📚 On Reading in July 2025 (Best of)

Hello! And welcome to another round of what my reading month looked like. 

I’m currently a judge for a big book awards program so, as you can imagine, my personal reading will take a temporary hit. In line with 2025 though that actually didn’t affect the size of this list so much as I DNF’d a lot in July and also finished a lot of books that were, for me, just okay. It happens. In good news, here’s what I really liked.

Sky Daddy by Kate Folk

“I could not be a man’s girlfriend if I hoped to be a plane’s wife.”

Any author that I can comp to Rufi Thorpe, Emily R. Austin, and Kevin Wilson is gonna be a winner for me: kudos to Kate Folk for perfectly walking the line of a bonkers premise written with humor, heart, quirk, personality, and care. What do I mean by bonkers premise? Linda—who works as a comment moderator and lives in an efficiency where the owners have a lot of rules—has never told anyone that her love for flying is really that she is in love with planes and believes that when she finds her plane match it will become so overcome that the plane will go down in a fiery crash with her inside. And she’s looking forward to this event, and doing everything she can to fly and ride the sexual high—between of course her life’s responsibilities. When she goes to a coworker’s vision board event she decides to make her own poster and manifest her dream…

It’s hard to pull off a novel with this kind of premise into more than “for laughs” or “crudeness” but in Folk’s hands this is a novel about finding connections in a difficult world and I ultimately understood, and loved, Linda as a character. This is what I want more of from publishing! In a year that feels really mediocre, Sky Daddy stands out.

This American Woman: A One-in-a-Billion Memoir by Zarna Garg

I equally read memoirs by people I know and have never heard of, the latter being the case when I picked up this audiobook. The opening made me think this was going to be a comedian recounting their professional comedy life—with zingers—but I was pleasantly surprised to discover the book is instead a deeply emotional, thoughtful, and humorous book about Zarna Garg’s personal experience growing up in India, and how life can change on a dime. She went from being a wealthy child to homeless when her mother died and her father gave her the ultimatum of marrying at 14 or going on her own. Garg recounts her childhood in India, her move to the US, unpacking trauma, starting a family, and ultimately how in her 40s she made her way onto a comedy stage and now has a full career. It’s a great read if you need a reminder that life is hard but it’s constantly unfolding and you never know what’s around the corner.

I 100% recommend the audiobook, narrated by Garg.

Along Came Amor (Primas of Power #3) by Alexis Daria

I love this entire series! It’s romance so you can read each book out of order as a standalone but it follows 3 primas, and each one’s individual love story per book, so this final book has the previous book’s couple getting married as the background event.

Ava Rodriguez is officially divorced, and she’s not heartbroken over the man but it’s forcing her to deal with a lot of stuff in her life, including how her family treats her and the ways she’s spent her life molding herself to their expectations. Enter hotelier Roman, her one-night-stand that slowly turns into more as Ava finally starts to speak up for herself with her family.

Like all the books in this series, I love the funny dialog, the characters, and I especially loved watching Ava’s emotional journey in dropping a lot of baggage that was never hers to carry.

She-Hulk, Vol. 5: All In by Rainbow Rowell, Andrés Genolet (Illustrator), Ig Guara (Illustrator), Dee Cunniffe (Colorist)

The only reason it took me a year to read this graphic novel is that I didn’t want the series to end! If you’ve read Rainbow Rowell’s novels and you read graphic novels it’ll make sense why she’s such a perfect fit for this series. If you’ve yet to read RR, she has a unique voice that leans into pop culture fun of the 80s/90s, great quippy dialogue, and emotional relationships you root hard for.

In this run, that starts with She-Hulk, Vol. 1: Jen, Again, she writes She-Hulk/ Jennifer Walters trying to get her life back together including working as a lawyer (with a terrible boss) and trying to figure out if a romantic relationship with Jack of Hearts can work. You don’t need any knowledge on the characters etc as there are little asides with any info you may need but I do highly recommend watching the Disney+ series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law because it’s just as fun! (I think I just talked myself into a rewatch!)

Check, Please! Book 1 by Ngozi Ukazu

I reread this in the first year of the pandemic and have reread it once a year since: I adore it with all my heart and it’s a tiny refill when I feel like an empty cup. Basically, if you loved the vibes from Ted Lasso you should absolutely read this (just like Ted Lasso you don’t need to like sports to enjoy it).

Bitty is a figure skater who’s full passion is baking and vloging about baking. In his freshman year in college he’s on the hockey team, which poses a challenge since he acts like a fainting goat anytime he thinks he might get hit. Lucky for him he wins everyone over with his pies, and incessant chatty-cathy personality. As he starts to find his way he slowly builds a relationship with the team’s star player (yes, this is a romance!).

The supporting cast is ridiculous and hilarious, and the story is funny and sweet but with real depth, including the challenges that Bitty and Jack face as gay hockey players. I love how the art really shows the action on the rink, and off, and one look from a character will leave you feeling all the feels.

You can count on Book 2, which completes the series with Bitty’s junior and senior year, in my August roundup of favorite reads!

If you’re curious about the backstory of Check, Please!, which began as a hugely successful webcomic—“Plus, a recent Kickstarter for "Check Please" raised about $100,000  in an hour. (It eventually cleared about a quarter of million.)”—here are two articles from 2017/19: How Ngozi Ukazu took Check Please! from college thesis to international phenomenon and With 'Check Please,' A Comics Creator Rewrites The Rules — And Scores

The Build-a-Boyfriend Project by Mason Deaver

I love the fake-dating trope, going into someone’s daily work drama, and when the MC has great friendships so this ended up being a fun read for me.

​​Eli is a writer at a magazine (think Buzzfeed) who is being strung along for a promotion (because he won’t fall into line and only focus on pointless fluff pieces) and is stuck working with his ex. To help get him over his ex his friends push him into a blind date, which is how he ends up on a terrible date with Peter. Ultimately, in hopes of tricking his boss into giving him the promotion, Eli pitches a series about dating Peter. What starts off as a fake relationship obviously grows deeper (hello, romance genre!) but Eli has been making some “sell your soul to the devil” decisions that will bite him in the ass.

I inhaled the audiobook while working on a jigsaw puzzle (like a proper vieja, thank you very much!) which I highly recommend doing if you need a de-stressing activity.

Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie

I love the setup of this novel (a theater critic gives his usual 1-star review, destroying a new play, but this time he sleeps with the actress after writing the review without telling her who he is) and that instead of being written from the critic or the actress's point of view it’s written from the point of view of another critic who happens to be temporarily rooming with the asshole critic.

There’s plenty of talk about here for book clubs, and I think we need more discussions about people automatically assigning “talented” or “worthy voice” just because a man is an asshole. The only reason this didn’t make it into my top-of-the-year is more on me than the novel: I wanted more. This is a big, meaty idea with plenty to chew on and rather than leaning into upmarket/book club fiction I wanted it to really hit hard. I would have preferred a giant swing, even if it ultimately missed a perfect landing, than a tidier box. But I think this version will appeal to mainstream audiences more.

Murder at the Museum (Montgomery Bonbon #1) by Alasdair Beckett-King, Claire Powell (Illustrator)

I am an absolute sucker for a delightful child solving mysteries—if I am three kids in a trench coat, one of them is always a little detective.

Bonnie Montgomery is a 10-year-old girl who is secretly Montgomery Bonbon, a great male detective in a beret and mustache (perfectly ridiculous!). She quickly changes into her disguise when needed, like solving a murder mystery at the Hornville Museum. Luckily, she has help from her grandfather who knows of Bonnie’s detective business and helps her sneak out of the house at night where he’ll wait in the car (fall asleep) and she’ll break into a museum for evidence.

This is a quick, fun, and funny read which I enjoyed so much that as soon as I finished it I got the next two audiobooks in the series!

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to shout out anything you’ve been loving lately!