June 2025: Books I Read Last Month

Written by Graeme

Felt like I read a decent amount in May which was nice. Some books I loved, some I didn’t like too much, one where the author lies to the reader for some reason, and then some non-fiction.

You Are Not Alone by Leah Cupps: This one seemed right up my alley – a thriller on a remote island. Unfortunately, this is the first and last book I’ll read by this author. There is a prologue to the book which is an outright lie. As in it didn’t actually happen – and it’s not even part of the story or a dream sequence. The reader is completely misled. A very crappy thing for an author to do, and yeah I’ll never read anything by them again.

Middle of the Night by Riley Sager: I’m a fan of Riley but I didn’t really enjoy this one. It was the story of a young boy who went missing 30 years ago, and the repercussions of that 30 years later when his body shows up, and his friend attempts to seek the truth.

I felt the characters didn’t have any personality, there were too many things I couldn’t suspend disbelief on etc. This one was a swing and a miss for me.

The Tenant by Freida McFadden: I hadn’t enjoyed the last couple of Freida books, but I loved this one. A great psychological thriller and one that I rushed through as I couldn’t put it down.

Death Row by Freida McFadden: An entry in the Alibi short story series. Thought it was fantastic. I’d love to see more novellas by Freida. A lot of depth to it.

Look Both Ways by Linwood Barclay: A DNF for me. The premise seemed cool, about self-driving cars essentially taking over an island for 30 days. But it just felt like it dragged on and on and it was still world building a few hours in and I gave up.

Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing by Matthew Perry: This was an excellent memoir. Perry is raw and honest and I’ll be honest – not a likeable person. But I prefer that over the fluff you get from some autobiographies. A very good bio, and it was sad hearing how troubled he was. I’d recommend listening to this over reading it.

Pageboy by Elliot Page: This was a solid listen – Elliot is such an incredibly strong person considering everything he went through growing up, already conflicted about his gender and sexuality, and then entering the toxic world of Hollywood. One I’d also recommend listening to over reading – it has that sort of “poetry’ vibe to it.

Parents Weekend by Alex Finlay: I listened to this one too. It was a bit hard to keep track of all the characters – it’s about 5 kids who go missing while there is a parents dinner going on. It was hard to keep all five families together, and the ending and mystery aspect seemed extremely obvious. Very paint by the numbers.

The Last Word by Taylor Adams: The story of a woman who gives a book she read a 1 star rating, then the author comes after her. I’ll also give this book 1 star and that is not ironic or being cute. Not sure what happened to the author of the awesome Eyeshot but I thought this was terrible in so many ways.