Everything I Read This Month | June 2025

Despite the fact that I’m nearing the end of my second term (of my first year of nursing school) I had quite a few opportunities to stay up late and get some reading in after I’d finished my studies for the day. Keeping to my reading commitments as best I can has been a priority, and after all, sometimes you just need a break!

This month I stuck mostly to my favorite genres (crime/murder mystery), and there are so many amazing books that have been released recently, including the first book, Such Good People, that releases on July 8th. Stay tuned for the Q&A with author Amy Blumenfeld that will be going live on the official publication date. Such Good People, along with Welcome to Murder Week, were my favorite books of the month, so keep scrolling to read my reviews and get my official ratings.

Such Good People | Amy Blumenfeld

If you want to read a book that will tug at your heartstrings while simultaneously igniting your passion for justice, Such Good People, which releases this coming July, is a book you need to add to your summer reading list. Set in between (now and then), aka present-day New York/Chicago and New York fifteen years in the past, we meet two friends, April and Rudy. The two neighbors were as close as any two best friends could be when they were growing up, but when April asks her friend Rudy to come to an event in Manhattan during a trip home from college, both of their lives are changed forever.

The story is so compelling that you’ll find it hard to put this book down (and I didn’t, finishing the book from cover to cover in just one day). It was the perfect escape from studying for an Anatomy and Physiology final, if only for a little while!

Rating: A+

It’s 10 p.m. on a Thursday in the spring of her freshman year of college, and April is standing at the back of a crowded Manhattan bar waiting for her friend, Rudy, to arrive. Their eyes lock the moment he enters the room, and in an instant, lives and legacies are altered forever.

Within hours, Rudy is arrested. Within days, April is expelled. Within weeks, he’s incarcerated. And within months, she meets Peter, a prodigious young attorney who makes her world recognizable again.

Nearly fifteen years later, April is happily living in Chicago, married to Peter, a mother of three with a fulfilling career, and has a standing yoga date with her girlfriends. On the eve of Peter’s election for local office, Rudy is up for parole. Headlines explode about April’s past, jeopardizing Peter’s campaign and everything they hold dear. Suddenly, April is faced with an impossible choice: protecting the life she created, or the person who sacrificed everything to make that life a possibility. Such Good People is a captivating portrait of blurred lines, divided loyalties, and what it means to love purely, steadfastly, and interminably.

The Summer that Changed Everything | Brenda Novak

Both The Summer that Changed Everything and Such Good People share a common theme, finding justice for the innocent. The only difference is that from the beginning, we are not so sure Lucy Sinclair’s (formerly McBride) father is innocent of the crimes for which he has been accused.

When Lucy returns to North Hampton Beach fifteen years after the course of events that changed her life forever, she doesn’t expect a warm reception; in fact, she hopes that she will be able to conduct her investigation quietly. Such is not the case when she’s returning to a town that is convinced that she played some small part in one of the murders.

Also returning to town is Lucy’s first love, Ford Wagner, who, at the urging of his family, shunned Lucy when she needed him most. Now determined to make up for the past, he chooses to make up for the past and help Lucy discover who could have committed the murders that shook the town so many years ago.

While parts of the book felt a little rushed, I truly enjoyed the book, and I suggest it for all fans of crime/suspense novels.

Rating: A

She returned to prove her father’s innocence, but there’s no telling what she’ll find.

It’s been fifteen years since Lucy Sinclair saw her father. Fifteen long years since she sat in a courtroom and watched him sentenced to life in prison. He murdered three victims—all people she knew—which ruined her life at just seventeen. But now she’s back in Virginia to talk to him, wondering if there’s more to the story of what happened that fateful night.

An old flame, Ford Wagner, makes his return to North Hampton Beach, fleeing a marriage that seems destined for divorce. He’s wary of Lucy and her digging into the past, but the more time they spend together, the closer they get and the more he finds himself reconsidering the truth behind the death of their mutual friend that summer. The problem is, there are plenty of those in this small coastal town who would prefer things stay quiet.

Just Emilia | Jennifer Oko

As much as I was intrigued by the idea of this book (being stuck in an elevator with past and future versions of the main character, Emilia), I couldn’t get into the book. The pacing is slow, and for this reason, I found myself skimming more than I probably should have to grasp the nature of the book fully. For those who enjoy books that deal with grief and finding their way through it, this might be just the book for you.

Rating: DNF

The past, present, and future collide in a DC Metro elevator as three women get caught up in a gripping time-traveling tale of memory, emotion, and unspoken truths about their shared history in this highly anticipated new novel from Jennifer Oko (Gloss, Head Case): JUST EMILIA (Regal House Publishing; on sale: June 10, 2025).

When Emilia Fletcher finds herself trapped inside a Washington, DC Metro elevator, getting out is the least of her problems. Sharing the confined space with her are Em, a troubled teenager plagued by suicidal thoughts, and Millie, an elderly woman yearning to mend ties with her estranged daughter. As the hours drag on, hunger, exhaustion, and panic set in, revealing an almost incomprehensible truth: they are the same person. Locked in an uncompromising match of memories, the three women excavate and attempt to reckon with the shared shame and suffering stemming from an unresolved trauma that has cast a profound shadow over their lives. Brimming with biting humor, compassion, and quick-witted insight, JUST EMILIA is a remarkable journey of self-discovery.

Great Big Beautiful Life | Emily Henry

Have you ever had an author that you wish would release a new novel every month? Emily Henry is one of those authors. You find yourself wrapped up in the cozy blanket of her stories from the moment you open the book. So it’s not exactly surprising that Emily Henry’s latest novel was a Reese’s Book Club Pick.

I loved the whole idea of this book, from the characters to the entire plot of the book (including the twist that I did NOT see coming). It was everything you’d want/expect from a novel by Emily Henry. There was one thing that I wished could have been left out… while you expect a certain amount of passion and build-up between the two main characters, the oral sex was just too much for me.

Rating: A-

Alice Scott is an eternal optimist still dreaming of her big writing break. Hayden Anderson is a Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud. And they’re both on balmy Little Crescent Island for the same reason: to write the biography of a woman no one has seen in years—or at least to meet with the octogenarian who claims to be the Margaret Ives. Tragic heiress, former tabloid princess, and daughter of one of the most storied (and scandalous) families of the twentieth century.

When Margaret invites them both for a one-month trial period, after which she’ll choose the person who’ll tell her story, there are three things keeping Alice’s head in the game.

One: Alice genuinely likes people, which means people usually like Alice—and she has a whole month to win the legendary woman over.

Two: She’s ready for this job and the chance to impress her perennially unimpressed family with a Serious Publication.

Three: Hayden Anderson, who should have no reason to be concerned about losing this book, is glowering at her in a shaken-to-the core way that suggests he sees her as competition.

But the problem is, Margaret is only giving each of them pieces of her story. Pieces they can’t swap to put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room.

And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story, just like the tale Margaret’s spinning, could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad… depending on who’s telling it.

Welcome to Murder Week | Karen Dukess

While I’ve read some amazing books this month, Welcome to Murder Week is, without a doubt, my favorite book of the month. It’s a book that I stumbled on by accident while scrolling Instagram, and I was so happy to get access to an early copy via Netgalley. This book is charming, funny at times, and filled with so much heart that you can’t help but fall in love with the characters.

After her mother dies, Cath doesn’t feel much grief, especially given the fact that her mother spent most of her time living far away from Cath’s hometown of Buffalo, New York. Cath has made a life for herself living in her grandmother’s aging Victorian home and working as an optometrist. When she finally goes through the boxes her mother’s friends sent her way, she discovers tickets for an upcoming ‘murder week’ in the Peak District. While she initially doesn’t plan to go, with the encouragement of her tenant, she decides to make the trip. Little does she know that her life will be forever changed.

Released on June 10th, this is the perfect read if you’re looking to curl up with a good book. A must-read.

Rating: A+

In this delightfully funny and heartfelt new novel from the author of the “bittersweet page-turner” (The New York Times) The Last Book Party, an American woman travels to the English countryside when she discovers tickets her late mother had purchased for a murder mystery simulation in a small British town.

When thirty-four-year-old Cath loses her mostly absentee mother, she is ambivalent. With days of quiet, unassuming routine in Buffalo, New York, Cath consciously avoids the impulsive, thrill-seeking lifestyle that her mother once led. But when she’s forced to go through her mother’s things one afternoon, Cath is perplexed to find tickets for an upcoming “murder week” in England’s Peak District: a whole town has come together to stage a fake murder mystery to attract tourism to their quaint hamlet. Baffled but helplessly intrigued by her mother’s secret purchase, Cath decides to go on the trip herself—and begins a journey she never could have anticipated.

Teaming up with her two cottage-mates, both ardent mystery lovers—Wyatt Green, forty, who works unhappily in his husband’s birding store, and Amity Clark, fifty, a divorced romance writer struggling with her novels—Cath sets about solving the “crime” and begins to unravel shocking truths about her mother along the way. Amidst a fling—or something more—with the handsome local maker of artisanal gin, Cath and her irresistibly charming fellow sleuths will find this week of fake murder may help them face up to a very real crossroads in their own lives.

Witty, wise, and deliciously escapist, Welcome to Murder Week is a fresh, inventive twist on the murder mystery and a touching portrayal of one daughter’s reckoning with her grief, her past—and her own budding sense of adventure.

No One was Supposed to Die at This Wedding | Catherine Mack

So I loved the first book in the series, Every Time I Go on Vacation, Someone Dies. It checked all the boxes for me, in terms of plot, character development, the flow of the story, and the location (I mean, Italy, that’s a no-brainer). However, despite the idyllic setting of Catalina (which I visited when we lived in CA) and the return of my favorite characters from the previous book, the ending of this book just felt jumbled. First, they ‘guessed’ that it was this person who had committed the murders, or that person who committed the murders, and just when you think everything had been wrapped up in a neat little bow, there’s another murderer added to the group. That being said, it was still an enjoyable read, and I will be checking out the third book when it’s released.

Rating: A

The second in a witty, USA Today bestselling series following author Eleanor Dash as she goes from wedding guest to murder mystery investigator at her best friend’s wedding on Catalina Island.

Attending your best friend’s wedding should be a piece of (wedding) cake, but not for Eleanor Dash, bestselling author of the Vacation Mysteries series. Because murder seems to follow her every time she goes on vacation and is definitely her uninvited plus-one to the special occasion.

Emma Wood, Eleanor’s best friend since childhood, is starring in the movie adaptation of When in Rome, Eleanor’s first novel. Emma is also marrying Fred Winters, a major movie star and Emma’s co-star, who just happens to be playing Connor Smith, Eleanor’s ex and leading man of the series.

Filming wraps and they invite the whole cast and crew to their wedding at nearby Catalina Island. There may be a storm headed their way―because of course there is―but nothing will stop their nuptials . . . that is until Emma receives a note that says “Someone is going to die at the wedding.”

Eleanor is a professional at this point, and she’ll do everything she can to uncover the murderer so true love can prevail . . . before it’s too late for her and the rest of the storm-trapped wedding party.