July 2024 Wrap Up

So, I can attest that pregnancy brain is real. Research shows that a woman’s brain can shrink up to 5% when you’re growing your baby. Apparently, my brain has shrunk the part that can focus on reading for longer than five minutes because your girl is struggling. I did read in July it just took forever for me to finish the book that I was reading. Anyhow, let’s get to my July 2024 wrap up.

Bag of Bones

Synopsis:

Four years after the sudden death of his wife, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan is still grieving. Unable to write and plagued by vivid nightmares set at the western Maine summerhouse he calls “Sara Laughs,” Mike reluctantly returns to the lakeside getaway. There, he finds his beloved Yankee town held in the grip of a powerful millionaire, Max Devore, whose vindictive purpose is to take his three-year-old granddaughter, Kyra, away from her widowed young mother, Mattie. As Mike is drawn into Mattie’s and Kyra’s struggle–and as he falls in love with both of them–he is also drawn into the mystery of Sara Laughs…now the site of ghostly visitations and escalating terrors. What are the forces that have been unleashed here–and just what do they want of Mike Noonan?

My Rating: 4/5

My Full Review: Coming Soon

Untamed

Synopsis:

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this? We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent–even from ourselves.

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She Is. At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice–the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living.

Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender, Untamed is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is.

My Rating: 3/5

My Full Thoughts: I liked Untamed in the beginning. However, toward the end I feel like the author tried to fit too many topics into this that didn’t completely work. It just tried to do too much.

That’s my July 2024 wrap up. What did you read this month?