
3. If one of the books you’ve read this month was turned into an ice cream flavor, what ingredients would it have, and what would it be called?
   Anna Bailey’s novel Our Last Wild Days is set in swampland with gators in Louisiana. So imagine the cone texture looks like alligator skin. Pecan pralines are a Louisiana specialty, so the ice-cream would have pecan pieces in with syrup swirls. It’ll be called Bayou Bliss.
4. If you could swap places with a character from one of the books you’ve read this month, purely for the summer, who would it be and what items would you absolutely take with you?
   It would be Alice in Emma Straub’s This Time Tomorrow – because it’s set in New York, a city I love – Alice lives in Brooklyn, an area I’ve not really explored. But this is a book involving time travel and I’d go back to Alice’s 1996 NYC though rather than the present – that would be fun. What would I take with me? Some Paul Auster books – he lived in Brooklyn, and would still be alive in 1996 – I’d hope to bump into him.
5. “Plot twist!”: If your summer reading challenge were a book, what unexpected event just happened to shake things up? Or did life get in the way of your reading plans?
   One unexpected event happened in one of the books I read – a real plot twist right at the end of Mick Herron’s 7th book in the Slow Horses series – Slough House (review soon). I can’t say what happens, but I went straight away to dig out the 8th book as I can’t wait to find out the result. I’ve been rationing myself through the Slow Horses series as an annual treat, but that’s had to go by the wayside! Bad Actors, coming this way soon I hope.

That was fun! Looking forward to seeing some of your answers.