July 2026 Book Reviews, Booklandia Commentary, And A Look Forward
July 2026 opened with elation and ended with devastation for me. Along the way, I did in fact manage to read 14 books... and cross the 100 books on the year mark.
Starting out the month at Walt Disney World for the America 250 celebrations was a trip. Both Magic Kingdom and Epcot really showed out, and I had a great viewing spot for each. Epcot in particular had easily the loudest sustained firework blast I've ever heard for its finale, and getting back to Pop Century after via the Skyliner took almost the same amount of time as it took me to actually drive all the way home to Jax from the park the next day.
Shortly thereafter, I announced I was (largely) pulling out of social media, and now that some of the bigger reasons I was hanging around are over, I'll be pulling back even more.
And then the end of the month. On the last weekend of the month, my cat got very sick... and never really recovered. By Wenesday, July 29, it was becoming obvious that we needed a vet's opinion, and we scheduled the appointment for Friday, July 31. Even getting into the exam room, I knew it was time when this cat, who absolutely HATED everything to do with the vet and would routinely bolt at the first available opportunity every prior time we had ever taken him... didn't. He wasn't pleased, and he let that be known via hissing and growling (as usual), but when he didn't even attempt to leave his carrier... I knew. The doc confirmed it a few minutes later, and at 5:45p on July 31, with my wife and I both petting him, Bucky died. Even 8 days later, that is still hard to write. And that is why this update has been delayed for a week, even as I have been reading and in fact have a few reviews to write tomorrow.
And now, on to the book reviews...
The Book Reviews
Book Review: Gouged by Lindsay Owens
Literally Calls For Bread Lines And Gas Lines. Read It Anyway. This is a book that absolutely has its own view of economics and attempts to gaslight the reader that this is the
"majority" view of economics in the same way that climate alarmists trot out the "97% of scientists" bullshit. As I said in the title, Owens actively advocates for "queue based"
distribution rather than "surge pricing" - what she calls "gouging" - in both normal and extreme circumstances...
Read Full Review
Book Review: In Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton
THIS. IS. ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hot DAMN I wish more romance novels had this kind of intense love on the page. Yes, there are Interstellar vibes at times - and they only
make the romance that much more intense. This is true to the period in oh so many ways....
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Book Review: Hot Girl Murder Club by Ashley Winstead
Solid Enough Vigilante Thriller Absolutely *DRIPPING* Misandry. If you like girl power thrillers where every man who doesn't kowtow to the female leads' every whim is
characterized as at *best* someone to be ignored and not considered at all - with most considered to be outright predatory - well, Winstead has crafted a tale here that will be
absolutely up your alley....
Read Full Review
Book Review: Up All Night by Imogen Willetts
Solid Social History. If you're looking for a technological based history about the various innovations that made and shaped nightlife over the centuries... yeah, this isn't that.
Including more recent developments like specific DJ tech and world famous party locations. But if you're looking for a more social-based history about how nightlife evolved
through various areas all over the world... this is exactly that kind of history....
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Book Review: Erebus-13 by David Wellington
Solid Action Based Conclusion With Less Abject Horror. This conclusion of this trilogy is both quite different than the books that came before it - while still continuing their
tale - and yet also pretty damn close to what at least I expected coming out of Revenant-X. This book picks up "shortly" after that one leaves off, and as with Mass Effect 2's
ending (particularly from The Arrival DLC) portending one hell of an epic final fight - also for Earth - and then Mass Effect 3 largely delivering on the sheer scale of epicness
while also being quite different in many ways from the tale(s) that came before, this is again following that well known path....
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Book Review: Leap Of Faith by Kellie Coates Gilbert
The Kind Of Family Everyone Wants - Even When They Claim They Don't. This series has been strong to this point, but to me, *this* is the story where the family really begins to
show its true strength as a unit. The first book in this series was introducing the family via a prodigal tale, the second was team building around a common goal now that
everyone was back together. *This* is the tale where everyone is having troubles with their own things...
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Book Review: The Men Who United The States by Simon Winchester
Fascinating History And Unique Narrative Structure. I have at least a few of Winchester's books on Audible, mostly because they always sound so interesting - but this was the
first I read, picking it up for my morning walks specifically as my own personal celebration of America's 250th birthday. Didn't even realize at the time that it was already 13
ish yrs old - and this really doesn't come to bear at all with what he actually writes here, ending, as he does, more at the dawn of the internet age (and how it came to be)
rather than the specific internet techs that came after the introduction of the public World Wide Web...
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Book Review: Killer Vibes by Jack Friday
Strong Stoner/ LGBT/ Almost Cozy Mystery (Yes, Including Both A Dog And A Cat). Straight up, this is an openly LGBT book from an openly LGBT author. Which will work for some and
not for others. You do you, either way. No judgment here. Truly. Unless you read this book despite this warning and still rate it 1 or 2 stars because "it has gay people in it"
or some similar bullshit. I already told you it did!...
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Book Review: Invasion Of The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Classic For Reasons. Will Offend At Least Some 2020s Readers. This is one of those ultimate classic American scifi tales that holds up remarkably well overall, with several areas
that Zoomers and even younger Millennials won't be able to envision as easily as older Americans, including even Xennials/ Elder Millennials....
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Book Review: Glow Job by Kristen Bailey
Bailey's Spicy RomCom + Sarah Morgan's Women's Fiction. If you love Bailey's usual spicy romcom... this is yet another of those, and you largely know what you're getting here if
you're already a fan. Where this one gets a bit more interesting is that it *also* features an almost Sarah Morgan type women's fiction tale of several different women, each with
their own issues, coming together and growing through those issues, in this case over a week long vacation to Ibiza. Bailey handles the combination quite well...
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Book Review: The Sunday House by Elizabeth Bromke
Solid Coming Of Age Story In Different Eras And Promising New Series. This is one of the more interesting books I've read in quite some time mostly because of how Bromke uses so
many different elements in atypical mashups to create such a compelling tale. There's elements of everything from Stephen King's Carrie to William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
with a bit of Alexandre Dumas' Three Musketeers and even S.E. Hinton's Outsiders to boot... or this could be my hyper-connective Autistic brain making connections that *no one*
else will see. Read the book, write your own damn review, and let me know what you think there. I'm genuinely curious to see if anyone else picks up on these things...
Read Full Review
Book Review: Indie Darling by Lauren Nossett
Solid Story Of Legacy And Family Marred By Prominent Hyper Leftist Politics. As far as the tale as a whole here goes, this is one of those tales that is actually at least
somewhat like The Great Gatsby: The beginning is a bunch of *utter* shit, but once you get beyond it into the actual meat of the story, it actually opens up into a rather
spectacular tale... that in this case returns to at least some of the utter...
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Book Review: The Story Keeper by Kelly Rimmer
Australian Gothic With Interesting Storytelling Mechanism. The questions mentioned in the description of the book (as it exists now almost two weeks after publication) serve as a
way of doing a version of dual-timeline... without actually doing dual-timeline. As someone who reads literally hundreds of books every year for the past decade now, finding
books that do something atypical and yet do it very well is always a joy...
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Book Review: Did I Ever Tell You This by Sam Neill
Unremarkable Man Doing Remarkable Things. I began reading this book in the days after Neill's death not knowing I would be reading it through my cat's final days and finishing
the book on the day we finally got confirmation that it was the right thing to do and had to end his suffering. Which, sitting to write this review roughly 36 hrs after that
particular event, makes this review a bit more interesting - at least to me and so far as writing it goes. There is actually an interesting parallel here, in that for all we the
general public think we know of Sam Neill...
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Booklandia Commentary
I'd Rather Be Reading - So I'm Declaring My Independence From Social Media
Some of you familiar with this site know that a couple of years ago - at the end of 2024 - Meta up and deleted my original accounts with them. All of them. Some of which (Facebook) I'd had almost since Facebook existed at all - back when you had to have a college email address to sign up. No appeal. Just. Gone.
Honestly, social media hasn't really felt the same since then, and if I'm really honest with myself, even long before that. The algorithms took over. The Outrage Machine began to dominate. What was once a way to connect with family, friends, and like-minded individuals - and maybe even grow a personal project brand became, well, none of that anymore. Now, as a brand you either pay to play or you're nobody anyone is ever going to see. You don't even see the people or brands you like or follow anymore near as much as what said Outrage Machine thinks will keep you on that site the longest.
I have fallen for it more than I care to admit - and more than I care to, period.
Quite frankly, I'd rather be reading.
Read Full Article
And Now, A Look Forward (By Release Date)
-
August 2019 (2026 Re-Release)
- Right For Me by Cindy Dorminy
-
April 2026
- Toward The Light by Mila Lewis
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May 2026
- To Kill A Poet by Onwe Arinze
-
June 2026
- The Hand Of The Nazarene by Randy Moon
-
July 2026
- Destination Funeral by Paige Harbison
-
August 2026
- Everything We Found by Kerry Lonsdale
- Captive Consumers by Chin Jou
- The Woman In White by Sarah Pekkanen
- On The Mark by Florence Hazrat
- The Magic We Made by Meg Cabot
- Ideal Life by Evelyb Skye
- Promise Me Never by Liv Constantine
- The English Bookstore In Bologna by Boo Walker
- Perfect Stranger by Gregg Dunnett
- Heart Of Glass by Jennifer Hillier
- The Time Tax by Annie Lowry
- Wicked Wanted Widows by Kimberly Bell, Cate Holahan, and Vanessa Lillie
-
September 2026
- The Forsaken Founder by Scott S. Greenberger
- In This Life Or Another by Melissa Payne
- Target Down by Ryan Steck
- The Wish List Trip by Kerry Lonsdale and Orly Konig
- What Comes After Almost by Charley J.K. Rose
- Against Convenience by Gabe Bullard
- Beyond Biology by Jason Martens
- Corpse Creek by Vincent Ralph
- Fear Farm by Vincent Ralph
- Failure Point by Rebecca Hodge
- Falling For Peachtree Bluff by Kristy Woodson Harvey
- I'll Be Watching You by Allison Brennan
- The Everywhere Millionaire by Owen Zidar
- The Wonder Of One by Suzanne Redfearn
- Shifta by Miles Joyner
- So It Grows by Andie Burke
- Your GLP-1 Game Plan by Heidi Skolnik
- The World Beneath Our Feet by Frank Ashwood
- Watch Her Run by Jennifer Moorhead
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October 2026
- The Christmas Yes List by Melissa Ferguson
- When You Tell by Steena Holmes
- Why We Asky Why by Tania Lombrozo
- Can Religion Save Democracy by Matthew Kaemingk and Shadi Hamid
- Have Yourself A Merry Little Meltdown by Sheila Roberts
- Please Enjoy Your Stay by Tara Goedjen
- The Bookshop by Andrew Pettegree
- Undersea War by Elizabeth Braw
- Until The Last Light Goes Out by Courtney Gould
- The Best Christmas Ever by Sarah Morgan
- Tyrant Lizard Queen by Riley Black
-
November 2026
- Set Your Life On Fire by Maddie Dawson
- Take My Word For It by Levar Burton
- The Cold Read by Tara Laskowski
- When They Find Me by Carter Wilson
- The Riddle Maker by Bruce Borgos
- Four-Letter Nation by Steven H. Jaffe
- The Crisis Of Biblical Authority by John H. Walton
-
December 2026
- The Blue Hours by Stephanie Kryzwonos
- Meet Me At Midnight by Sophie Sullivan
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January 2027
- Take Back The Night by Heather Gudenkauf, Kaira Rouda, and Kimberly Belle
- Possessions by Carey Morewedge
-
February 2027
- Sub War by Bruce Jones